A moment of grace

I have come home early today and after walking the 4km from the station, I’m a bit hungry. So I make myself a fried egg and a cup of tea and eat it in solitude and silence, savouring every bite. Outside the sky is blue with white cottony clouds floating by languidly. The sun peeps in and out of clouds and when it is out, the light falls full upon everything, the garage roof next door, the leaves, the petals of flowers, the grass, brightening them up to a golden sparkle. It falls through the french windows and lace curtains onto the floor in filigreed patterns. A light breeze caresses the tree-tops making the leaves scatter the sunlight here and there in a merry dance. As I sit there doing nothing but taking in the scene, I think ‘This is it! This is just it!’. A moment of grace. When nothing is done and nothing accomplished and yet is full of beauty and peace and strangely enough, eternity.

Accomplishment. It seems only man is capable of such a thing. But, our intellect, our achievements, are to what avail, I wonder.When I look at all the non-human living beings on this planet I somehow get the feeling that they are living close to their core or source. Man is the only animal who even though endowed with great intellect has moved away from his core. We have accomplished so much, built cities, warheads, machines, yet we struggle to build relationships. We have amassed hordes and hordes of knowledge in our brains, computers, storage systems but know so little about our own selves, let alone the next person. We have split the atom and found quasars but have still not found a way to live without war and in peace. We have sent man to the moon and space craft into inter galactic space, but cannot seem able to take a small step towards our inner self.

It is twilight now and that magical time of the day when light retreats and shadows take its place. The air is hushed and full of mystery as night walks in following the footsteps of the departing day. Our activities, our bodies, our minds wind down. Nature has so cleverly built into us the rhythms of day and night, of activity and rest. A time to work and a time to put our tools down, including our mind. Especially our mind. Time to turn off the lights and listen to the music of the stars, the soft breathing of beings asleep, the stirrings of the soul and realise that we all interconnected. That beyond the veil of illusion of the material world, we are all one.