superaliveness.

earlier in the year i was warned by the doc that i needed to lose some weight, and so i cut back fairly hard on the amount that i was eating, and it's had the desired effect. but as a pleasant result of the diet i began to really savour my food again; it's like i'm feeding my taste buds and not just my belly. as leesun said last week, less is more.

and now a similar thing has happened with the silence. i have to admit that the past few days have been a bit manic and the practice of stillness has been a bit absent from my routine, but i've generally noticed that i'm hearing stuff more accutely, becoming aware of the ambient sounds around me that are normally drowned out by my noise; the sound of the shower, birdsong, kids playing, the tick and creaking of central heating pipes, next door washing up, traffic off in the distance, the hum of the the laptop, dogs barking, wind lifting bits of plastic sheeting on the building site in the garden, the gurgling of the coffee machine, joe upstairs practicisng the songs for his school assembly, the hum of the fridge, neighbours dragging out their wheelie bins, the occasional plip of water in the cistern [and our not-quite-watertight-yet extension!]...

in 'everyday apocalypse' david dark talks about holiness, about how we tend to see it as a sort of other-wordly and aloof state, but how in reality it's more of an opposite state to that, a state of 'superaliveness', a state of heightened awareness and engagement with the world around you. and i'm thinking that that's partly what the silence is bringing me into. that's where the practise of solitude is leading me.

of course i'm not there yet - nowhere near; it's two [baby] steps forward, one step back, and there's a huge distance to travel, but it's good to be able to note these changes for the better, to be able to mark the benefits of this journey that we've undertaken...

and so i was wondering about adding a line to our prayer - god be in my ears, and in my listening...?

si