And Life Lights Up, page 1
About Alice’s other books
Home for Christmas
‘Taylor’s joy of everything that surrounds the festivities permeates each page.’ Sunday Business Post
Do You Remember?
‘Magical … Reading the book, I felt a faint ache in my heart … I find myself longing for those days … This book is important social history … remembering our past is important. Alice Taylor has given us a handbook for survival. In fact, it is essential reading.’
Irish Independent
And Time Stood Still
‘It’s as if she just writes down on the page what she was feeling, you don’t get any sense that there is any filter between you and the writer.’
Arena, RTÉ Radio 1
To School through the Fields
‘One of the most richly evocative and moving portraits of childhood ever written.’ Boston Globe
‘Ireland’s Laurie Lee.’ The Observer
And Life Lights Up
MOMENTS THAT MATTER
Alice Taylor
Photographs by Emma Byrne
Dedication
To Lena
who lights up my life
Contents
Reviews
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction – Golden Moments
Part 1 Awareness
Out of Our Minds
Meeting the Morning
Repairs and Maintenance
Afternoon Tea
An Ordinary Day
Finding My Feet
The Wonder of Wood
Take Good Care of Me
Part 2 Roots
Beauty from Boredom
The Gap
The Well
The Fort Field
The Sacred Earth
Part 3 Special Moments in the Garden
Dancing with the Day
Red and Yellow
Black Gold
Blue Brilliance
Fresh Flowers
Waiting …
The Plantsman
An Old Tree
Part 4 Small Kindnesses
The Black Bubble
Beautiful Mind
Battered Chalice
Never Suppress a Good Impulse
Let It Be
A Passing Kindness
Part 5 Then and Now
The Agony and the Ecstasy
A Time to Write
From There to Here
Refeathering the Nest
It Takes So Long to Say Goodbye
Both Sides Now
About the Author
Copyright
Other Books
Introduction – Golden Moments
Deep within each one of us is a vein of sacred stillness holding the seeds of our awareness. On special occasions a ray of light beams into this vein and these seeds spring to life, igniting dormant threads of our being. Our inner world lights up and dances in tune with all that surrounds us. We glory in the wonder of being alive. Such moments are golden, rare orchids scattered along the woodland of our lives.
It is for these moments that we scale mountaintops, penetrate the depths, pit ourselves against the might of man and nature, strive to be raised up so that for a few minutes we dance on a higher plane. We are in total harmony with ourselves and with life.
When the moment passes we live in the afterglow of the experience. We walk on, enriched by this secret inner glow because we have flown above and beyond the ordinary. We have danced with life and with our inner being. We are rejuvenated.
Sometimes nature can lay such golden moments out in front of us on a palette of breathtaking beauty. It can happen unexpectedly, out of the blue – and for one brief interlude our world is transformed. On a remote mountain road we may drive slowly around a sharp bend – and there it is, an unbelievably beautiful hidden valley. Nature holds a key to open our windows into wonder. Amazing moments can also be gifted to us by our fellow humans. This happens when genius touches us. We hear it in a beautiful piece of music – for a few magical moments we and the performer dance together. We see it in a beautiful ballet when the ballerina becomes a bird in flight. We read it in a soul-stirring poem where words written thoughtfully allow us to see the world through the eyes of the poet. We see it in an exquisite painting – on the canvas we and the artist are one. These moments can form a link across the decades; the artist may be dead for centuries, but creativity is an invisible bridge across time.
When we are gifted with these rare insights, a ray of radiance encompasses us. It lifts us up and we experience an interlude from ordinary life that infuses us with delight and a positive belief in the greatness of our fellow human beings. We wish that these moments could last forever. But if we mindfully absorb them as they happen we can encapsulate them into the depths of our being where they mould themselves into the fabric of our souls and carry us over the stumbling blocks that may lie ahead.
A horse-trainer friend of mine, who has seen many fallings and risings in his racing career, says about days when he has a winner, ‘I don’t go to bed at all that night.’ He believes in taking the time to absorb the exultation, to lace the magic moment into the fabric of his psyche to help carry him over future crash landings.
We may not all walk in the winner’s enclosure or stand on the podium of achievement or raise the cup of victory, but we do all have beautiful moments, special times that can set our inner being aglow and wake us up to the wonder that surrounds us. But we must be there for these experiences and in them. They enrich our lives but can so easily be lost if we are too busy looking in another direction. They can then go by, unappreciated and unnoticed. They just disappear. So it is good to be mindful, to be aware, to observe and savour these special moments, and absorb the joy of them now as they are happening and take them into our soul.
Part 1
Awareness
Cherish the moment as it may never happen again.
Out of Our Minds
You have been evicted. Your mind has been taken over by the outside world. A demanding army has moved into your head and encamped where you should be. You have moved out and retreated to live at a distance from yourself. You want desperately to come home. To get back into yourself. To live again within yourself. To rest in the peaceful places of your own mind. But that space is occupied. A noisy world has moved in. How did that happen? When did it happen? You have no idea! It must have happened when you were busy doing something else, preoccupied with another project.
This happens to us all. Frequently. But now, how do we get that invading army out? Where to begin? This army in the mind will not easily surrender. This occupying force of noise and confusion has taken up residence and stubbornly refuses to leave. It has decided that this is its territory. It will not be moved. We are lost in confusion.
But we must make some effort! We try confrontation. We try shouting down this inner noise. Talk, talk, talk. But that does not work. More noise only creates more conflict. We simply end up in a worse state. So, confrontation is definitely not the answer. But what is the answer? There has to be an answer.
How about simple silence? Could silence be the answer? Could silence evict the noisy army? Sounds a bit too easy. Would the voices actually move out and allow peace of mind to move in? Worth a try. It could take time for a mental door to quietly open and allow it in. But we must slow down and allow this to happen. Can we slow down? Can we stop?
Our engine has become accustomed to fast-forward living. There is so much to be done. But we are exhausted from rushing. Is it possible to slow down? It has to be possible.
What I usually do is sit quietly in silence. Sounds like a simple thing to do. It may sound simple but it is not easy. My mind keeps demanding attention. As the Buddhists say, there is a tree full of chattering monkeys in there in my head. I have already discovered that I cannot out-chatter them because that just stimulates them into more activity. Now I need to find out if a quiet body quietens them down. When the body quietens, will the mind become a quieter place too? Can I introduce a silent quietening into this clamour and noise? Can I find a passive, tranquil silence that simply will not engage with the turmoil?
I sit calmly, patiently, and wait. The monkeys try every stunt in the book to keep the racket going. But then, gradually, they ease off a little. The noisy inner army begins to quieten down and very, very slowly it gives up and reluctantly retreats a little. With no counter-attack there is no battle. Gradually the inner tumult eases and I gain a little ground. Peace slowly creeps in. My mind calms down and the clamour of the world recedes a little more. Quiet spaces open up within. I am slowly able to come back into my own head. I am gradually coming home. Eventually I am home. Quiet. At home.
But how do I stay at home? That is the question. With the best intention in the world, clamour and clutter seep in. That is life. So how do I attempt to ring-fence myself from the chattering monkeys?
Many years ago, when I had a head full of chattering monkeys, a friend gave me a book by Anthony de Mello called Awareness. De Mello tried to introduce me to my chattering monkeys. I read the book, but did not get it. Read it again, but still did not get it. Then my friend gave me a de Mello tape to which I listened again and again – and finally I got it. I got to know my monkeys.
Anthony de Mello was an Indian Jesuit who came to the western world and quickly reached the conclusion that we were all crazy. He decided that we were all sleep-walking through our lives in a total lack of awareness. Drastic thinking! People thought that he was cra zy. In a huge effort to wake us all up he tried to introduce meditation to the West, to introduce it to ordinary people: the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker! Meditation was not just for monks and enclosed orders, but for ordinary Joe Soaps to get us to wake up and appreciate the here and now. Did he succeed? Not really! He died a young man – but he had sown seeds that are still sprouting up in different corners of the world.
Needs
Give me space
To roll out my mind
So that I can open
Locked corners
Where lost thoughts
Are hidden.
I need time
In a quiet place
To walk around
The outer edges
Of my being,
To pick up
Fragmented pieces,
To put myself
Back together again.
Meeting the Morning
A jarring alarm clock jerking you into sudden wakefulness, with an attached radio system shooting every world problem into your mind before you put a foot on the floor, is a brutal introduction to a new day. Your equilibrium is shattered.
When I was one of the jarring alarm-clock brigade there was also the early-morning tear-around looking for lost socks, and the making of school lunches to cope with. Each morning began with this kind of bedlam that hurled me into another day. From there on I was on the treadmill of the daily merry-go-round. Sometimes I wondered could there be another way? Another way to begin the morning that would make a real difference to the day ahead. So very early one morning, before the world woke up, I crept out of bed and down the stairs. Out into the garden. The dawn chorus was just about to begin.
We have a lot to learn from the dawn chorus. On waking, the birds do not all blast into full song at once. One little voice gives a soft tweet and soon afterwards this is taken up by another, and then another, until, very gently, the wake-up call spreads from one tree to another. With this soft call to meet the new day they all gradually become aware that morning is breaking and so, having begun on a small, delicate note, they slowly raise the volume until, in full chorus, they welcome in the new day. There are no jarring, discordant sounds, just the collective harmony, like a magnificent choir, and yet there is no hidden conductor waving a baton.
In this garden all paths lead to the seat under an old apple tree, and so I sat there and let the surrounding peace seep into my body and mind. A tide of tranquility washed over me, forming a peaceful inner pool.
Into that pool came the memory of another dawn, my first and never-to-be-forgotten awareness of the magic of the dawn when I was eight years old. It was after an all-night vigil, a night up minding the bonhams, which was part of the baby-animal caring pattern of our farm life. This was an undertaking that as a young child I was very anxious to experience. I wondered what the world would be like at night when everyone else was asleep.
So I had persuaded my reluctant mother to allow me to stay up with an older sister to mind the bonhams. But the welfare of the baby pigs was way down on my list of priorities. My motivation was a huge curiosity as to how the world functioned at night.
The first change I discovered was the all-encompassing silence. It rested like a blanket over the house and farmyard. Apart from the missing adult voices, the usual farmyard noises too were absent. No squeals from the piggery, no bawling from the calf house, and no quacking from the ducks. All were silent. The only sound breaking that silence was the regular ticking of the kitchen clock. The brass pendulum was easing away the minutes of my precious night.
Outside the kitchen window, hump-shaped bushes strode the ditches and away in the distance the giant Kerry Mountains followed each other like great dark camels along the horizon. Gone were the familiar shapes of the day. Out there the dark night was foreign territory. It was slightly strange and scary.
Beside the turf fire the old sagging sofa offered the comfort of familiarity. I snuggled down into its lumpy depths. My plan was to stay there for just a few minutes, but the arms of Morpheus were irresistible.
When I awoke, the clock was striking four in the morning. Oh no! Some of my precious night had disappeared. It had been sucked down into the realms of sleep.
But while I was down there a change had come about. Faint splinters of light were filtering in through the windows. Sleepy-eyed, I pawed my way to the door. I found myself in the front porch where a soft fan of light was seeping in under the front door. I rattled the loose brass knob and the door eased open.
Outside was a transformed world. The tip of the red ball of the sun was edging its way over the horizon, shooting arrows of light across the sky and transforming it into a multi-coloured dome.
At first almost inaudible, a tiny twitter came from the nearby wooded fort. And then, very slowly, this first note was followed by another and then another. An unseen feathered orchestra was preparing for a dawn recital. Radiant light poured down over the mountains, changing the fields into pools of gold. And gradually the whole symphony of bird song spread through the groves of trees around the house. The surrounding landscape was alive with light and the dawn chorus was heralding in the arrival of the new day.
That dawn was many years ago but it had opened a door into an awareness of the beauty of the coming of a new day. Years afterwards, I remembered it as I watched another new dawn as the sun rose over the Sea of Galilee. I felt that heaven was reaching down and blessing the earth. And now, I had my third experience as I strolled slowly around the garden intrigued by the sparkling early-morning cobwebs. Shrubs were shrouded in shimmering veils. What an amazing complexity of designs the spiders could create in one night. And the whole garden was full of fresh smells that seeped into my senses. A wave of tranquility washed over me, forming a peaceful inner pool. This pool would remain calm no matter what chaos the day might bring.
Inner Sanctum
Let me steal five minutes
To welcome in the dawn,
To touch its dewy fingers
As they creep across the lawn,
To watch beneath a misty tree
The sun roll back the night,
Its beams transforming darkness
With soft translucent light,
To hear the birds awaken
With delight to meet their day
Let their happiness infuse me
To meet my day their way;
Let this tranquil scene give balance
To the busy day ahead,
To create a tranquil pool
For withdrawal inside my head.
Crash Me Not into a New Day
Let me unfold gently
Into a new day
As the sun calmly
Edges above the horizon
Before blazing into a new dawn;
As the birds softly
Welcome the light
Before bursting into
The full dawn chorus;
As the cow rising
stretches into
Her own body
Before bellowing
To her companions.
May I, too, slowly absorb
Be calmed and centred
By the unfolding depths
Of this new day,
So that my inner being
Will dance in harmony
With whatever
It may bring.
Repairs and Maintenance
Showers have totally taken over from baths. Far quicker. Far more hygienic. They better suit our modern world. Who has time in today’s world to take a bath? Even the very word ‘take’ a bath conjures up images of taking something from a former time that does not quite belong in today’s world. You are not quite with it. Neither are you entitled to ‘have’ a bath. This implies that you are wasting time having something you could well do without. It is a waste of time. You waste time waiting for the bath to fill, and then more time getting the water to the right temperature to make sure that you will not be frozen to death or roasted alive … This all takes time. Time that you really do not have. And after all that, do you actually come out of a bath well washed? From a hygiene point of view a shower is far more efficient. The polluted water disappears instantly down the plughole rather than swirling around your cleansed body in a foamy sludge. So, all in all, a bath is a sheer waste of time. Let’s get rid of all baths once and for all!
