Lessons of the land

We stayed very close to the Twelve Pins

I could not stop thinking of the Connemara lands. All i could see was the bright orange and the blues - the greys and when we were leaving the curtains of rain that trickled and ran and shifted across the land. The gift of this land was sadness. It was impossible to be sadder than the land - the melancholy of the Ulliean pipes and the tin whistle, the loss and longing, the impossibility of conquering - of being anything apart from these colours and this sky. I take your sadness - bury it here. Your sadness, let it be the sacrifice, let it be my sacrifice. Take a rough hole and lay down your sorrows and your disappointments - and they will be transformed into mountains and loughs, rivers and grass. The wind will carry your sighs and the rain cleanse your tears. Think nothing of leaving your sadness here - for here it will grow.

It is humbling to be before such generosity. No gratitude will cover its offering. Given with no wish for reward. That is the land on the edge of the sea. On the edge of the Atlantic.

It is possible to read anything - the land, animals which are from the land. What are animals? They are the living things which come from the land, which live on the land, in harmony and without judgement. They are evidence of how much of love there is in the land - they are evidence of how much it is possible to love another. The animals love the land and the land loves the animals - it supports, nourishes and gives all living things - and the animals take and pass through the land - they give back and when it is time for them to go, they leave, they sink back into the land, they become the elements, the clouds. They are constantly in the embrace of each other, in life or death.

And flowers... flowers i was thinking, why do i love flowers so much? Because they are the manifestation of pure joy - in flowers there is just happiness. In flowers, the entire universe, the entire cosmos as conspired to bring this delicate form into being. In flowers is the dance of Venus, the tracings of Mercury and Saturn and Jupiter. The sun is manifest. In the flowers is the heart which has burst with joy. It has scattered into a million scintillating pieces and has come to be among us. The miracle of the rose.

And what about man. Ah human beings? The infinite capacity to create - or deceive. To kid ourselves about who we really are, what we can be. It is difficult to look at people sometimes, to read that hunger, that loss, that yearning which is only momentarily filled and then must be filled again. And so from human beings i learn compassion. And service and courage. For I learn what it must be to be torn and then to once again have the courage to be whole again. The entire pulsing, seething, will of the cosmos lives in us, in our hearts, our souls, our eyes. So from being human i learn stillness and i sometimes, at these moments, see what the angels see.