Tuesday 25 September 2012

Listen


“Listen.”

“I am listening.”

“What do you hear?”

“Nothing.”

“How can you hear nothing?  Listen again.”

“I can hear a dog bark….  A car go past….  I can hear the rain on the window…. I can hear my neighbours breathing……..  I can hear my breathing……..I can hear my heart beating………I can hear the blood in my veins….”

We are sitting in the classroom.  It is a beautiful Spring day, warm enough to have the doors open and let the breeze come in.  The grass has that special tinge of green which comes when the new shoots outnumber the tired old brown leaves that are now so brittle.  The sky holds a blue of promise, of new life and fresh beginnings; and soft, white clouds glisten against the vivid background.

“Be still.  Take a deep breath.  What do you feel?”

“Air so cool, so new…..Freshness, like I am coming alive…..Connection to all that is outside…..I want to be outside!”

Stillness and silence came that day in a class of twenty girls and boys aged around thirteen years old for a brief moment.  Usually these children love to chat, but something about that day, that time, beckoned to them and touched a part of their humanity that is always there; even though the premature veneer of sophistication induced by the demands of an affluent 2ist Century lifestyle constantly threatens to drown this sensitivity.   Silence and stillness can be demanded, coerced, but it remains the product of regimentation through the inferior submitting to superior authority and therefore has no meaning.

Instead we begin with listening together.  It is through collective participation in listening that sensitivity and compassion can flower.  We undervalue the importance of listening in a world that clamours with noise and frenetic activity.

Tuesday 11 September 2012

A Song: Last Will and Testament




A  Song:          Last Will and Testament

I don’t want to
Die a hard-wired, concrete,
Plastic-tubed, metallic death.
I don’t want to
Be surrounded with mechanical sounds drowning
Out the voices of
The wife and sons
I have loved for all these years.

I want to
Lie down on the hills,
On the snow covered mountains.
I want to
Hear voices
As the breeze blows through the long grass
Of the meadows.
I want to
Rest in the warm sands of the deserts
Or bathe in cool rivers.
I want to
sink in to the gently lapping seas,
drowning in its saltiness.

So please don’t
Put me in some ambulance
With flashing light and blaring siren
To be operated on
Under the cruel glare of hospital lights.

Leave me in the sun
Hold my hand through the pain
Until my breathing is no more.