Move gently and mend things
a resistance of quiet joy
Hello friends
When the news that comes at me through my screens gets too overwhelming, I put on my boots and coat and walk to the sea. It is my great good fortune to live here. On an island it doesn’t matter much which path you take. The sea will always meet you at the end.
Zipping up my winter jacket against the sharp chill of the wind that slaps me as soon as I step outside, I set off up our track towards the road, a route I’ve walked a thousand times. There’s a near gale blowing again today and I’m walking straight into it, my eyes watering and squinting in the cold light.
The wind is raw and scours my face but I’m glad of it, take a few deep breaths of it, rinsing out my lungs. Pulling my scarf more snugly round my neck I follow the quiet road uphill until the tarmac gives way to a rutted farm track that ends at the sea.
When I reach the shore I stop to look due west, straight out to the open sea. The sky is a drama of dark and light. Rays of sunlight slant through thick cloud. Dark veils of rain and silver pools race across the sea surface. The wind holds my weight as I lean into it, arms wide.
Across the bay, line after line of breakers roll in with the swell, but before they can lift and break they are flattened to a mess of froth by the onshore wind.
Below where I stand, huge tilted slabs of blue-black rock are washed over and over again by garlands of foam that gather, lift and scatter, gather, lift and scatter. In the geos (coves) between them the foam has the colour and consistency of porridge.
Beyond the bay is the Brough of Birsay, a cake-shaped tidal island topped with a gentle slope of salt-browned grass out of which pokes a stumpy lighthouse like a birthday candle. The rocky cliffs of the far side press out into the churn where the North Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. Today, puffs of glistening white spray break against them like distant explosions.
There is nothing to the west of here but sea and sky as far as Newfoundland. Facing out to such an immensity of wind and wave and light, exhilarated by the sea’s heave and yet safely on land, I feel the sense of dread and calamity begin to ease. For now, I am protected by privilege and geography, that much is clear.
But really, no-one is ever ‘safe’. Not now. Not ever. Not even here on this island. Standing here in the fizzing light at the edge of this still-wintry North Atlantic I can get a direct sense that nature is relentless and immense and deadly and life-giving and heartbreakingly lovely, all at the same time, that every life is fragile and fleeting and unique.
Whatever events might lie ahead of us, this big sea reminds me that even my own life is not about me. It might be precious, to me at least, but it’s just a speck, a fleeting part of something inconceivably vast, complex and unknowable. Somehow this helps. I feel lighter, my sense of self less dense, less important, my edges blurred, just a little.
Over on the tidal island of the Brough I can make out the outline of a ruined medieval monastery that huddles near the tidal causeway. The monks who built their church there must have sensed that this tip of land exposed to the whole heft of the North Atlantic, an island that’s not quite an island, separate and yet connected, could open them up to something more powerful than themselves.
I imagine those hardy and pious monks tending kailyard and scriptorium, daily treading out the canonical hours as the sky and sea whirled about them, praising God seven times a day from Matins and Lauds to Vespers and Compline, rising again at midnight to pray and all the while immersed in this great, generative, humbling mystery of ever-shifting light and dark, salt and rock, air and water. Such a life must surely leave you hollowed out, scoured and emptied, so that something else can enter.
I turn towards home, right in the teeth of the gale now. Gritty sand is blowing up from the beach and it stings my cheek. I pull my hood up and skirt the beach towards the village. Seven dazzlingly white birds are clustered tight to the shore, migrating Whooper swans taking shelter behind an outcrop of rock. On my approach they start to head reluctantly out into the bigger waves. One bird lifts itself heavily off the water but is pushed sideways by the wind as it gains height. I back off, not wanting to disturb them.
Leaving beach and Brough to the birds I loop back to the road. My cheeks are scrubbed by the wind-driven sand as I pass through the quiet village and take the last turn for home, with the gale at my back now. The wind sends my thoughts tumbling away across the fields and it seems as if I am seeing the world beyond them more clearly again, here in all its freshness and sudden moments of surprise.
Along the roadside fence white tufts of fleece, caught in the barbed wire and teased out by the wind, flicker in the lucent air like rows of candle-flames caught forever in the moment of being blown out. Over the empty pastures a lone curlew flutters up and glides down, flutters up and glides down, all the while calling that mournful bubbling song that tells me that, cold as it is, spring is on its way, for the birds at least.
Crowds of greylag geese waddle heavily around the fields, lifting in ragged groups to pass overhead in loose formations, yapping and squawking. A leggy brown hare rises up and gallops away across the empty pasture, the grass still too short to hide him.
I tug my woollen hat down more firmly and lean into the strength of this bullying wind that keeps shoving at me, sending me tottering forwards, slapping my hair into my face, pulling at my coat and scarf, sucking the breath from my mouth and dragging tears from my eyes.
I think of those hardy monks who came to live and pray over on the Brough, their red raw hands gripping plough, oar, psalter, quill, their hearts seeking wisdom. Some, at least, must surely have found it. Perhaps I too might find some wisdom here.
The American historian and diligent documenter of these tumultuous times Heather Cox Richardson recently said in an interview:
“One of the really important things to remember going forward, as we fear the rise of authoritarianism in the US [is that] authoritarians cannot rise if there are strong communities and people are acting with joy. That is, you need despair and anger in order for an authoritarian to rise…Showing up and doing the things you love says to an authoritarian You have no place to root here.”
Joy is resistance. Being present to the place and the people immediately around us is resistance. Watching the light move over the sea is resistance. Cultivating our natural intelligence over an techno-artificial one is resistance.
Creativity, whatever form it takes, is resistance: making, growing, connecting, writing, nurturing, taking care of things, people, creatures. Working day by day, like the monks. Challenging the move fast and break things mentality with move gently and mend things, this too is resistance.
So I’ll walk and write and draw. I’ll anchor my mind with my pen or my brush, to keep it from fretting, wishing, worrying, to train its wandering attention to a deeper, slower rhythm.
I’ll walk from loch to seashore and back again, rain on my right cheek, then on my left. I’ll place these words on the page and sift back through them, looking, like the monks on the Brough, for what this place might have to teach me.
A practice then, a contemplation, or meditation, of quiet joy. A slow work of mending. A refuge. A life raft.
The Life Raft Co-Working Session
Our little Life Raft will launch this week on Thursday instead of the usual Wednesday slot. Do join us at 3pm (UK time) for some quiet companionship as we make, mend, write together. Just click the link below to join us. If you can’t make the time, paid subscribers can stay connected asynchronously through the recording shared on the subscriber chat.
That’s all for this week,
Sam
Oh Samantha, I felt the bite of that brutal Orkney wind against my face. Your thoughts are like a balm to the chaos of our bizarre time. And yet, there in the background stands the old man of Hoy, as he has for - I have no idea, thousand, hundreds of thousands of years, first as land, then eroded by the sea, now sea stack, ogled by ferry trippers, and visitors to Hoy alike, diminished maybe, but still standing. These cruel self serving men cannot hope to survive more than a few more years. We stand together, creative, caring and loving beings that we are. Communities of kindness will overcome the banal, brutal lies of narcissistic men! We hope together. Thank you for your words x
Such a wonderful post, Sam. So timely, so deeply comforting and with a galvanising reminder: we are not impotent.
Beautiful writing. Thank you.