Courage to be

Saturday 12th September, 2020

So I have started my two weeks alone. It is hard simply to stop and find oneself with no commitments except a dog, two chickens, fourteen sheep and a tortoise. Somehow we all feel we need to be doing something, to fill our time and sense we have some usefulness or productivity....we must stop defining ourselves by what we do and think rather of who we are and rejoice in that.

Yet winding down takes time as one is conditioned to be 'on the go'.

Fortunately it is a sunny, even a hot, day. I have been sitting out in the garden. In fact I have spent the last two hours just watching the tortoise eat lettuce leaves and dandelions. It was mesmerising, relaxing and just extraordinary.

I did feed the chickens and will give them their second dollop soon. I did walk the dog and then give her two meals and her pills. While walking her I noticed damsons and picked them as they were ripe and I love damson jelly. I was also searching for crab apples but only found small wild ordinary apples but I picked some of them and will add blackberries and make more jelly.

I have watched canal barges slowly chugging up and down the canal. The ducks seem oblivious. The sheep which surround my hideout are soothing as they graze constantly and seem relaxed and pastoral. One terrifying moment was when a goshawk swooped down on to a pigeon, stunned it and then ate it on the lawn. Nature is beautiful yet terrifying. The hawk was so swift, so built to kill and so intent with its beak  and talons. Then the tortoise with its heavy shell, its strange head and neck...what marvels of sight and design. Even the chickens I find fascinating. You see I have time to stand or sit and stare and listen and watch and note.

I have a biography of WB Yeats I have started. I have a book by an Egyptian author. I have a room where a previous occupant has left his library, or part of it, on psychology. He is a practising psychologist and the titles alone make me tingled with mild horror. Survival of child abuse, the psychotic impulse, defining stress, a lifetime of illness, the misunderstood and spurned, why murder is a must.....

I need God even if He does not need me. I need Love. I need hope. I will be silent for them knowing how privileged I am and how lacking in generosity.

Yeats wrote: " why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself". Yes, courage to live and courage to die and courage to be.