There is a gradual blooming throughout our lives… and depending on the soil we were planted in, its generally an ever-expanding growth ‘up and out’… causing endless cycles of new buds emerging as aged rose hips fall away when their flowering is complete…
The buds will look and feel different for all of us, even though many a day we’ve wanted them to look like someone’s who we admire, looked up to or even stood in terror of… and many a day we’ll have come into the company of others who tell us we need to follow a certain plan so that we do grow up and look like other buds, by following others’ ways…
The time it takes for us to grow familiar with, appreciate and even embrace our own buds is varied and may never be fully realised – show me an artist who thinks they know it all, and I’ll show you a person who’d love to be an artist…
One of the precious nutrients we’re given to support our blooming, is the everydayness of Life, the very soil we find ourselves planted in… who’d have thought that we don’t have to go to India, or Jerusalem, or Rome to be nourished… however – if we have, no doubt that was a component of our personal everydayness too…
Through seasons, what we grow to discover (uncover) is that the matted soil of our years is the unique ‘welcome mat’ laid out by Life just for us… just for our own very personal, unique buds to bloom, and bloom they do and will… and wilt in time, and lie fallow, resting before new buds emerge…
Naturally, we all try to grab those blooming happy moments and hope they will go on forever – we were raised on fairy tales after all… and our life is a tale too… and every moment in every day adds to that tale that is only ours to unfold and tell… the world right now needs our tale… That, after all, is one of the reasons we’re here in our uniqueness, in this place, at this time…
There will have been others who have placed a welcome mat at our door… and we’ve used their mat to wipe away our tears that Life’s thorns have brought… and it’s both the thorns and buds that gently invite us to follow the infinite welcome mat deep inside ourselves, inside all of us, to where the composted (manured!) soil lies within…
Ohhh, and we lay oursleves there as often as we can, to imbibe its odourous courage, that all is well and that all is very well… that all of the Life we’ve been given, has beauty in every breeze, and that if we flow with the breeze, not against it, we come to be this more and more… and that our being, merges with Life’s Being, and… in time we too help to put a welcome mat at others’ doors…
audio divina
This is an oldie and a goodie song from 1968 and written by Michel Legrand. It was first sung by Noel Harrison but made famous when it was sung by Dusty Springfield for the film ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’…
Perhaps use it for audio divina, divine listening… and experience the melodic repetition throughout it, what is your body experiencing as it hears the repetitive melody…? What does this show us about the windmills of our days – never ending or beginning…
(So, find one of the many different YouTube versions of it – they’re all grand, and turn it on…)
The Windmills of our Minds
Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that’s turning running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind
Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind
Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head
When did summer go so quickly? Was it something that you said?
Lovers walk along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand
Is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?
Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song
Half remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?
When you knew that it was over, you were suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning to the colour of her hair
A circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
As the images unwind, like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind
