Sunday, January 16, 2011

Hush

It's 8.01 on sunday morning. I've fluttered to my blog text box on a whim, on a wing feather caught in a light breeze. Appropriately, all I can hear are the tiny, sweet and varied songs of birds; many birds, who must be dotted through trees here and in neighbouring properties. Astonishingly (to me in this moment) I almost never hear this bird song. My morning ears are flapped in, attuned to the clamour and chat of my own head.
It happened again this morning, until I arrived here. "Do this, do that, slice that part of that day this week to such and such task. Get a pencil/ add this to the list. Oh, and don't go to quaker meeting at 10.30. Use this time to think more, to make plans."

Alongside this urgent nonsense, the small birds continue to sing.

And I remember again, that above all, (below all) I want to listen, to abide in the quiet. To exercise the gentle discipline that says hush, I have things to notdo.

7 comments:

  1. Dear PamelaMM
    So lovely to have you flutter back in on a feather, a wing.
    I, too, have been contemplating 'gentleness and hush' this morning. It seems to me that when we bring gentleness to bear (in any - every? - situation), a hush accompanies us. We not only listen differently, we hear differently, too. How important it is not have things to notdo. Perhaps that is (as Wendell Berry's poem on Marylinn Kelly's blog suggests) where and when we find our real work?
    Lots, C xx

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  2. Thank you ClaraB for your welcome note. Isn't it interesting how rush and hush are so similar in sound, so utterly different as inmpulses - one taking us headlong, the other settling us back into our selves, the bowl of our being. This may be a uesful question to keep in reach. Am I in rush or in hush? Pamx

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  3. Good thoughts. Enjoy the birdsong. x
    John

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  4. To your "notdo," I add, for what my peace of mind requires, "and you are notdoing it perfectly." For me the seeming imperatives of lists and tasks that, in a photo, would have red circles drawn around them, need some further gentling.

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  5. To gentle is a very good, a very useful verb. And interestingly, one I've never used. But I will! Thanx Marylinn.

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  6. Oh, the scattered thoughts that peck themselves into a new day!

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