Nearer to the earth’s heart
Deeper within its silence:
Animals know this world
In a way we never will.
As spring returns to the east coast of the United States, the instinctual migration of the animals returns with it. Every day a new bird song, a new tree leafing, a new flower appearing ~ and thus the inexorable cycles of life continue.
This Sunday, our day of collective silence, brings the opportunity to shift our gaze from the busyness of a frenetic world to the wisdom of the natural world that surround and sustains us. Let yourself be drawn into the silent, unfolding beauty of creation. Take some moments to connect with this place of deep and wild beauty within – the place where your own life is intimately connected to the rhythms of all creation.
With you in this place,
Peri & Barbara
To Learn from Animal Being
Nearer to the earth’s heart
Deeper within its silence:
Animals know this world
In a way we never will.
We who are ever distanced and distracted
By the parade of bright
Windows thought opens:
Their seamless presence
Is not fractured thus.
Stranded between time
Gone and time emerging,
We manage seldom
To be where we are:
Whereas they are always
Looking out from
The here and now.
May we learn to return
And rest in the beauty
Of animal being,
Learn to lean low,
Leave our locked minds,
And with freed senses
Feel the earth
Breathing with us.
May we enter
Into the lightness of spirit,
And slip frequently into
The feel of the wild.
Let the clear silence
Of our animal being
Cleanse our hearts
Of corrosive words.
May we learn to walk
Upon the earth
With all their confidence
And clear eyed stillness
So that our minds
Might be baptized
In the name of the wind
And the light and the rain.
- John O’Donohue