Thoughts in a Hospice Garden

Yesterday morning I sat in the garden of a hospice amid flowers, birdsong and summer sunshine.  Everything was vibrant, intense and alive.  I sat for a few minutes savouring the beauty and the serenity, listening to the birds and the tinkling of the water as it flowed along one of the channels.  The sky was cloudless, a sea of blue and swifts darted playfully high above my head.  But my eyes soon scanned the doors to the ward through which an elderly woman and a younger one had been guided by a nurse.  I had overheard her words and realised that they were on their way to sit with a male relative during his final hours.  All around me nature and life were in full bloom yet a few feet away, a man’s life was minute by minute fading and soon he would be forever absent from the family and friends who knew and loved him; his presence replaced by a memory. 

I looked around, minutely scanning and observing the red and pink holly-hocks, the white roses, the bees on the lavender and the etchings in the stonework in an attempt to take my mind off the sad thoughts and the scene indoors.  It worked to an extent but the location affected me deeply and the vibrant colours of the flowers and the bright sunshine only highlighted the contrast.  Life is full of ups and downs, sorrows and troubles but despite all of that, life is wonderful.  To have been lucky enough to be born, to experience love, beauty, joy, compassion as well as suffering, sadness and despair is a gift.  I remembered those people in my own life who were no longer alive, considered my own mortality and that of the those I love and cherish and felt the brevity of it all. 

Life is short and therefore precious and we should not waste it on trivialities and nonsense.  Thoughts of the spiteful and nasty behaviour and mistreatment between neighbours came to mind.  Madness. I found myself thinking that everyone should be made to visit a hospice.  I know it is impractical for many reasons but  perhaps they would get things in perspective, re-arrange their priorities and realise the importance of actually living.  We should be more aware of the precious gift we have and take better care of how we use our time and the things we pay attention to for we have but a few decades to enjoy this wonderful experience called life. 

Most people will never visit a hospice until the time comes when they are nearing the end of their life, but something each and every person can do is to spend just five minutes every day reflecting on the preciousness of life.  In the modern world, we tend to hide death, push it into the background, gloss over it, avoid it all costs which is ironic given its inevitability.  Being aware of death doesn’t have to make us depressed but can have the opposite effect. As John Cowper Powys pointed out, it can make us come fully alive as we take more notice of everything in the world.  Instead of taking it all for granted, we learn to appreciate the people around us, the wonder and beauty of the natural world.  We will fully recognise our common fate which can foster empathy and compassion for others. We will see, hear, experience, and feel more, take our time and learn to appreciate “the pleasure there is in life itself.”   Then, we will live happier and more fulfilled lives and come to know what it really means to be alive.

When we come to the end of our life it must surely be a consolation to know that you have made good use of this incredible chance and lived it well. 
  

Happiness is ...Sitting beside a Stream

"Strange are the feelings that come to us when we are alone with the earth and sky. They are feelings that contradict not only the injustice of the foolish, but the justice of the wise. 

   The sands of the seashore may not remember the steps that printed them, nor the stones of the roadside the feet that passed them by. The undulant tides of the air, washing back and forth, may have no knowledge of the troubled heads that their unseen presence filled with magical calm. And yet it was these things that rebuked us. It was these things that melted the heart within us."

(John Cowper Powys, The Philosophy of Solitude)

 

How using your Soles can feed your Soul

"A life spent between the seat of a chair and the seat of a car is a monkey’s life, not a man’s. When you think in a seated posture you think with your rump, not with your soul…

But the real point about walking is that it isolates you in the midst of the Cosmos. It liberates you from the necessity of isolating yourself by a terrific effort of the mind.

Your whole nature can now be receptive and at peace. You can see things and people, life and death, in a large, free, easy, atmospheric perspective. You can, of course, escape from your home in your car; but your car itself is a mechanical contrivance imposed between you and Nature... The mere physical process of walking: this putting of one leg in front of the other, this treading on the pavement, on the road, on the grass, is itself an engenderer of wise and gentle thoughts. A person cannot be too conscious of his body as he walks: of the actual sensation of movement as he stretches his legs.  By treading upon her with alternate feet you enter into a subtle and intimate relation with your mother, the earth. It is as if the earth in her deep planetary masochism got pleasure from being trodden upon, just as she does from being ploughed up.

You should feel, as you walk, something of the exultant pride with which our remote, anthropoid ancestors first stumbled across the astonished earth. You should revert to the old childish glory in being able to move at all in this upright manner. And in the mere process of walking a thousand mysterious understandings spring up between you and the earth which cannot reach you, though you steer your car ever so cleverly, while you are sitting above. In the process of actually touching the earth you realize what an escape from everything that hurts you worst in the world the Inanimate is..."

John Cowper Powys 

 extract from 

The Philosophy of Solitude 

Iris Murdoch on John Cowper Powys

Iris Murdoch was a fan of John Cowper Powys.  She talks about him and three of his novels in this interview  

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2313/the-art-of-fiction-no-117-iris-murdoch 

In The Garden with John Cowper Powys

I came late to gardening even though I have had a garden for most of my life.  It has always been like an extra room; a sitting room in summer and a spare guest room for the feathered visitors that come with winter days.  Although I have gained much pleasure from the garden, as with any other room in the house it must be kept tidy and maintained.  So for many years I viewed gardening as a necessary task until about ten years ago when I began to enjoy the weeding and planting, the digging, cutting and pruning.  What changed?  Due to stresses and pressures at work, I began to see the garden as a refuge, an escape, and I found myself enjoying the gardening as much as sitting and relaxing there.  How I ever saw gardening as a chore I now couldn’t understand.  About the same time I was discovering the works of John Cowper Powys and found many insights there.  I have always loved being outdoors and going into the garden means stepping out under the sky and into the air but most of all, it is offers a myriad of sensations to experience and enjoy.

 

When I’m just sitting quietly in the garden or doing some work there, the vibrancy and beauty of the red roses, the citrusy freshness of the lemon ones, the hum of the bees gathering the pollen from the foxglove bells, and the delicate scent of the honeysuckle on the warm air reach me and I receive them joyfully.  I watch the insects and the worms going about their lives and see and hear the birds in the branches above my head. I see and feel the textures of the different leaves and instinctively recoil my hand under the prick of the holly or sting of a nettle.  I feel the sun on my back or more often here in Cumbria, the soft rain gently patting my face!

The title of one of JCP’s book’s is ‘In Defence of Sensuality’ which he opens with an explanation of his meaning of the word sensuality.  He stresses that he uses it in a different way to our usual understanding of it.  He advocates a ‘life of sensations’ by which he means actively opening our five senses, keeping them ever alert to the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures that surround us constantly.  Doing so will bring happiness and dispel those feelings of lethargy and boredom that afflict so many people.  We live in an artificial world surrounded as we are by concrete, steel, pavements, covered shopping centres, paved driveways and nature is pushed further and further to the edges of our lives, physically and emotionally.

 Sit or dig in a garden, walk in a park, observe pots of plants in yards and on balconies and really notice what is around.  Once we switch off the thoughts and concerns in our heads and open ourselves to experiencing the moment, our senses can hone in and pick up all the impressions and communication that nature is offering to us. A renewed sense of wonder is instilled as the natural world displays some of its beauty and diversity.  Reading JCP’s works, his novels and non-fiction, alerts me to these facts for he presents another perspective on the world, or sometimes he just reminds me of essential facts of living I have forgotten that have been covered by our 21^st century lifestyle. 

 

I was wrong in thinking of the garden as an extension to the house, another room.  It is much more than that; it is a universe with a life and aliveness that infuses my being, renewing and invigorating the life within me.  JCP cried “Sensations! Sensations! Sensations!”  He was right – using our senses fully means experiencing the world about us.  There is so much beauty and wondrous things happening all around us, how can we ever be bored?  

“[Sense] impressions adhere to the soul.  They gather and deepen.  We forget the pain.  We forget the shocks and insults.  We remember the cumulated exaltations of rapture, rising up and hitting our sense, from country-roads, gardens, doorways, old walls, leafy lanes, backwaters, wood-paths, twilight harbours….The annoying, troublesome aspects of experience disappear from memory.  Only the rare vision remains.”
 (In Defence of Sensuality)  

“Colour! What a thing to have appeared at all under the sun! To anyone who like myself is not only a coward but a confirmed sensualist, this phenomenon of colour is like a vast number of entrancingly delicious fragrances grown visible. No it is more than - that. It is like a human body with which you are infatuated. It is at any rate something you touch, taste, feel, and embrace with your whole soul. It is something you sink into and enjoy like the revelation of an erotic Fourth Dimension.” 

(Autobiography)