Posted inDharma, Henry's Messages

Message from Henry: Sitting in an English Village in Late Summer

October 20, 2021

The village is settled deep in its ancient self: probably here since late Neolithic times. Three things emerge into awareness.

First, pigeons cooing, their soft fluting in mid morning. In a way it’s not exactly theirs. The sound is more like the sound of rest agreeing with itself. The daytime roost is an ease offering itself as the sweet soft music of the pigeons’ contentment. The pigeons hardly say it themselves. The rest speaks through them to itself, of ease, like the easy bloom of wellbeing that comes in a deep sit. The pigeons know how to sit.

Second, there’s an old clock in the house somewhere that shuffles along like a weary veteran from a long-ago war, one leg hobbled, the other OK, so the step is light on one foot, heavy on the other, almost as if each second click is a double-click, as of a footfall and a cane. All through the quiet morning the old clock makes its way.

Third, the old house doesn’t hiss like a modern house, like newer walls. It has settled in its bones. Its breath is easy and clear. It has seasoned and matured. It thinks clear thoughts to itself, when it thinks at all. As if its awareness is deep and clear like an old well. It has ceased to chatter to itself the way younger might houses do, houses that are still trying to figure out who they are. This one has given up on that.

Message from Henry is from our October 18, 2021 Newsletter
Photo by Helen Lord on Unsplash
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