‘Stillness from a Quaker’
Greetings,
Today’s contribution has been offered by Barbara Davey, one of our Honorary Quaker Chaplains.
As the scale of the crisis we are facing begins to emerge, I sometimes feel overwhelmed. Fear can feed a negative imagination that cripples the courage we all now require to live through these extraordinary times. We each have different resources that strengthen our confidence: alongside my faith as a Quaker, the arts help provide materials I need to gain a sense of perspective.
“Art can’t stop the climate crisis, cure a virus or raise the dead. What it can do is serve as an antidote to times of chaos. It can be a route to clarify and it can be a force of resistance and repair.”
Olivia Lang, The Art of Survival
I have a postcard of Johannes Vermeer’s painting The Milkmaid from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Sitting with the image, taking time to let its light and shadows unfold — a still moment of clarity — I too am held in that moment of stillness. Just as the jug is continually filled, so too am I replenished. And what of those we know and read about who are working on the front line, especially the ones who are struggling to bear the burden of care for those afflicted by this virus? Maybe there is a way in which we can take particular care to hold and nurture that still space for them, that they may be upheld and sustained by its potency.
A different timescale has been imposed upon us who are needing to stay close to home. We have the opportunity to focus down, to see beauty in the minute particulars of life, and that beauty can feed the spirit.
Perhaps more wonderful still is the way in which beauty breaks through. It breaks through not only at a few highly organised points, it breaks through almost everywhere. Even the minutest things reveal it as well as do the sublimest things, like the stars… And yet beauty has no function, no utility. Its value is intrinsic, not extrinsic. It is its own excuse for being. It greases no wheels, it bakes no puddings. It is a gift of sheer grace, a gratuitous largesse.
Rufus Jones 1920, Quaker faith & practice
The cherry blossom in our gardens and on our streets has come into its glory over the recent few weeks. Even if we can’t venture outside, there are images aplenty available for us to savour and to sense the Japanese celebration of ‘hanami’, relishing the blossom’s fleeting beauty, its scent and sight.
(A faded photo of cherry blossom which I took nearly thirty years ago when I lived in Japan – Donald.)
One of the gifts of poetry is to heighten our awareness and enrichen our sense of interconnection. Throughout 2019 I tried to write a poem each month with inspiration gleaned from the garden where we live in Ceres. In March last year I focused down on our compost-heap!
March
There’s a crude strip of ironwork
that gets used as a prop
for the lid of the compost-heap.
Crusted with rust, bolts still attached,
it’s unwieldy, uncompromising.
Maybe it belonged to a field gate,
remembers cattle and openings.
One end has been beaten into a rough curl.
Emptying the barrrow
of last season’s stalks,
brittle stems and flowerheads, I spy
in that dark cradle-curl
a glossy trove of ladybirds
clustered together, a different shade of rust.
They remain for days,
are suddenly gone.
What is the word
for a host of ladybirds?
Perhaps a liking?
A liking of ladybirds.
The arts help us stay afloat, lift us from despair, restore our sense of hope and our passion for a better life for all we share this planet with. Kathleen Jamie’s poem Lochan fills me with hope, and as I read it, I try to let hope spread far and wide, rippling in countless unseen ways. I’d like to conclude by sharing the poem with you —
Lochan
(for Jean Johnstone)
When all this is over I mean
to travel north, by the high
drove roads and cart tracks
probably in June,
with the gentle dog-roses
flourishing beside me. I mean
to find among the thousands
scattered in that land
a certain quiet lochan,
where water lilies rise
like small fat moons,
and tied among the reeds,
underneath a rowan,
a white boat waits.
Kathleen Jamie from Jizzen 1999
You can hear Kathleen reading her poem here: https://poetryarchive.org/poem/lochan/
yours,
Donald.