Over the last few years, one of the hobbies I have taken up since Covid has been bird watching, and generally enjoying nature more and more. But bird hides, these are fascinating places, and I have a few favourite ones. Yesterday I had a bit of a lucky day, seeing a hobby, greenshank, bittern and an osprey.
‘Theres nothing going on’ is so often a deliciously tempting phrase to set the tone in a bird hide, this translates to ‘Whilst there is a panorama of unpredictability of natural life outside, there isnt an unusual bird today to get excited about’ just the seemingly usual birds. In the tempting demand to make life consistently exciting and full, the chase can be on, to go to the places where the ‘interesting birds are.
Modern life, and modern expressions of faith, often want to fill, rather than keep the empty spaces open, the gap, the pause. We’re frustrated when the ‘gap’ between trains is too long at the station, when theres a gap in the curtains, when there a gap in the TV schedule, church services full of activities in their 90 minutes. Silence feels uncomfortable. Yet…
What would be music without its gaps?
There is inside each of us, a sacred pause, a gap, a space. A place where thoughts are watched like birds in a bird hide, some stick around a bit, others fly past fleetingly, some hover, pounce and leave marks. Yet in that place of watching, there is a gap. A gap, like undrawn curtains where the light is. A gap like an artist sees between objects that give the objects their identity. Inside you and me, the sacred gap accompanies our every waking moment, waiting to be noticed, like the things of the thoughts themselves.
And that sacred pause is where the power is, the joy is, a wonder, mystery, and where love is, its where our consciousness envelops the divine eternal oneness, its where no-thing exists and everything exists all at once.
And it’s there all the time.
Find life in no-thing. The Sacred Pause.
Where – No – thing separates.
Because it connects as one. Whole being.
In the nothing there is everything.
James Ballantyne 