Doing nothing...

St John Fisher and St Thomas More. Thursday 9th July, 2020.

I love the sentence attributed to St Thomas...'until we meet merrily in heaven'. Yes indeed, what ever that may mean it is a spur to hope and purpose.

" Doing nothing with friends is never doing nothing, is it? " asked the boy.

"No" said the mole.

Charles Mackesy's book has simple statements, one liners and some straight forward common sense sentences as well as the four characters of boy, mole, fox and horse. Having looked at today's news pages on my iPad and registered various horror headlines about world starvation, unemployment figures and spikes and the death toll of the pandemic I decided I needed a day off, to do nothing.

What sort of day is a day off? As the boy queried 'doing nothing is not necessarily doing nothing'.

So I read a little of a trashy novel where a good cop detects a bad murderer. I went in to the gardens the sun was shining and gloated over a possible three new courgettes. I lent on the end wall and looked out over the Tay and across to the hills of Perthshire. I simply lent and watched and listened. Two elegant swans flew passed dazzling me. A few large portentous pigeons strutted their stuff and amused me. A fisherman was casting with style. A swoop of house martins soothed. Some floating sea gulls, some screeching oyster catchers, a lone heron: all added up to a feeling of relaxation. The world was still turning, the sun had risen, the clouds floated majestically across the sky, a distant sound of traffic did not really impinge, a rippling of waves dominated calmly, the rustling of leaves reminded me of movement. I was merely a part of all this.

It is all so remarkable. Sights, concepts, sounds, reality passing by. At times I think one has to be, to recognise one's place. Really it is not a day off, nothing is a day off as it were for we are all alive and living, part of a whole. Yet also I feel a day off is to be able to get away from all those buzzing concerns of the mind, all those nagging fears , all those anxieties and prognostications. To be able to dump them even for a minute is a relief and a revitalising of the inner, true self. Also to get away from the body, the ever anxious making sounds and aches and pains: to focus on nothing or on something other, to forget.

This morning it was the Tay, the dancing sunlight, the activities of little creatures which gave a glorious respite from me.

To be a drop in the ocean is not to lose identity but to gain a world.

A day off is, I have discovered, a day on.

Doing nothing is transforming into being something, unconsciously.