I tweeted recently that during a visit to a local churchyard I'd found peace; literally - see the photo above. Let me explain, my latest lunchtime ritual is walking to the local churchyard and sitting on a bench sitting in a tranquil part of the grounds under the canopy of a gorgeous ash tree whilst eating my sandwich. I generally stay for twenty minutes or so and cogitate (mindfulness for slackers). I've been mulling over a few things that haven't been sitting right with me lately. To be honest I'd rather do it in the middle of the day than toss and turn at night and lose valuable shut eye.
As I say, it's a relatively new ritual but I find it helps me compartmentalise a lot of the crap that's currently going round in my head. And today I had something of an epiphany: just as the church bell chimed one something pretty amazing happened. A white feather fluttered down from the tree above my head and landed on my shirt. Now, whether I believe in angels is a subject for another day, but what I heard in my head as I picked the feather up and let it fall to the ground was "All will be right for you soon." At least I think that's what I heard...
Ah, John, I hope "all will be right for you soon", whatever that needs to be for you. It's apt that you should find peace and time to think in the churchyard, seems to me that was what such a place was always meant to be about, regardless of my lack of religion. I took a stroll through the wild bit at the back of my local one the other day, amid the crows and the spiders and the trees growing right through ancient graves, it was the perfect place to de-stress.
ReplyDeleteI’m guessing it’ll just be a Summer thing; can’t see myself in there when there’s two foot of snow on the ground. I do love it in there tho’.
DeleteI find that I decompress best when walking. Unfortunately an increasing workload over the past few months has prevented me from getting out and about anywhere near as much as I'd like, so things do tend to churn around the old noggin through the wee small hours. Not the ideal scenario.
ReplyDeleteI second C's hope that all will be right for you soon John.
Thank you, TS. My brain just gets so full sometimes; I find myself having to uninstall the old stuff before new stuff can go in.
DeleteMulling stuff over in the middle of the day in a beautiful setting definitely seems preferable to losing sleep because of it. Ditto what the others said.
ReplyDeleteI leaned a little trick a long time ago (around the time I had my bump in the road) whereby I can, for the most part, stop a lot of this stuff coming into my head when I turn the bedside lamp off.
DeleteYou’re going to have to share that trick at some point as once the bedside light goes out my brain goes into overdrive.
DeleteGreat post title too.
ReplyDeleteThank you. Whether I'm right or wrong I do like a good title:)
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