Dark versus light

Thursday 4th March, 2021

The world keeps turning and it is hard to get off! The seasons come and go, the clock moves on, the moon follows the sun set and whatever Auden may write one may want but one cannot stop the clocks. Time may figuratively stand still or speed up, one may become so absorbed by something that one is unaware of time, or so bored that the minutes seem like hours but there is, to quote Ecclesiastes, nothing new under the sun. Indeed time is an artifice yet an indicator of our fallibility.

To me also pain, suffering, sadness is ever present as should be joy and happiness. I was reading Rainier Maria Rilke's 'Letters to a young poet' this morning and came across this. I quote it as it fits in with so much else re suffering that I have read that I think it is worth pondering:

" the only sorrows which are harmful and bad are those one takes among people in order to drown them out. Like diseases which are treated superficially and inexpertly, they only abate, and after a short pause break out again.... If it is possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and a little beyond the outworks of our intuitions, perhaps we should then bear our sadnesses with greater assurance than our joys. For they are the moments when something new enters in to us, something unknown to us; our feelings, shy and inhibited, fall silent, everything in us withdraws, a stillness settles on us, and at the centre of it is the new presence that nobody yet knows, making no sound".

There is a growth through the dark side of life, there is a strength that is awakened in the dark, there is an opportunity born of the need to find the light and there is a fact to be faced and not suppressed and ridiculed. It is hard to bear but then after the pangs of birth joy is witnessed. I cannot say I like the idea or have experienced it but yet I believe it and I believe the witnesses to it.

My walk was long. It was cold. Litter was less abundant. The trees were especially still, majestic and sumptuous. The birds were atwitter and on my return home the robin looked at me aggressively...he had devoured the fat ball. I must find another. He disdained the stale bread and waits impatiently. Talk of a little dictator.

Elsewhere Budget analysis goes on, Ms Sturgeon's performance is analysed and gossips, commentators, trolls and mischief makers and cheer leaders are having a good indulgent time.

I returned and watched Cormorant Strike and the Cuckoo's Nest on catch up television.

I am trying to come to a decision re the purchase of a home and I must consult a couple of people and continue to pray and consider. Life goes on, the clock ticks.