Wednesday 29 December 2010

...crumbling back into soft clay and tiny stones...


(if this is your first visit, start here)

Jessica at everything feeds process made this exquisite little journal for her small stones. I'm very jealous. 

People are still signing up for the river and some are getting rather excited about it. I'm glad. We should be excited, because this project is about engaging the world. 

It is not about creating wonderful writing, although that is sure to be a by-product. 

It is not about beating ourselves up if we miss a day or can't get our small stone to look right. 

It's about attempting to put all that aside, and be curious in our object, the 'other'. What does his voice sound like? What is the texture of that crinkled leaf? What does the colour of that bird remind you of? 

What we're aiming for is to grow small, as Caroline has written below. Let's dance!

"The world grows. We grow small. Like violets on an old path, the world fills the cracks of our being. We are invaded by life in all its complex beauty and weather into relationship with the material world. We soften. Just as bricks lose their hard edges, their constituents crumbling back into soft clay and tiny stones, so too, we find our resting place in the greater processes of life. No need to defend now. We are surrounded by the light of life, and in it we dance."

(From Caroline Brazier's The Other Buddhism)

2 comments:

  1. That is such a charming little book! :)

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  2. What a lovely book. I'd like to make one too - it would be nice to re-read them like that sometimes, rather than from the computer screen.

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