A Sign along the Way

Click on photo to study the beautiful light

How does one savor an experience?

If merely held in the mind long enough for attention to be paid to it, asking that question itself will lead to an increased awareness of any given experience.  How?

I believe that between the stimulus and the response is a moment which through practice can be extended and expanded to become a timeless moment, the kind of moment which will give you the time and space to be more fully present to the activity, or object, or person being experienced . . . a opportunity in which to seize the moment and draw it into yourself and make it a part of who you are in a way that no unheeded experience can.

This idea was really brought home to me one evening on a walk when I was passing by a grassy area outside the village where I live. What I saw took my breath with its beauty . . . but because I was pondering this idea of how do we savor, I began to ask myself was it enough to merely see this sight in passing?   Was there a way I could draw this bit of serendipity into me and savor it, and glean something deeper from it that would make it more than a passing impression which I might easily forget in future?  Because that sight had such a special quality on that evening, I didn't want to lose it.  I felt if I paid attention to it that it could become a lasting gift.

So in the interest of savoring it I asked myself, not what did it mean, because at that surface level question I might have drawn a blank. Instead I asked myself, what could it mean, especially in the light of my present circumstances at that time?   Yes, it was a pretty view, but was there something that, if I really listened, it was trying to say to me?

I don't mean to be "airy fairy" about this . . . I just wanted to be truly present to this beautiful experience, one of those that often is so transitory.

And so in quietly taking the time to pay attention to the sight, in savoring it, it began to shape itself into a form I can carry with me along my way . . . a poem.  Please bear in mind that I have never considered myself a poet, so if you're thinking that about yourself, you might surprise yourself one day too and feel the impulse.

A Sign Along the Way 

On the village green, the dying sun

Was spilling golden light

Over the backs of the Canada geese

Who had broken the path of their flight

To pause in this place serene.

How could they know the peace they lent

To a heart that was steeped in sorrow?

A word it seemed had been silently given

That one could still trust that the morrow

Might surprise with a hope yet unseen.

For how they arrrived here,

What knowledge, what grace

Had guided them along their hard journey

To be set down in this favorable place,

Is a lesson the faint heart might glean.

©A. Rutherford 

I consider the accompanying photo above a real blessing too.  I had not taken my camera along with me, and was really regretting that I had not been able to capture the sight of the golden geese that had been so inspirational to me.  But on a "nudge" I began looking through Photobucket's images of Canada geese and literally gasped when I came upon this one which was so close to what I had experienced, with the same aura of mystical peace.

I nearly always take my own photos, but I do want to give credit when I have not taken the photo myself. In this case, the name of the photographer on Photobucket was given, which is not often the case, so much appreciation to Chris Nash, although in all likelihood he will never see this post.

Postscript   I must say, however, that whenever I have read this poem to myself since that evening, all this explanation fades away, and the physical walls of my room fade away, and I am again in that timeless space on the green with the grazing geese, and my heart lifts.  That’s the benefit of making a beautiful memory to be stored away and savored again and again.


Phil. 4:8  ". . . whatever is lovely . . . think about such things." 


_________________________________________________________________