This is how it is up here in Northumberland, after the snow and before the grass greens. Grey sky, splashes of sun, dry stone walls mended with what’s to hand, bleak moorland. And yet….
….rounding the last bend for home, these snowdrops waving to me. What a joy to return, how grateful to be alive!
The house in the snowdrops photo is not the monastery. It’s a cottage at the bottom of our lane. It was once a post office.
Quite so ….
That great cycle of the seasons calls me back. Liked Wrekin too! Same call.
In gassho
I felt a moment of joy coming around a bend on my bike yesterday—Frankfurt has a green belt that surrounds the whole city, the remains of the old medieval wall…and there pushing themselves out of the ground were the long, graceful leaves of jonquils! How wonderful to see…still only green without their bright yellow and orange heads…but still a whisper of what is to come!
This makes me recall my musings last month about vitality and the following:
in his book ‘Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist’ DT Suzuki writes about trisna (tanha) as:
…more deeply rooted than we imagine, as it grows straight out of the root of karuna.
Let me cite a Japanese Haiku poet of the eighteenth century, Basho. One of his seventeen syllable poems reads:
When closely inspected,
One notices a nazuna in bloom
Under the hedge.
The nazuna is a small flowering wild plant.’
I’m looking for the signs of spring too. Desperately. -29 this a.m. I have to keep reminding myself that weather is just weather. Lovely photos.
Best,
Michael
Thanks everybody for your contributions which are much appreciated. Good to know you are out there.