Colin Fletcher, in THE MAN WHO WALKED THROUGH TIME, describes how from moments of peak awareness, there came at last after long solitude and silence, and for the time being, a continuous sense of being one with the rhythm of all life and all time, of being inside as well as outside the life of everything he saw – animals, insects, the living rocks, the wind, the river; and finally, most difficult of all, he could feel even the craziness of modern humanity as part of the unbroken pattern of eternity.
"Peacemakers who sow in peace
raise a harvest of righteousness" (James 3:18)
We lay down our seeds in the dark.
Spring has been exceptionally cold
this year. Reluctant daffodils
have done little to convince me.
But we do the work of the faithful
farmer, rising in the pre-dawn hours.
It is a chosen hiddenness, a subtle
stretching over time, ear bent to listen
to the ground, ready for instruction.
Slow rhythmic movements are best.
Sometimes we simply show up,
holding borrowed pain, applying tears
or not. With a gentle
but demanding attention
to detail, we prepare the soil.
We plant. We wait.