Skip to main content

I go among trees



Today I went to an exhibition of Joan Baker (http://www.joanbaker.co.uk/index.htm) and bought the painting shown here: 'Tree Wisdom'. It is of a place in Pembrokeshire, at the foot of a hill whose name is the 'Hill of Angels'.

I had found a new way to Ludlow (and the Silk Top Hat gallery), along the road from Droitwich, past Tenbury Wells where Shropshire, Hereford and Worcestershire meet. It is a beautiful road, winding, amongst diverse shaped hills, topped now with trees in autumnal glory and the villages you pass through have a wonderful cross-section of architectural styles in this place occupied for centuries.

I was listening to Delius - those quiet winding pieces of mood shifting, contemplated nature - as I drove along, these conspired with the shifting view to place my mind in the right place to view Joan's art.

It is an art of nature meditated upon and seen, and seen through. It is art that says that there is another world and it is both enfolded in and enfolds this one. It is an art of a transcendent unity that yet captures the world in its particulars.

I loved both painting and title - I always hanker for living amongst trees, and my favourite walk is to go amongst them and if that is coupled with coming to and from a water's edge, the walk is made doubly perfect!

It is resonant with one of my most beloved poems of Wendell Berry: one of his Sabbath poems:

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move. 

Comments

  1. sdbrOctober 23, 2011 at 11:36 PM

    What a beautiful poem! If only we could make Golgonooza. . .

    sheila

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nicholas ColloffOctober 24, 2011 at 7:58 AM

    It is one of a series that Berry has written over the years on and out of the experience of Sunday's rest and reflection. Building Golgonooza begins, as Blake and Berry would attest, in clear seeing, 'rinsing the doors of perception' (as Blake wrote) which requires the immersion in fearless peace that is described so beautifully here.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Buddha meets Christ in embrace

Reading Lama Anagarika Govinda is proving nostalgic on a number of fronts. I recall my first reading of it in my first year at university, bought at Watkins, the famous 'esoteric' bookshop in Cecil Court in London. I sat in my hall of residence room transfixed by a world made familiar; and, it was deepening of a commitment to contemplation (which has been observed fitfully)! I remember returning, at the time, to my school to give a talk to the combined fifth form on Buddhism and using Govinda as the backbone of my delivery (both this book, and his equally wonderful, the Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism). I was voted (I immodestly remember) their best invited speaker of the year. I had even bought a recording of Tibetan music as opener and closer! He reminded me of how important Buddhism was (and is) to my own thinking and comprehension of my experience. The Buddha's First Sermon in the Deer Park was the first religious text I read (of my own volition) at the tender age...
13 comments
Read more

Luminous Spaces - the poetry of Olav H. Hauge

Don't give me the whole truth, don't give me the sea for my thirst, don't give me the sky when I ask for light, but give me a glint, a dewy wisp, a mote as the birds bear water-drops from their bathing and the wind a grain of salt. It began with a poem, this poem, in Mark Oakley's 'The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry' - a wonderful series of meditations on particular poems, one each chapter. The poet is the Norwegian, Olav H. Hague (1908-1994). I immediately ordered, 'Luminous Spaces: Selected Poems & Journals' and was enjoying dipping until, at the weekend, recovering from a stomach bug, I decided to read them through and fell wholeheartedly for a new friend. Hague was born on a farm. His formal education was brought short by a combination of restricted means, an inability to conquer mathematics: and, a voracious diet of reading ranging beyond the confines of any confining curriculum. He went to a horticultural college instead an...
1 comment
Read more

Red Shambala

Nicholas Roerich is oft depicted as a spiritual seeker, peace visionary, author of numberless paintings, and a brave explorer of Central Asia. However, Andrei Znamenski in his 'Red Shambala: Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia' has him perform another role - that of geopolitical schemer. The scheming did have at its heart a religious vision - of a coalition of Buddhist races in Central Asia that would establish a budding utopia - the Shambala of the title - from which the truths of Buddhism (and co-operative labour) would flow around the globe. This would require the usurpation of the 13th Dalai Lama to be replaced by the Panchen Lama guided by the heroic saviour (Roerich) who appears above dressed for the part. In the achievement of these aims, the Roerichs (including his wife, Helena, who had a visionary connection with 'Mahatmas' whose cryptic messaging guided their steps) were willing to entertain strange bedfellows that at one time include...
Post a Comment
Read more