Beautiful Paintings

A week ago while wandering through the tube system of London I saw a poster with this painting.


Don't Be Too Serious by Elizabeth McDonald

Today while in London meeting friends it was suggested we visit the National Portrait gallery and there to my surprise I came across the original. In real life it was even more striking. I still think he looks somewhat like Justin Timberlake, or an early Elvis Costello maybe.

Within the exhibition, the Portrait Awards for 2010, were many breath-taking, jaw-droppingly stunning paintings, including this one called Free Paul by David Beel.


A mesmerising, not to mention inspiring exhibition!

Hope, Faith and Love

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.

- Reinhold Niebuhr -

Quote found at the beginning of the book, 'How the Irish Saved Civilization', by Thomas Cahill.

the changes are happening ...

... keeping the doors of my heart open,
is easy on the days when I'm in the flow,
when the peels of laughter and happiness
are all around, not so much on the unknown days,
when all there appears is confusion,
stepping forward to gaze into the abyss
and dare to see what's there,
then to keep the doors of my heart open
is terrifying, and yet that is what I'm
slowly learning to do each and every wobbly
step of the way, holding the love, keeping
my heart open, staying on my path,
being a witness, feeling the universal
wound we all share and being brave enough
to continue to participate,
to heal and be healed ... the ever possible
potential of transformation is here,
the changes are happening ...

What to remember when waking

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
in which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

What you can plan
is to small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love? What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

It is waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?

- david whyte -

from the house of belonging,
many rivers press 2004

As

... the rain falls from clouds moving above,
the moon peeks from behind the occasional cloud
glowing a golden yellow ... like a mirror
my feelings echo times gone by ... a wake up call
from the night sky ... it's time to get real
and pull myself from this dream, I need
to get myself back home now.

Twenty Four Hours Later

Through out the day the image of the deer being hit by the car has passed through my mind often. It's shocking. I slept badly and woke early. During the day I've spoken about what happened. I asked myself why I didn't think about stopping afterwards to check out if those involved were ok. I want to think that the deer was killed instantaneously, felt nothing. By this afternoon I was exhausted. I lay down on my bed and eventually fell asleep. As I was beginning to wake up I dreamt about the spirit of the deer rising out of its body. It's cliched and yet it helped me to begin to accept what happened last night. As shocking as it is and as disturbing as it is to see something that violent I feel as though I need to find a way of seeing this not as a random accident but as something that can and does happen to animals when they enter dangerous spaces like motorways. Harsh things happen and lives get lost. What's important is to prevent harm as best as possible and to honour the life.

Gone in the blink of an eye

Driving back to Devon this evening on a warm summers night. The light had finally receded, the darkness broken by my car headlights on the motorway. As I'm approaching Exeter and starting to imagine being back at the college I suddenly make out the pale outline of a deer up ahead. In a split moment I swerved out of the middle lane and miss the deer, only to look behind to see the deer being hit full on by the car following me. Neither the deer or the driver had a chance at those speeds in that darkness. The deer flew into the air and landed on the road rigid as anything. It's like an awful nightmare. There's part of me that can't quite take it in and then the pictures flash in front of my eyes again - it's unbearable - gone in the blink of an eye. Alive one second, dead the next. Wiped out, for what, trying to get from one field to another. AArrggghhh, I feel sick!!!!! That is no way to die. I hate driving and cars. I hate it. Its so destructive. And the driver will have had the most dreadful experience to - that was a full size healthy deer. Its unbearable. It seems so random and unjust. Fuck. Fuck Fuck ... I don't know what to do except the one thing I can't do which is to undo what happened by winding back the clock to somehow stop the deer from getting on the motorway.

Tomorrow friends and family are gathering to mark the one year anniversary of Kate's death - she was randomly, accidentally, pointlessly, unfairly killed while cycling into University this time last year. She would have been 28 on the 8th July. Fuck, I keep seeing this deer flying in the air and it's bringing back the memory of what happened to Kate - it's crap, rubbish, fucked up - another life gone for no good reason. Gone in the blink of an eye and in that moment everything stops making sense to me. I don't want to be part of this anymore. This fucking random pointless suffering doesn't seem to ever stop! I can't work out what to do or what not to do. Nothing seems to make any difference. I want to bang my head against a wall. Anything to stop these thoughts, to stop the feelings overwhelming me. And its not even about me - I'm beside myself here ... fuck fuck fuck.

I pray with all my heart Kate didn't suffer ... the deer didn't suffer ... and the people in the car are ok.

To call back from exile

I wish to be so close to the one I love that
I can hear their heart beat,
I can feel their soft embrace,
I can smell their seductive aroma,
I can see their eyes smile, and
I can taste their passionate kiss.

I want to call back from exile the fullest
spectrum of emotions that life can offer.
To be undone by a rainbow of experiences.

Every colour of feeling,
every note of touch,
every tickle of taste,
every sweetness of sound
and every vibration of sight.

May my spirit move my soul,
So I become entwined and engaged
In all our beingness.
To dance again,
To laugh to the end,
To cry, to sing, to love.

Loving is eternal innocence

I believe in the world like I believe in a marigold,
Because i see it. But I don't think about it
because to think is not to understand ...
The world wasn't made for us to think about
But for us to look at and agree with ...

I don't have a philosophy: I have senses ...
If I talk about Nature, it's not because I know what it is,
But because I love it, and the reason I love it
Is because when you love you never know what you love
Or why you love, or what loving is ...

Loving is eternal innocence,
And the only innocence is not thinking ...

Alberto Caeiro
from 'The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro'
Published by Shearsman Books, Exeter.

Printed in Resurgence Magazine, July/August 2010, p.47

Whatever you think ...

Whatever you think truth or fable
That in a thousand books you find
It all remains a Tower of Babel
Unless it is by love combined.

Goethe (1805)