Dear Earth, help me to take pauses.

Build gaps in your life. Pauses. Proper pauses.

Thom Yorke 2013

Kaspa is away and so I am in charge of the temple. Mornings consist of cleaning litter trays (and all the other places our old cat has deemed equivalent), getting the bunnies up, giving medication, searching for dog poo in the garden, and all the other tasks that are necessary when you somehow end up with seven animals.

This morning I heard my blue bench whisper to me on the way back to the flat. “Satya! You haven’t sat on me for ages!” And so I did. For ten minutes I sat with a little dog on my lap and looked out across the valley. The heavy clouds were being shoved across the ceiling of the sky by strong winds. Splodges of colour had arrived: a bush with candy-pink flowers, deep purple primroses, even a baby daffodil. The sun was hidden and leaking rays.

Some days, a few minutes of space feels impossible. How could we stop doing, when there is so much to be done? If we stopped, what might we feel?

You know about pauses, dear Earth. Your bulbs, your bears, your trees – all have a good long sleep once a year. Your African daisies close at night to preserve their pollen. Bodies are built on pauses: our liver becomes slow at night, we relax in the space between each breath, we take a tenth of a second rest with every blink.

Dear Earth, when we gobble our days, we neglect to taste them. We get indigestion. It makes sense that we rush. The sickness in our society encourages it. We also have many complex systems that are protecting us from our own depths, where they fear that monsters are waiting. Pauses do sometimes allow old parts of us to rise up from our subconscious, but they are never monsters. They are always alone, afraid, and in need of love.

Pauses are the salt and pepper of our days. They are the cat on your lap, purr-engine running. They are sitting in the dark after the credits of a dazzling film.

Dear Earth, help me to take pauses. Help me to taste the infinite courses of your feast.

Much love, Satya <3

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Gratitude for the image by cg_champion0 from Pixabay