Day Retreat: Beauty and Stillness

Yesterday was our Day Retreat at Anantamani's beautiful house in the lovely rolling hills of Flintshire. The theme was Beauty and Stillness, making space in our lives for stillness and for beauty, and approaching all of life with an attitude of aesthetic appreciation, relishing all of our experience.
Here are two poems, the first from the Day Retreat, and the second suggested by Jo during the retreat.

Dreaming the Real
I'm lying down looking at the colour
of sky falling through trees, dreaming
the real, tasting what it feels like to love it.

Why did it take me so long to let go, simply
exhale, so the day could breathe itself in
and open without me getting in the way?

How could I forget the grace of my own body,
strong as this blue, tender as the white
of the wild blossom, warm as midday light?

Let me practice a patience bold enough
to hold every weather, trusting the elements,
the beauty of rain, all its shades of grey,

I want whatever's real to be enough. At least
it's a place to begin. And master the art
of loving it: feel it love me back under my skin.

Linda France


The Loveliness is Everywhere

​The loveliness is everywhere
even
in the ugliest and most hostile envirnoment
the loveliness is everywhere
at the turning of a corner
in the eyes
and on the lips
of a stranger
in the emptiest areas
with no place for hope 
and only death
to invite the heart
the loveliness is everywhere 
it emerges
incomprehensible
inexplicable
it arises in its own reality
and what we must learn is
how to receive it
into ours

Kenneth White