Heroes Not Zombies

One of the things which struck me during my many visits to Japan several years ago was the practice of tying wishes or prayers to trees in the gardens of shrines and temples. Even in the middle of Tokyo you’ll come across all kinds of sacred places where you step out of the bustle, noise, concrete and glass of the city environment into a magical, tranquil oasis of a temple or shrine surrounded by a garden.

This photo is one of many variations of the tying a wish or prayer to a tree tradition. When you see one of these trees from the distance you can be fooled into thinking it’s a tree in full bloom, especially when the little papers are pink like these ones. But when you step a little closer you see that what you’re looking at is an abundance of hope – a blossom of dreams, desires, wishes and visions of the future…..just waiting to be harvested.

I think this is a beautiful practice. My default in life is optimism, even though at times I can slide into gloomy despair and catastrophising! Can’t we all? But I think I’ve carried dreams, visions, hopes and expectations throughout my entire life. I still do.

I believe that wishes, hopes and prayers are important. They create aspiration and stimulate imagination. They give us targets and goals to aim for. They create “north stars” to guide our path forward. They stoke up motivation and will. They help to organise our energies to help us realise the life we want to lead.

I don’t know how this fits into your life but for some people affirmations are a way of achieving this. For others, it’s the creation of vision boards. And for others it involves guided visualisation. For some it’s probably a system of diaries, planners and lists.

Maybe this year I’ll write out some of my personal wishes, hopes and prayers and tie them to one of the trees in my garden. Hmm…..there’s something to explore (I should tell you I moved house about a month ago and the large garden has gone wild over the last few years whilst the house has been uninhabited, so I’m still venturing into thickets and discovering all kinds of plants, bushes and trees)

How about you? Have you a way of bringing out your hopes, wishes and prayers and using them to create the life you want to live?

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A couple of hundred metres from my house is a Roman spring (a “source” in French – isn’t that an inspiring word?). Here’s a photo I took there this week.

The water in the spring is so amazingly clear. It’s quite astonishing. So I’ve been taking a few photos down there since I moved in.

Take a look at this one. It’s a lovely image of trees which are perfectly reflected in the pool.

But wait a minute….the trees are bare, but in their reflection they seem to be completely covered in leaves! How can that be?

Well, look more closely and you’ll see that those leaves are actually green plants growing under the water – those leaves that have magically appeared on the winter trees aren’t anything to do with the trees at all!

Magic! And beautiful!

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This is not a photo of my house! It’s a bookshop in Japan. However, I’ve just moved house and that’s entailed me putting every single book I own into cardboard boxes. I am now in the throes of emptying all those boxes and putting the books onto shelves. I imagine if I did empty all the boxes and stack the books up on the floor I could well take a photo like this! I haven’t counted my books (I read them but I don’t count them!) but I know I have a lot.

I’ve always delighted in books which nourish my curiosity and delight me with great stories. So I have many non-fiction books, many fiction books, and many books of art and poetry.

I’m finding that this process of packing and unpacking has led to me handling and considering every single volume so as I place each one on a shelf I’m doing so with deliberation and fully conscious thought.

This is exciting me! I’m rediscovering books which I haven’t seen in years, reaffirming my interest and/or joy in others and finding yet others which I meant to read but somehow never got round to it.

I’m sure you’ll have your own way of storing and organising your books. Maybe you store them by size or colour, maybe you use the Dewey Decimal coding system, but I just group them according to interest. I have all the poetry books together, all the philosophy books together, all the health books together and so on. I also have a special section for special books – ones which made the biggest impact on me, and which I return to again and again.

How do you organise your books?

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I know there’s a tendency to promote the biggest as best – the greatest number of something, the largest something or the most powerful something.

I’ve read we live in the attention economy where businesses compete for our attention by promoting the outrageous, the extravagant or the ridiculous. They try to catch our attention with shock, fear and anger. It’s not very appealing is it?

So at the opposite end of the scale I thought I’d share this photo I took of a single plant growing on a rock in the middle of a pond.

Doesn’t it astonish you? How does a little seed find the inner strength and driving vital force to grow sufficient roots on the surface of a rock and stretch itself right up towards the sun, then at the top of that spindly but strong stalk it flourishes, producing a delicate, and delightful, little flower.

I often think Nature is astonishing and it’s usually something small but remarkable like this which catches my attention.

What catches your attention?

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Whenever I look at this photo I think of the phenomenon of bars or restaurants on the same street where one will be crowded and another virtually empty. The place I noticed that most was in Aix en Provence, along the Cours Mirabeau. It wasn’t even that one bar was awful so always empty. The crowds would move over a number of months, deserting the popular one to make a less popular one now THE place to be!

Maybe you’ve had a similar experience on holiday checking out the options for a place to eat. The really busy place exerts a pull, and those waiters hanging around outside the empty restaurant aren’t tempting.

Part of the explanation for this is the social instinct we humans possess (and other creatures, including these guys on this rock have it too). We are born with a drive to make connections. We have to bond to a carer to survive. In fact the social instinct is so strong in human beings that it surprises me that competitiveness is thought to play such an important role in development.

The other thing I think of when I look at this photo is the passage from T S Eliot’s The Rock –

When the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city ?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?”
What will you answer? “We all dwell together
To make money from each other”? or “This is a community”?
Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

Why do we congregate to form such large cities? Well, the social instinct is surely one of the factors. And here’s the thing, this instinct seems to operate primarily below the level of our awareness. Much of the time we don’t realise the power it is exerting over our choices and actions.

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Look at this photo. What do you see? Do you see the light cast on the wall from the lamp, with an unusual shadow pattern in it?

What could be making that pattern? A cut out filter in front of the light bulb perhaps?

I think this is a very human phenomenon – we see connections between parts as we try to make sense of the world around us. That takes observation, imagination and memory.

However, this image isn’t what it appears. It’s a photo of sunlight shining first through a tree, then through a window to cast this pattern on the wall. By chance, the patch of sunlight is exactly above the fitted, electric light – which isn’t switched on.

Isn’t it beautiful? Doesn’t it catch your attention and fire up your curiosity?

I like this, “in its own right”, so to speak, but something extra gets added by imagination and curiosity.

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When I look at a photo like this I think of the word “flow”, but there’s a related word which comes to my mind as I reflect on this particular photo today – movement.

I took this photo yesterday in the “source”, or “spring” which lies a couple of hundred metres from my house. The water which appears in the pool and then flows strongly off down the old Roman water channels is as clear as you could imagine.

Standing looking at this “source” I can’t help but think that I’m looking at something which is alive – or, at least, something which is at the basis of Life.

One definition of Life is that which has a “self-moving capacity”. When we see a rock we know it’s not going to go anywhere under its own volition or its own steam. But all creatures, from single celled organisms right up to complex human beings and other mammals move all the time – they move on the inside with the flow of nutrients, chemicals, electrical signals, as they maintain an internal environment – we call that homeostasis. They consume, metabolise and transform other elements. Some have a beating heart, and/or lungs which cycle through inspiration and expiration. All forms of Life show continuous movement inside.

Living forms are also always on the move on the planet too – sending seeds great distances, stretching up and climbing walls, spreading roots deep underground or walking, running, flying, swimming from one place to another.

Many creatures are migratory traversing huge amounts of land and sea every single year. Others move habitat from one place to another. All are seeking to survive and thrive.

This is true of human beings which is why I find nation state attempts to control the movement of people so disturbing. People will always move. Individually, in families or in large groups. Dividing neighbours into “citizens” and “foreigners” is fraught with difficulties and injustices. Hatred towards “the other” is counter to the human need to connect, to travel, to migrate.

It’s also true of viruses. This pandemic is often described as a war we are waging on a virus – a virus we want to eliminate. Except it’s very hard, almost impossible, to eliminate any viruses from the planet.

As we move ahead I wonder if we need to change our emphasis and change our societies and systems to make them both more resilient and more adaptable. We can’t just ignore epidemics or pandemics. We need to respond to them. But maybe we do that best when we create populations which are well housed, well fed and well educated. Maybe we do that best when we develop health and social care to successfully treat the sick, and to care for the elderly and vulnerable in our communities.

So, I’m just reflecting today on the importance of movement in all its forms – change, adaptation, resilience, growth and flourishing.

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Why do we call this month January?

Apparently it’s a reference to Janus, the god with two faces, one looking back to the past and the other looking forward to the future.

The symbol of Janus is a gateway or a doorway. When we stand on the threshold we are stepping forward into the future, from the past.

We do a lot of that around this time….looking back over the year just ended, remembering those we have lost, celebrating our best moments, making lists of best movies we saw that year, best songs we heard, best books we read. And we look forward with mainly hope, making plans, deciding what we want to change I the year ahead.

I was so lucky during my career to visit Japan on several occasions. One time I visited Fushimi Inari Shrine up the hill just outside Kyoto. That’s where I took this photo. The path up the hill winds it’s way through a forest and there are dozens of these bright red Torii gates straddling the path all the way up. There’s a tradition to visit it at the beginning of the year and to pray for prosperity.

The experience of stepping through one threshold after another (there are about a thousand) is hugely impressive. It becomes a meditative experience where each step and gate is a repetition as well as a unique and singular moment.

I always think of that now at this time of year.

I wonder what blend of memories, commemorations, celebrations, hopes, desires, dreams and goals you’ll be thinking of today.

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Another year draws to a close and wasn’t it full of challenges? It seems we are all learning to live with uncertainty. It’s always been hard to predict the future, but this pandemic plus climate change seems to have taken it to a whole new level.

I’ve long since believed the future emerges from the present, flowing forward from the choices we make and the decisions we take today.

Seeds intrigue me. The fact that nobody can tell whether or not a particular seed is alive or dead astonishes me. The only way to know what that seed will grow into is to nourish it, to tend it, to care for it.

It seems that what we choose to give our attention to, is likely to increase. It seems that what we choose to nurture will thrive.

So what seeds are you going to nourish, to tend to, to care for in 2022? What will you encourage? What, therefore, is likely to grow and flourish in your life?

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It’s been raining quite a lot these last three days but when it stopped for a bit I took a wee walk in the garden. The first thing that caught my eye was the glitter of sparkling water droplets on fallen leaves.

I took a few photos. This is one of them.

What caught my attention about this one was the large droplet in the middle, surrounded by various other smaller ones.

Actually when I look at it again now it kind of looks like a mask with two eyes and a nose. Do you see that? I didn’t notice that until now.

We don’t really think much about the shape of water. As often as not it takes the shape of whatever contains it. And raindrops, I presume most of us think of as all the same shape, although they definitely fall in different sizes.

But just look at these droplets! One is huge. Way bigger than the rest. And that big one has a very irregular shape. The ones that look like eyes are almost oval but still irregular and the rest a range of circular or oval shapes of an astonishing variety of sizes.

Why should that be surprising?

Individuals are all unique. Never forget that.

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