Don't silence and bypass the wonder of life's unseen because unlooked for gifts.

Sunday evening's wood walk - no photos. Instead we came into a blue sky clearing and the red kite was circling just above the trees. The red and cream feathers caught the late September sun in one of the finest sightings we've ever watched. We stood for a minute or two gazing up, slowly turning and weaving to follow its flight, then walked on. A minute or two later the persistent tapping of a woodpecker, which we saw briefly, but only as a silhouette putting distance between us.

 

My point? A 40 minute walk in a wood and two encounters with the locals felt like gift moments that can't be organised or predicted. And if I'd had my camera I would have missed the pleasure of enjoying the sight for its own sake. There is an anxiety attached to 'getting the photo' that often gets in the way of attending to what is seen. I doubt I'll forget the grace of effortless movement and reflected glory in that performance of blue sky ballet.

 

That anxiety to possess, to make an experience permanent, to have something to show to others either to impress them or for the straightforward pleasure of giving vicarious pleasure to someone else - such motivations are commonplace. But they can also get in the way of simply being present to what presents itself to us. 

 

Contemplative thought, unhurried reflection, allowing the heart as well as the mind to process experience, training ourselves in attention, but also in alertness of response to experiences that live with us, and go on reverberating inside - these are habits of heart and mind that don't easily accommodate to the immediacy of our digital and social media saturated culture. 

 

Indeed it may be that prayer, contemplative and meditative, patient and sustained in quietness, offers a much richer alternative to nurture and nourish the inner life. Which is another way of saying that we can be so intent on capturing more experiences that we miss the significant experience of being present to who we are and who the other is. And so un knowingly we silence and bypass the wonder of life's unseen, because unlooked for, gifts. 

 

As an example. A week ago we visited the Scottish Highland Wildlife Park. The wolves, the snow leopards and the Scottish wildcats were all I expected of spectacular beauty, constrained for their own good and for the preservation of their species. But it's hard not to feel the mixture of exhilaration in their wildness, and sadness that their existence is so limited and their created potential for life fenced in.

 

I have photos of these animals, but the one I choose to show is of something altogether more mundane, till you have a context. The robin is sitting on a pole within a yard or two of several wildcats. But it knows it's safe, because it is free and the cats are not. There's no need to expound any parable in this. It was a moment of insight, captured on camera, when the juxtaposition of bird and cat caught my imagination. What does it mean? I've no idea. It remains a moment of wonder. Though only after I looked at the photo did I see the cruciform shape of the fence.