There is nothing now but kestrel.
Iris Murdoch
I begin to think about what happens when a landscape or a great tree or the spectacle of the night sky presents itself and commands attention. That quite ordinary scene beyond the railway track had ceased to be merely an object I was looking at. It had become a subject imbued with a power that was offering me…a kind of mutual communication or exchange was taking place which did not originate entirely in myself….this was [also] a very ordinary, almost universal human experience. I was not an animist, so I did not credit the corn stooks with consciousness…
So this is what is meant by the Holy Spirit. This is the essential nature of his power….this is how God acts upon human beings….working from within, making them more aware.
John V. Taylor
No wonder John Taylor could write in The Go-Between God:
This is where we must now begin our talk about God –
God working anonymously and on the inside:
the beyond in the midst.
And:
We so commonly speak about {the Spirit]as the source of power.
But in fact he enables us, not by making us supernaturally strong
but by opening our eyes.
Our first insight is to realize how blind we are – and how we miss so much.
We don’t make “something happen’. We learn to be present to what is. So recall moments in your life which have spoken to you, engaged you at depth, grabbed you attention, resonated with you. Let them speak again.. In what ways do they gift you now?
I am looking out my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious of my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important. And of course this is something which we may also do deliberately: give attention to nature in order to clear our minds of selfish care.
Iris Murdoch
Can you recall moments like Iris Murdoch’s ‘kestrel moment’?
‘Nothing changes yet everything is different’.
Iris Murdoch suggests a more intentional, deliberate disposing of herself.
As simply as you can, take time and attend to a part of nature around you –
in your back garden, or when you go for a walk.
‘Waste time’ each day for a few minutes.
‘I know how to be idle and blessed’ (Mary Oliver).
And give full rein, in turn, to your five senses: sight, sound, touch, smell and taste.
God is essentially beyond thought, beyond human knowing. Yet God is embedded in everything that is visible to us. We might say that God is a kind of horizon – the context or basis of all our seeing and hearing and valuing.
For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation please click on the link below.
