This page is about finding peace and happiness in appreciation of the natural beauty that surrounds us. Each week we will explore some of Dorset’s beautiful places in search of inspiration for those moments of gratitude for our lovely planet.
This beautiful rhododendron (see inset) is a spectacular sight in an urban setting. It stands on the corner of Church Road and Ringwood Road, in the grounds of St Mary’s Church in Ferndown, East Dorset. I stood and stared just as the sun was starting to set, the last bright rays lighting up the blossoms and casting dark shadows behind them. I know that these trees are not native to our countryside and are regarded by most environmentalists as an invasive aliens species – they do indeed despoil our native woodlands – but what an awe-inspiring display they make at this time of year. Each individual blossom of this tree is worthy of a moment or two of attention and together they are an homage to beauty. They remind me of these lines from a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.
(From: God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1884 – 1889)
Practicing Mindfulness
Mindfulness sounds so easy – it is so easy, after all, just to stand and stare and to empty your mind of everything except the sight, sound, scent and feel of the moment that you are in. But, as most of us know, sometimes nothing could be harder.
I love this quote from David Edwards, the campaigning journalist and practicing Buddhist in one of his ‘Cogitations’ posted last year.
“Quite outrageously, then, the present – the moment in which we actually live – is dismissed as uninteresting, worthless, by the desire-driven mind. In rare moments when we detach from our Twitter twaddle, pods and pads to mentally inhabit ‘now’, we seem to have arrived in a present moment positively radioactive with boredom. Our mind and limbs immediately start twitching with a hundred things we ‘must do’, that ‘would be fun’, all urging us to get up and away from this morgue-like present. Real life is cold turkey to the thought-addicted mind.”
We all find it difficult to control our thoughts sometimes, but particularly when we are depressed or anxious. The link betweendepression and ‘compulsive thinking’ – thoughts over which we have no control and that take over our minds, running like a broken disk or a vinyl record stuck in a groove – is real, common to all of us, yet at times so very hard to break away from.
Taking a few moments out of our busy day just to appreciate something from nature can really help us to escape from those compulsive, repetitive thoughts. I watched my two-year-old granddaughter as she discovered a tiny, iridescent beetle in the garden: her total absorption in the movement of light on the shell was as perfect a lesson as dreamed up by any Zen master. I was as caught up as she was in that moment.
I found this chive flower in the garden today: another perfect natural mandala, easy to find and worth more than a passing glance, surely.
Miranda Smith
I write about finding happiness through appreciation of the world around us. If you would like to know more, visit www.mistletoemoon.com.
