A step further

As you step off the world, you enter an ever changing landscape of different vistas, all operating in slower time.

Firstly, it is the noise. The birds chirping as they seek to get a seed, or three, from the bird feeder; the hum of a very distant tractor along a road on the horizon; and the noise of the rain as it hits the roof. I don’t recall hearing that before, that slowly increasing crescendo and then that intermittent rap as each drop strikes the roof. The background noise of ‘urban life’ normally drowns out this beautiful sound, but now, in this alternative world, the tables have been turned: so much so that road noise, car horns, loud exhausts have been driven into silence. What remains is nature itself.

Secondly, those pressures of checking the mobile, accessing the emails on the computer, being available – now recede. To reside away from the urban environs, where the wifi signal now plays second fiddle, means that to take a call – if we wish, we will need to be adjacent to the internet portal. Those emails, texts, messages now compete with the demands of nature: the weather and the birds. I wonder who might win?

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your loving God feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Matthew 6: 26

Thirdly, by recognising that those within the urban whirlwind, may have an alternative perspective of how to keep warm. Contrary to everything we have considered previously, the need to heat the rooms may not be ecologically sound. This isn’t due to preference, but due to necessity. In this, up-cycling becomes a prominent aspect of life: not wishing to discard that log, useful for heating; throwing away sticks, when they can be used to aid composting; and weeds can be that fuel for that compost to aid the cycle of nature in the garden. Those bits of wood might just be the surrounds for a new vegetable patch.

And into this mix is community. Not one that is fired up in getting those tasks set by others complete as soon as possible; but, adopting the timescale of nature itself, making yourself open for others, where recompense is not dictated by financial stakes but the principle of helping when possible.