Each morning, on my early walk around my neighbourhood, I pass an unusual menagerie of small animals suspended in windows (or hedges) - teddy-bears, panda-bears, dolls, alligators and rabbits greet me as I walk by. I also pass windows with vases of flowers, hand-written notes with “Have a nice day”, or a daily joke or riddle (“I have a pencil with a rubber at both ends - it is pointless”) stuck on the glass. I wave to and greet strangers who also walk (or bike) at this time of day.
I don’t know these arrangers,composers and fellow-walkers, and they don’t know me - but we all have something important in common. We all share a new and unfamiliar change in our lives. We are all in ‘lock-down’. In this strange new imposed existence we are turning on a new axis, at a different speed and for a different reason.
Yet - amidst this unfamiliar human behaviour - a familiar rhythm continues: leaves fall, feijoas hang on the branches, grass grows, the last of summer’s faded roses still bloom, bees and birds go about their business. While so much of our human world seems different and strange, the natural world carries on regardless.
In one of my new-found moments of space and quietness, I found this poem by Danna Faulds who speaks of life when change is thrust upon us:
There is no controlling life. Try corralling a lightning bolt, containing a volcano.
Dam a stream and it will create a new channel. Resist, and the tide will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry you to higher ground.
The only safety lies in letting it all in - the wild and the weak;
fear, fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of your heart, or sadness veils your vision with despair,
practice becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your known way of being,
the whole world is revealed to your new eyes”
At this time I am reminded that in our brief and unpredictable lives, change is inevitable and necessary. And there remain some constants to give us footholds even as we pick our way across shakey and unstable ground.