Tag: life

Hazel Nut 🌰

(C) Rachel Burton 2023

Loving seeing the squirrels this January in my local park as they scamper to find their stash of well hidden nuts. Something about them makes me want to pick them up and squeeze. But then I’m like that with most furry creatures.

Love a hazel nut too. So rich in colour, smooth in shell, delicious in taste, rich in nutrition. The 14th Century mystic Julian of Norwich had a vision of a hazel nut (1). She saw it clearly in the palm of her hand and knew that God made it, loves it, protects it.

Cracking open nuts at Christmas is a fond memory. We had a black bowl engraved with pretty coloured flowers around the outside. It would hold a variety of hazels, walnuts, brazils and a shining sturdy silver nutcracker would rest on the top. I loved trying to crack open the nuts, but every so often I would smash through hard shell to the soft, tender fruit inside. Too much pressure shattering the shell. My Dad was skilled at this and would gently crack the outer shell to reveal the tender fruit inside and hand it to me. It’s a delicate art, borne out of much love for the nut inside.

I hear talk about being broken. Some talk about God breaking us. It’s natural to shy away from such thoughts. Leave that to the aesthetics. Too much pain in life already. Hard times, poor health, loss of loved ones. But on reflection the process is less about breaking down into bits and more about a divine intervention to reveal my true self.

Thomas Merton talked about our true and our false self (2). The false self is the one we wind around ourselves, through the trappings of life: appearance, performance, possessions. Impressive to others, unseen by God. He only sees my true self, the one He created me to be before time began. The one that sings and resonates with joy at simply being.

On reflection the breaking is less about breaking me down into bits, and more about the gentle and necessary work of a skilled Father carefully cracking the outer shell of my false self and revealing my true self. It’s a delicate art, borne out of much love for the nut inside.

  1. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (1982) Middlesex: Penguin, Chapter 5, p68.
  2. Merton, Thomas,(1961), New Seeds of Contemplation, New York: New Directions, Chapter 5, p34.

Be

(1)

So all day long the noise of the battle rolled

Morte d’Arthur, Lord Alfred Tennyson (2)

Sometimes my life can be like this. Work issues roll into family issues roll into health issues. Last year was like this for me and it felt like one big rolled up ball that gathered pace, until it left me exhausted and I stopped.

But it was in the not being able to do, that I found a way to be. Oh, I do like to do. As Adam Gopnik says in his insightful book The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery (3), learning and mastering a new skill is not ‘rocket science’. It’s down to repetition. Doing something over and over and over again, until you, maybe, get good at it. You may not become a grand master, but you may go some way towards mastery. So, I keep on writing, keep on playing piano, keep on swimming. I keep on reflecting on why, when someone pushes my buttons, I react. It’s a bit squirmy sometimes, but I guess I’m a work in progress. Like Robert the Bruce’s spider I ‘try and try and try again’. Maybe I’m getting better.

(4)

But doing, in a world fixated with doing, is exhausting. I have to do and I also like to do – to get up, go to for a walk, a swim, to work. To meet with friends and family. To do the daily routines and so live this precious life I have been given. But I’m realising more and more that I can get ‘the cart is before the horse’. Doing is not peaceful unless it comes from a place of peace.

Horse before cart (5)

Contemplative prayer has helped me with this. It’s a time aside to still myself in the presence of One who is higher and bigger and lovelier and more peaceful. He is Peace. He is my peace. I read about Him, I talk with Him about it, I listen to music and worship Him. But real peace comes as I ‘quiet and still my soul’ (6) and just be with Him. Just to sit and be aware that He is with me, I am with Him, and I am loved. It’s a choice just to be with Him. It’s not new, but a well trodden path that mystics, and others, through the centuries have followed (7). The horse goes back in front of the cart.

You do not have to look for anything, just look.
You do not have to listen for specific sounds, just listen.
You do not have to accomplish anything, just be.
And in the looking, and the listening and the being, find Me.

Ann Lewin (8)

(1) “The Death of Arthur” by John Garrick, 1862 from https://pressbooks.pub/earlybritishlit/chapter/le-morte-darthur/

(2) Tennyson, A, (1842) More d’Arthur, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45370/morte-darthur 26 04 24

(3) Gopnik,A (2023) The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery. Riverrun: London.

(4) Robert the Bruce and Spider https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bruce_and_the_spider.jpg

(5) Cart before Horse Image https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/put-the-cart-before-the-horse.html?utm_content=cmp-true 26 04 24

(6) Psalm 131 v 2 ASV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%20131:1-3&version=ASV 26 04 24

(7) Finley, J. https://cac.org/podcast/turning-to-the-mystics/ 26 04 24

(8) Lewin, A (2002) from Seasons with the Spirit (Churches together in Britain and Ireland: 2002) in Celtic Daily Prayer Book Two Farther Up and Farther In (2015) London: William Collins (Eata readings 21 May p1485)