The Wind at my Window: Dances and Scents of the Green God
Dances and Scents of the Green God 26-11-08
I wanted to write in my blog how I saw/met God in the leaves outside my window recently.
I wanted to write how it is that something, some new level of awareness and an 'awe-entity' has came over me.
Maybe, it is a question of ripeness, a time that we notice when we need to be ripe, and ready for such things.
But I thought, and I still think, that the key to seeing God is through our senses.
I have this sense of the sight of the plane leaves straining, bowing, playing in the breeze outside of my window, that they seem to allure me to a vision of awe. The sighting of green fingers and arms bending this way, and that, has indulged some part of my brain in an interaction and has given to me an insight of a space that is practised (de Certaeu), and an insight of a nourishing terrain (Levinas) of the spiritual of the awe-entity (my word)...beyond and yet near.
Maybe, I have wanted to see God in the wind and thus the tree beyond is simply the vehicle through which God is revealed...and communicating, but then too, plunging my nostrils as I am often intent in doing, like a bee does its tongue into the sexual organs of a rose, I know something else of the awe-entity that sends another of my senses reeling, dancing and pondering on the scent of the sacred.
And this sensing in seeing, smelling such scents like the rain on cement, or the scent of rain on ancient rocks by the sea - or dust mites in the air (?) - has created in me an awareness of how my mind and my inner senses are anchoring my intuition to a growing attunement and sense of the sacred in my life.
I am beginning to believe there is a part of me that is growing more and more attune and adjusted and even charged to the possibility that God is revealed when individual senses work in unison.
Certain senses are developing an acute sensitivity to certain aspects of where the sacred is revealed. The orange murraya (orange jasmine) hedge beyond the plane leaves communicate something different to the movement of the breezes beyond the glass, but each anchors a recall of moments where I have had sightings/glimpses of the sacred - fleeting glimpses and glances and instances - fleeting moments of something of the awe-entity beyond.
posted by McCabeandco @ 12:56 AM
7 Comments
7 Comments:
Beautiful and true ... have you read that chapter "The piper at the gates of dawn" in Wind in the Willows? This reminds me of that.
No Sarah, I haven't, but now, thanks to you, I will. Thanks for that.
Yep Sarah, I see what you mean! Wow, it's bizarre really, how the rat hears the words of the reeds and the mole too yearns to hear... and this text mentions the 'awe' factor, and the voice of nature being spoken... And you know, strange as I think about it now, I once went to sleep under a Morton Bay Fig in Hyde Park. I fell asleep in its shades and woke up with a poem in my head, which I later read at my wedding under that same tree. "Oh wheel away the while I say, and watch my shadows creeping, for it here I heard this tree come speaking, Oh wheel away the while I say..." I can't remember the rest of the words... but ain't it strange? What does it all mean? Thanks for showing me something similar Sarah!
Actually, speaking of words and whispering things to trees. Before I was accepted into my studies at the University of Western Australia, I spied a giant spreading Morton Bay Fig on the south eastern corner of Winthrop Hall. Holding its leaves I was drawn to pray to it, saying to it that I wanted it to be something of the constant in my life. Strangely, not only did UWA take me on, but I later found out that this tree was named the "wishing tree"...
Trees will do that
I have sometimes considered a relation ship with God as being compete absence of senses, detachment. But to consider it as an experience of sitting in stillness with the senses (or a singular) is a really lovely, inviting thing. It seems so natural and passive. Thanks!
Chasing Rainwater, thanks for your comment. I guess that with most relationships our senses determine the way we are brought to understand what it is we are endeavouring to relate to. Some senses work more than others, and sometimes we dismiss others. Such that "I knew it was wrong to do that, I should have listened to (my instinct) that feeling..." you know the scenario... perhaps to "see God" one needs to see one's senses at work in the world around them? Thanks for your comment.
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