Musings from a morning stroll

Earth's crammed with heaven, 

And every common bush afire with God, 

But only he who sees takes off his shoes;

The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.

                                                                         Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Very early on Friday morning, I went into the meadow behind the house to pick wild flowers for Matilda. The grass was soggy wet with dew. Wearing shorts I put on my gumboots to keep at least my feet dry.

Later, back at the house after breakfast, I discovered that the dew on my legs had dried into a sticky film. It had the same feeling as the overspray getting onto my skin when I apply varnish with the spray gun to a work piece. Stuck all over my legs were a multitude of grass seeds, hitching a ride. In an ingenious manner, the grass produced a glue to stick its seeds to anything passing by and in the process is sown all over. I had to wash my legs with warm water and soap to get it off.

The incident somehow moved me. Once more it brought the message home that I am part of a much bigger picture. As if by second nature, I tend to see myself as the centre of the universe, without whose planning, organizing and hard work, nothing will get done. In my own eyes I carry this huge responsibility to keep everything standing and afloat.

A Friday morning stroll literally brought me back to earth. Despite my sense of grandeur and influence, often I am nothing more than a pair of bare legs, taking grass seeds for a ride. A part, among an array of other living organisms, of a process unfolding and playing itself out right under my nose.

Through synchronicity, having no knowledge of my experience, my friend André sent us an excerpt from a beautiful book, The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley. He said on reading it he thought about Barowfield and the field sloping down towards the river. Surprised I read this passage in Eiseley’s book:

By the time I get to the wood I am carrying all manner of seeds hooked 

in my coat or piercing my socks or sticking by ingenious devices to my shoestrings. 

I let them ride. After all, who am I to contend against such ingenuity? It is obvious 

that nature, or some part of it in the shape of these seeds, has intentions beyond this 

field and has made plans to travel with me.

The centre of the universe I am not. Things get done and are being taken care of even without my initiative.

But paradoxically, in the process of conveying that message to me, it is done with such care as if I am the centre of the universe. It is even repeated. I am constantly struck by the delicate immensity of it all.

~ o ~

At first I only heard the voices. Sound travels far that early in the morning. I only saw Winnie, the lady working for us on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the cart and her daughter leading the two oxen pulling it as they appeared from behind some shrubbery and stopped for a rest. The incline was steep and the cart heavy laden with fire wood gathered from the fallen trees on the river bank down below.

Catching her breath the daughter shouted over the distance separating us: “Good morning sir! It’s a surprise to see you here at this time of the morning. Especially on Valentine’s Day.”

I love this country.


George