Make a place to sit down...

More than usual, this week, time seems to have fashioned a particularly elastic quality.

Drawing tight to remind me that each moment is precious.

While also opening wide and shrugging off boundaries with a sense of eternity.

And we live in the messy and unpredictable in-between, with its associated sense of disorientation and ephemeral opportunities.

So how might we redeem our relationship with time and feel our way into a rhythm that serves us and the world around us well?

Recently I came across this evocative invitation from the farmer/poet Wendell Berry, which offers a means of navigation:

HOW TO BE A POET

(to remind myself)

i

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.

You must depend upon

affection, reading, knowledge,

skill — more of each

than you have — inspiration,

work, growing older, patience,

for patience joins time

to eternity. Any readers

who like your poems,

doubt their judgment.

ii

Breathe with unconditional breath

the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.

Communicate slowly. Live

a three-dimensioned life;

stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything

that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;

there are only sacred places

and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.

Make the best you can of it.

Of the little words that come

out of the silence, like prayers

prayed back to the one who prays,

make a poem that does not disturb

the silence from which it came.

+ Wendell Berry from 'The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry', listen to his reading for On Being

… because at heart, we are all poets.

~

This week

Poems and reflections on love, belonging and growing a radical relationship with time. I'm pleased that Oliver Burkeman’s TEDx talk Why patience is a superpower – referenced on Thursday – has spoken to many people…

• Monday: The possibility of loving who we are becoming
• Tuesday: Unveiling the unseen
• Wednesday: NO POST – Data Centre cooling system failure
• Thursday: Pausing for the radical act of patience
• Friday: The paradox of passionately waiting