So begins the poem ‘Peonies’ by Mary Oliver, a poem I’ve always loved because it reminds me that everything, everything is there each morning to be fallen in love with, over and over again, as long as I’m willing to keep an open heart.

This morning the sun shines across the kitchen table. The tomatoes in the bowl glow like lamps. I watch the shadows on the floor spill like water.

I’m feeling the happiness that always comes from taking a few moments to slow down and really look at my world, the little details. The world can be incredibly soft and yielding to us, even on the harshest of days.

I’m thinking that this is what Mary Oliver might mean when she writes in another poem, ‘Wild Geese,’ that:

‘Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.’

‘Do you love this world?’ she asks us, in ‘Peonies.’

‘Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?’

Today, whoever you are and wherever you find yourself in your life, the world is waiting for you. It’s waiting for you to fall in love with it all over again.

So this is my Valentine to you.

Blaze open.

Love deeply. Yes, even ‘the terror beneath.’ (And I’m thinking that the greatest challenge of my life, so far, is learning especially to love ‘the terror beneath.’)

Please know that, just by being here, you bestow the beautiful gift of your gaze, your unique loving on the world. What you create, each day, is powerful beyond even your wildest imaginings.

Only you can do this. In your way.

The world is waiting for you.

Take your place.

Love.

Everything.

My dad, the strong, capable, fixer-of-things, the man who for most of his 66 years has been dedicated to running and fitness and, as founder of a very popular local running club, is passionate about cultivating fitness and self-belief in others. My dad, falling to the floor at my sister’s feet.

It’s the kind of phone call we all dread. I rushed to the hospital.

Over the next twenty-four hours, I sat willing the colour to return to my dad’s face. I held his hand and looked into his eyes and saw that he was already somewhere far away from me – in a place of pain, in that in-between place to which people retreat when it all becomes too much for the body to bear.

For hours I sat listening to the blip and bleep of the monitors. I watched the graphs – mysterious translations of my dad’s heart rhythm and blood pressure – moving on the screen above his head. Those green and white lines seemed like the threads of his life, unfurling above his head in delicate webs, and I sat and watched them and willed them to bccome stronger whilst we chatted about nothing in particular, each of us complicit, knowing all the time that he was slipping further away, each hour a little further beyond the bright lights and clatter of the ward.

Leaving him last night was the hardest thing I have ever done. I did it because that is the thing you do. I did it because I had to. Visiting time was over.

But what I wanted was to lie down on the floor next to his bed so that I could be there if he needed an extra blanket. What I wanted was to roll the pain up in that extra blanket and carry it for him. What I wanted was to scream and cry and rage and demand of everyone and anyone that Something More Be Done. And, should I be tried and tested, should even more love be required to heal him, then I would love him harder, longer, stronger, louder.

Later that night, my dad was transferred in an ambulance with blue flashing lights to Leeds where a team of eight emergency staff performed a state-of-the-art angioplasty.

Only minutes after it was completed, my dad described to me on the phone how he had seen his heart pumping on a monitor from many different angles and how he had felt his cheeks and forehead infuse with warmth for the first time in weeks as the surgeons cleared blockages in a major artery.

Today, my dad has made the journey back: back from the critical care unit in Leeds to the ward in York, where skilled staff will monitor his progress and chart the next steps for the further procedures he now needs; and back from that other place, that strange space where we go for a while when we’re exhausted with pain and fear, whilst our bodies get on with the business of breathing, of living.

Tonight, whilst my dad told us the story of his journey over the last few difficult hours, I looked into his face and welcomed him back. I thought not about how fragile we all are but about how strong and resilient we are, even in the face of such seemingly superhuman challenges.

My dad’s heart is not quite mended. There is still some way for us all to travel together. But tonight I am giving thanks. Tonight, my heart is brimful.

I’m so grateful to everyone who has supported my dad, my family and me over the last couple of days with messages and thoughts and kindness.

I’m so thankful that I live in a time and place of amazing technologies, with medics who are willing and able to save the lives of people like my dad every day with their expertise, hard work and dedication. I’m humbled and awed by what I’ve seen.

And this New Year, I wish you – belatedly but from a place that I couldn’t have accessed or understood just a couple of days ago – a deep-down knowing in your heart, and the courage to trust that your heart is stronger and more resilient than you might ever imagine, that it is always ready to open a little more, always ready to mend.

I’m incredibly curious and interested in the ways that we use ritual in our lives – and the extent to which we seem to be losing some of the rituals that have defined us or bound us together on this planet for centuries. I think perhaps it’s time for us to create some new ones.

By rituals, I mean both those particular events or actions that we choose to create in our own individual lives to consciously mark or celebrate something; and those times when we come together collectively to do the same.

A ritual could be as simple as waking early in the morning to watch the sun rise or lighting a candle and meditating for ten minutes or writing down in your journal everything that you’re grateful for in your life.

I think the point, though, is to do it purposefully, and with intention.

On Saturday, I went to a community bonfire in a small vllage north of York. People had come together to organise a torchlight procession from the village green out to the sports field.

We wove our way in a little band down the main street and into the dark where the first torch bearers lit the bonfire. We’ve been doing this for centuries in one way or another. Lighting up the dark. Getting ready for winter. Warming ourselves on the last flames as the year turns and our lives with it.

For me, this time has always had an extra significance. It’s my birthday tomorrow and the bonfire parties and fireworks at this time of year always give me a secret thrill. I remember as a very small girl watching my dad lighting a catherine wheel he’d nailed to the fence post and turning to me with a smile, saying, ‘This is for you, Sophie.’

And I suppose that’s what I mean when I talk about ritual. I’m so grateful that my dad created that moment for me, lit the touchpaper that has continued to burn for me so brightly down the years. And some years, just remembering that, looking up into the night sky, has been more than enough to light up my own dark.

I think we badly need rituals right now. There is so much doom and gloom out there; so much potential dark.

Here’s the challange. How can we create small moments that make new meaning out of our lives, celebrate our hopes and dreams, our trials and achievements, what we’ve learned, the journeys we’ve made this far, what we’ve come to understand? How can we share them with the people around us?

And perhaps, with purpose and intention, everything can become a ritual. Yes, a dark field lit by stars, a place at the edge of the fire, a new sun rising can do that for us, creating a space for us to step out of time and connect with what’s bigger or wider than us and what’s deep within us and what we’re part of.

And also preparing a meal for people we love; or writing a letter to someone telling them how much we cherish them in our lives; or making a space for ourselves at the end of each day to reflect and to choose to focus on what we’ve already made happen rather than what we haven’t yet done. These things too.

Whatever it might be for you, I think we need more of it.

And as I looked up into the sky on Saturday, I had a thought and I just wanted to share it with you here and find out what you think too.

I began to think that maybe this is our time, for our generations now, on our particular little corner of the planet, to consciously and purposefully and collectively decide, to set our intentions about what we’re really here for, how we’re going to live, what we choose to celebrate and what we’re going to spread around.

]]> http://www.sophienicholls.com/healing-power-of-ritual/feed/ 0 http://www.sophienicholls.com/wordsauce-wednesday-yes/ http://www.sophienicholls.com/wordsauce-wednesday-yes/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:00:20 +0000 sophie http://www.sophienicholls.com/?p=1005 love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds

e.e. cummings (508)