For a while a buzzard has flown down from the nearby trees
to stand in the field next to the cottage in which we are currently
living. It stands for some time
surrounded by green shoots and surveys the world with sharp inclinations of its
head; occasionally it will heavily hop a metre or two to take up a new
position. I have not been able to watch
it for all the time that it has been there, but I have, once or
twice, seen it lift itself off the ground and with a few strong sweeps of its
wings take its next existence back in the trees. Is it looking for food potential? Is it just watching? What does it see from the ground that it
cannot see from the trees? To watch this
bird, indeed to watch any living creature, is to connect to a world that is
beyond words.
The human being is born into the wild, the uncontrolled;
born into fragility; and born into the extraordinary potential that is
life. Unfortunately, much of this life
is spent in denial and in direct conflict with all that connects us with that
which is more than our individual and collective selves. As human beings we are nature, indivisible
from the animals, plants, and all living things on this earth. When we die we return to the unknown and our
deaths are no different to that of the fly, the elephant, the fish or any other
living creature. So why do we educate
our children in enormous regimented mechanical factories? Why do we create vast towering blocks for
people to live in amongst the pollution in the cities? Why do we produce food that has little or no
nutritional value, involves the killing of animals on an industrial scale and
the pumping of chemicals into their bodies?
Why have we made the pursuit of money the root of our existence? Where is it leading to…? Where are we going…?
So walk up the waterfall with a heart that bangs in the
chest almost to breaking. Watch with
care the slight movement beneath the glassy water where the bird is about to
rise. Feel the soft rain fall and the
bite of the cold on your cheeks. In
watching life, can you also observe your separation? Can you see how you have been taught that it
is all to be about you? And how that prevents
you seeing.
The snow on the mountains cuts into the cracks and feels for
the solid base to gather and stretch.
Blasts of wind take flesh and bone and play at throwing it down the
hill – a good game! If taken solely with
sedentary logic and the pontification of the armchair, then your skeleton will
gather dust in a room with no windows. And
the light of the slow revolution is appearing now through the spaces in the
floorboards whilst the awful, destructive sense of those in authority is
creeping like suffocating smoke into your thinking.
You may be dividing yourself from others through sex,
through age, through your cleverness – climbing the ladder of superiority; but
you cannot hear the song, see the colours, feel the joy and touch the
pain. You are lost and already dead. Others may also be lost, but they vibrate
with a life that has come knocking unexpectedly at their door.
