Deliriously Living Moments Of Blue

Rural scene, a rural scene, / Sweet especial rural scene. GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS Binsey Poplars

Under a broad sky, / In the peaceful light / Of a spring day, / Why so restlessly / Do blossoms scatter down? KI NO TOMONORI (c. 850-c. 904)

How is it, / The restless spirit / Of scattering blossoms / Itself reveals / The peaceful colour of spring? FUJIWARA NO TEIKA (1162-1241)

A Bird, Just A Bird

'What fragrance', the bird said, 'what sunlight, oh Spring's come
and I'll go find my mate.'

Off the porch sill flew
the bird, flitting like some messenger, and was gone

A little bird
a thoughtless bird
a bird who never reads the news
a bird free from debt
a bird unacquainted with us

The bird flew through the air
above the red lights
unaware in the heights
and deliriously living
moments of blue

The bird was, oh, just a bird

FORUGH FARROKHZAD (1935-67); translated from the Persian

I'm taking a blogging break but will resume in June. I wish all my blog readers out there a wonderful Maytime. Happy walking, happy living, happy blogging! And remember to live deliriously those moments of blue...

Our Walking Is Our Preaching

Aparigraha is the Buddhist tradition of non-possessiveness, non-hoarding, non-attachment - taking only what you absolutely need, not coveting unnecessary, luxury items, not grasping at things greedily, not clutching on to things. St Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) also practised this philosophy of taking only that which is necessary, and it became one of the precepts of the Franciscan Order he established in 1221.

Another book of my mother's, now on my own shelves, is the Everyman's Library edition of The Little Flowers Of Saint Francis. This was first published in 1910 as the 485th book in the Library, but my copy is the 1947 reprint on War Economy Standard paper. (In my former life as a book salesman I used to tout the Everyman's Library round the UK, a wonderful series which brought the classics within reach of the ordinary working man and woman. They were published at affordable prices in small-size formats. In their heyday nearly 1000 volumes were in print.)

The book contains three 'biographies' of St Francis, his life and teachings: The Little Flowers itself, translated into English from the Italian which in turn is translated from the Latin; The Mirror Of Perfection, based on documents and memoirs left by Friar Leo, one of the Franciscan brothers; and The Life Of Saint Francis by St Bonaventura.

In 1222 a certain Thomas of Spalato saw St Francis preaching in the piazza in front of the Palazzo del Podestá in Bologna, and described the effect his words had on the whole city which had assembled to hear him: ...he treated his theme so well and so wisely that many learned men who were present stood filled with admiration when they heard such words from the lips of an untutored friar. The whole matter of his discourse was directed to the quenching of hatred and the establishment of peace. His dress was mean, his person insignificant, his face without beauty. But with so much power did God inspire his words that many noble families, sundered by ancient blood feuds, were reconciled for ever.

These are are some of the words of St Francis:

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.

Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self.

What we are looking for is what is looking.

Start by doing what's necessary; than do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.

Lord, grant that I might not so much seek to be loved as to love.

No one is to be called an enemy, all are your benefactors, and no one does you harm. You have no enemy except yourselves.

True progress quietly and persistently moves along without notice.

I have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, he can work through anyone.

It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.

I hope to visit Assisi later this month.

The painting of St Francis at the top of this post is by the Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664). Zurbarán was born in the village of Fuente de Cantos in the region of Extremadura; I passed through this village on my recent pilgrimage along the Vía de la Plata.

Thanks to George at Transit Notes for the photo below, which was taken in a 'small hermitage near Assisi, Italy, where St Francis and his followers frequently meditated and broke bread together.'

Hidden Treasures

Yesterday - half-way through a mass clearout and springclean of the house - I was delighted to rediscover a large wooden chest I hadn't opened in a long time. It was packed full of books. I shouldn't have opened it, but I did - and that put an end to clearing and sorting for the rest of the day. It was a treasure trove of odd books and esoterica; a window into my past. In among such fascinating curiosities as Apocalypse by D. H. Lawrence, The Notebooks Of Leonardo Da Vinci and The Life Of Rembrandt by Hendrik Van Loon, were 3 little series of booklets which in an instant transported me back 40 years.

The first series - a collection of illustrated children's histories - used to be my mother's, so must date from the late 1920s/early 30s (there's no printed publication date inside). Titles include The Story Of Prehistoric And Roman Britain, The Story Of Saxon And Norman Britain and, tellingly, Our Empire's Story:

Published by Sankey, Hudson & Co of Manchester, they tell the story of Britain almost exclusively in captioned illustrations; and, as you can see, these pictures (some of which I'd coloured in) are very fine:

I also unearthed a series of booklets which accompanied the radio (or should I say wireless) programme Adventures In English, which was broadcast for schools on the BBC Home Service (now Radio 4) in the mid-1960s:

These books and programmes must have been among my first introductions to poetry, and they hit me with a force akin to mystical revelation. The choice of poems certainly didn't make any attempt to talk down to the 10 and 11 year olds who were listening and reading along. There were poems by Auden, Robert Graves, Edith Sitwell and - that most prolific of poets - Anon.

Later, in my mid-teens, I took out a subscription to a local literary magazine called Lincolnshire Writers. I even submitted one or two poems to it, but they were politely declined. This magazine revealed that there were lots of talented poets and short story writers unexpectedly lurking in those neat, mellow-stone Wolds' villages and windswept fenlands. It showed me that you didn't have to go to Liverpool or London or San Francisco (it was now the late 60s) and rub shoulders with the Mersey poets or the Beatles or the Hippies to be creative. You could do it in your own back yard.

The standard of writing in Lincolnshire Writers was exceptionally high. Here are a couple of poems from it, chosen more or less at random:

Journey Into Autumn

Coming south, it seemed the train
Travelled faster than my watch.
It was summer in the north.
Cornfields where the wind had lain
Still were waiting to be cut,
Children trailing the afternoon's
Listlessness behind them found
The blackberries still tart. But
Here the fields bear straw-bales strapped
For winter and the stubble burns.
The boys have gone now who lounged
All summer long beside the track.
Diesels pass unwaved. The last
Down drifts from willow-herb to find
A niche for next year's purple
Flowering. Summer here is past.

JOHN CHARLESWORTH

Louth

Spire and crescent moon
So close in this autumn sky
They form one ikon.

ROBIN BRUMBY

Winning And Losing

For the loser now will be later to win / For the times they are a-changin' BOB DYLAN

If we look around it isn't hard to see that we're obsessed with ranking people into winners and losers. Consider the recent parliamentary election debates on TV: all the media's interested in is who 'won' each debate, who came second, and who was the 'loser' - like a political version of The X Factor or The Wheel Of Fortune.

Consider education: what is it but a constant comparing of who's ahead and who's behind in the league table of learning? (My little Ptolemy is so bright, would you believe it, he polished off his SATs even before he could digest proper food, and as for algebraic equations, well, he was doing those in the womb!)

Consider jobs and professions: who's the boss's favourite, who's performing best in the 'office politics' stakes, who's in, who's out, who's won 'The Most Obsequious Toadying Award Of The Year', who's won the ignominious, foot-in-your-face scramble to the top of the greasiest pole in capitalist win-lose 'culture', who's getting the sack, who's getting into the sack with the secretary?

Consider ourselves, the poor foolish ones, the relentlessly competitive denizens of this petty petit-bourgeois society: status-haunted, we twitch the curtains, anxiously checking out the neighbours to see if they're gaining or losing points in the futile, robotic dance of suburban one-upmanship. Is their car better, faster, more expensive than ours, does its almost sensuous, plastic-metallic sheen have a more attractive and lustrous glow? Is their lawn greener, are their weeds less prolific, does their picket fence stand somehow more proud and erect than ours, are their children more wholesome-looking, their wives more decorous, their husbands more tanned and handsome (or do they look just plain worn-out?) Jealousy and despair set in - we're slipping behind! We'd better invite them double-quick to a dinner party, a little ménage à quatre, where we can impress them with our nouvelle mock-Gothic Heston Blumenthal cuisine and our faux-intellectual banter. Otherwise we might fall even further behind in the winning and losing game!

Well, I want no part of it. I have no part in it. I've haven't had a part in it for years. Yes, count me out. It's such a relief to be counted out. You don't have to wait to be excluded. You can simply exclude yourself. Just like that. We can then take on 'the awesome responsibility of embracing our own freedom', as Fireweed said recently in a memorable comment on one of my Turnstone posts. For I have no interest in simplistically dividing up the world into black and white, into good and bad, into winners and losers like a child's superhero comic. Real life, true life, moral life, soul life is not a question of winning or losing at any price in our supposedly evolved consciousness. We could say we have now reached a post-Darwinian, post-evolutionary New Age consciousness - if only we would realise it. We are rather more than mere creatures jockeying for position in the pecking order - or we could be. I want the powerful to admit their weaknesses, the lame to embrace their strengths, the hidden talents in the shyest wallflowers to shine. For comparisons can be odious. And we are all both winners and losers; and we are all neither winners nor losers at all.

Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. KING JAMES BIBLE Luke 12:27

When crows find a dying snake, / They behave as if they were eagles. / When I see myself as a victim, / I am hurt by trifling failures. SHANTIDEVA

(The oil painting reproduced above is Francisco de Goya's The Greasy Pole)