words

The path always dips in and out of light and shadow; the other face often invisible but ever-present.

I’m not sure why I’m writing this. I sat down to write about Brittany (in our yesterday’s rare day out on the Finistère coast, and in sunshine! – for my daughter’s birthday), no-dig gardening and sowing more broad beans. Oh and to offer you a winter-garden vegan recipe or two.

Another day.

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Lately, I have had too many words; and simultaneously not enough. I have written plenty; but how much is worth saying is a different matter. I have at least two other longer posts on hold at the moment, while something in me rearranges itself.

I know many writers who feel that at times like ours in this world words simply can never go the distance of addressing what needs to be spoken of in our fragmented world. I’ve bumped up against this sense of bleakness several times lately: on here, in other writings, among friends, in myself. And, in truth, there is so much to distress us.

I have one politically aware and active friend who has decided, in her distress, that for the moment her only course of action in relation to all the troubles is elective mutism.

Sometimes the only appropriate response to anything is silence; something, like solitude, that is rarely valued in our secular times, but in other eras and cultures was or is seen as a prerequisite to a life lived with soul.

Sometimes, again, I would say to her and to others, including me, who feel similarly at times, that on occasion all we have is words. Sometimes they are offered for those whose voices are not given space. Often they are inadequate to express the awfulness of what is happening in our world. However, they can still bear witness; and arguably we also have a duty of care – both to voice the almost-unspeakable, and also to pay attention to, celebrate and express what there is still of beauty – that is always present, for the looking.

Sometimes, too, a life worth living, a life well-lived, depends on knowing when a situation demands speaking, and when it demands keeping silent – a fine art, distinguishing between those two responses.

More, such a life might depend on a willingness to do all we can on a personal level to minimise the thoughts, feelings, words and deeds of ours that can cause harm (to ourself as well as to others), in whatever way. Simply by being human we are in some (usually minor and unconscious) ways complicit in violence. It takes courage to face, over and over, our own shortcomings; to acknowledge, address and change them. And sometimes that is truly all we have. That too is soulwork.

I seem to be doing a lot of that kind of personal investigation at the moment. It’s challenging, and it’s time well spent.

The Dhammapada, a Pali text reputedly from the Buddha’s words of 2500 years ago that has influenced me since I discovered it as a teenager, says: ‘What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind.’ Isn’t that sobering? It’s a useful way of looking at karma: ‘As we sow, so shall we reap.’

Our sowing begins with our thoughts.

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‘When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.’

‘Everything can be taken from a man [sic] but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.’

Viktor Frankl, who survived a Nazi death camp

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Thank you for reading, as always.