Gardening Wisdom

Gardening is cheaper than therapy, and you get tomatoes.

Anonymous

Mindfulness is a practice which has become greatly accessible to people of all traditions and faiths. Often sought as a remedy for excess mind activity and turbulent emotions, many people don't quite know why they are drawn to it - they just know they feel more balanced, centred and happy by having this practice in their lives. Mindfulness teaches the fundamentals of meditation and of present-moment awareness.

This practice is of immense value as it teaches us self-awareness - we become aware of our habitual patterns of thought. We begin to see how much of our day is taken up with worries, stress and ruminating over situations past or future. It reminds us to bring our awareness back to our immediate current situation, our immediate activity, surroundings and bodily sensations. It trains us to create an internal anchor such as the breath or anchored awareness of our body in the immediate moment. This action of continually returning to present-moment awareness is meditation, it is mindfulness.

By locating our attention on our immediate surroundings, we are dropping an anchor into the deepest and calmest part of the ocean. It steadies our erratic movements, and gives us a chance to look around and get our bearings. Present-moment awareness is naturally calm and it slows and soothes both mind and emotions. Because of our deepening self-awareness, we come to know ourselves very well. Dedicated practice over time habituates us to fresh moment-by-moment awareness, and centres us in our true nature. Through longer and more focussed meditation practice, we learn to recognise ourselves, and learn to recognise Presence. 

Take a look at a gardener at work, or anyone who works physically with their hands. A rhythm comes upon them and a natural ease in their movements. They are not in a rush. Years have taught them that there will be more weeds tomorrow, so they just do what they can today. They witness their thoughts and bodies relaxing as they focus fully on the work. They always pause to look around the whole garden as a complete entity, to search for ideas and inspiration for the next season's planting, and to decide what needs pruning later in the autumn.

They always take time to stop at their favourite flower in bloom. They take time to smell the roses, to water the dry patches, to tend the seedlings, to thin out the carrots, to rub the cat that loves visiting her owner in this space. They see which plants are struggling and which ones are taking over, and they have no problem pruning and removing plants, and relegating them to the compost heap. They know the overall garden rhythm. It is all natural.

Some days, they will even go out and attack the garden with tools and clippers with a whole load of steam built up inside. After an hour, the higher balance of nature will have exhausted them, and unleashed their steam. They return to themselves. Even as the gardener is slowed by age and arthritis, they know every inch of this familiar landscape, and find a spot to sit where Presence is loud, and the heart becomes still.

Any practice that brings us home to ourselves is a gift to be cherished and an activity to pursue with priority for all our days. This is effortless mindfulness. We may go for another round of golf, another choir practice, a music gig, a leisurely walk or run in the park, T'ai Chi, or some Meditation or Centering Prayer - whatever brings us home. We all benefit when we are around people who know themselves deeply, know and practise their divine practice, and share Presence by their presence. 

We spend our lives hurrying away from the real, as though it were deadly to us. "It must be up there somewhere on the horizon," we think. And all the time it is in the soil, right beneath our feet.

William Bryant Logan, Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth

The Divine Image

Stained Glass at Mount Melleray Cistercian Abbey, Cappoquin

The Divine Image

To Mercy Pity Peace and Love

All pray in their distress:

And to these virtues of delight

Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy Pity Peace and Love,

Is God our father dear:

And Mercy Pity Peace and Love,

Is Man his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart

Pity, a human face:

And Love, the human form divine,

And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man of every clime,

That prays in his distress,

Prays to the human form divine

Love Mercy Pity Peace.

And all must love the human form,

In heathen, turk or jew.

Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell,

There God is dwelling too.

William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, c.1789.

When disappointed by others, when saddened and frustrated by our own efforts, when it's just tough going - it is a relief to be reminded of the purity and goodness inside all beings, even ourselves. Behind it all, there is Love, Mercy, Pity and Peace. There is Rest. There is Presence.

I can see why Thomas Merton loved the poetry of William Blake.

The Grace of Surrender

I remember first being introduced to meditation in my 20s, and for some reason, in spite of an often restless mind, I also had a strong sense that I was somehow coming home. As I persevered with my initial clumsiness, I found myself looking forward to the ceremony of sitting, allowing my restlessness to soften, and wait. What I couldn’t name at the time was the experience of Presence which then enfolded me, and drew me back in expectation for the next sitting. I also didn’t recognise at that time the seeds of self-kindness which were being sown.


Twenty years later, I look back at my younger self, and have to admire the humble innocence of a young adult finding her own way in life. I look back amazed at the disciplined practice I enjoyed then. I can still be a little restless. I suppose I am also older and hopefully a little wiser. Surrender comes easier now. Life has brought many joys and storms in the intervening years, each one cracking open the heart ever wider. Life has shown I am not in control of the vast majority of events unfolding in my life. Life has also shown that a force of gentleness and providence was with me throughout these years. The lives of my family were held and a pull towards truth, simplicity and trust was moving through us.


I realised some years ago that it was no longer possible to limit my daily practice to one or two periods of meditation, or regretfully none at all on occasion. I needed more help in the in-between times. I found I needed to reconcile the remainder of my day with the peace and serenity I felt during meditation. Slowly I noticed a inner pull towards a more contemplative way of living, the turning and surrender of each moment into prayer and devotion. This practice became a welcome anchor at difficult moments, and a celebration at times of breakthrough.

I still struggle with the discipline needed to sit in meditation and Centering Prayer. I welcome but no longer cling to the consolations which can come. I don’t always feel the strength of Presence which I felt in my younger years. I now seek to simply rest in Silence, rather than seeking a felt experience of Presence.

Though it may go against our nature, the act of surrendering is Nature itself. One moment and one season surrender into the next. The cycles of life surrender into each other. Birds and animals know this instinctively. They are led by inner rhythms dictated by Nature. We also see this graceful process unfolding in many people. They grow in wisdom and acceptance as they get older, and are often recognised by their strong sense of humour about Life's ups and downs. Surrender has made them humble and adaptable. They have witnessed many people making their final surrender from this life. They know that Life is to be lived, enjoyed and revered, moment by moment.

To welcome and to let go is one of the most radically loving, faith-filled gestures we can make in each moment of each day. It is an open-hearted embrace of all that is in ourselves and in the world.

Mary Mrozowski, Contemplative Outreach Founder

Pause For A Moment

A quiet day's pause 

Time slows to an easy pace

Nature is basking

Hurry finds no hit today

Contentedness arises

How lovely to find a long quiet day stretching out ahead, with no appointments, no deadlines, and nothing at all to be achieved. It is with a grateful heart that I find one, today.

Everyone needs a moment to immerse themselves in their own natural way. It is my constant prayer that my outside world becomes a more natural rhythm for me. In other words, it is my prayer that those internal disharmonies soften even more so that the external world then reflects this ease and harmony. Much energy is pulled from within when we find ourselves in an unnatural rhythm. It is not possible to sustain it for very long, without feeling exhausted and strained. The prayer is that we can adapt and move seamlessly from one role to the next, whatever the context, all the while following an internal natural dial. I don't think we were even meant to be anything other than this.

Our natural rhythm may be a quiet one for some, or filled with company for others. Either way, it's best to find our own balance. Some need a burst of spontaneity, of fun and laughter. Some need that elusive alone-time, others want to read, to write, to go for that long walk, to play music, to watch a movie. A nap, anyone? Do we even know how tired we actually are? Whether we have just a few precious hours, or the whole day, or joy of joys, a few days, make it a retreat for your heart, for the deep aches of the inmost self. Get re-attuned to your natural rhythm.

Enjoy these accidental mini holidays, whenever they come along. Don't fill them with emails, phone calls, TV, chores, or social media. Everything can wait. This is an outstanding opportunity to spend the day listening and seeing, rather than planning and doing. This is a chance to receive the day as it unfolds.

Intuition tells us when to move on, where to go, and what to do or say next. By anchoring our attention on what surrounds us - listening to the sounds, seeing the activity in nature, following our intuition - we are in prayer. By being present to the Presence, we strengthen our ability to lead a contented blessed life, within the natural rhythm of Life, whatever our role.

This is a sacred discipline.

Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Silence

God's poet is silence! His song is unspoken 

And yet so profound, and so loud, and so far,

That it thrills you and fills you in measures unbroken -

The unceasing song of the first morning star ....

Joaquin Miller, The True Poet

There was a beautiful calmness this week, a gentle invitation for the Spirit into Silence. It was restful, with a grateful recognition of peace, simplicity and community. And then, typically, a familiar moment of turmoil arrived, with its not-so-welcome recognition of panic, confusion and isolation. It amazes me how our default polarities sit so closely together, pulling us from one extreme to the other.

The spiritual masters, saints and mystics have recommended for hundreds and thousands of years, that we consciously place our attention on Silence and Presence, rather than on the story or object of our disharmony; focus on the Presence rather than on the circumstances of the turmoil; focus on the background Silence in which this is all taking place. In this way, the circumstances are acknowledged, allowed and absorbed into the entire background, rather than so dominating our foreground that we cannot even sense Silence as the background.

This is a practice of prioritising Presence over the restless, ever-changing, often weary landscape of our minds. It is the repetitive action of placing our attention on God, on Silence, like the hall light we leave on through the night while we sleep. Ramana Maharshi tells us to concentrate on the light, rather than on what is illuminated by the light. This is our permanent landing place. This is certainly one reminder I constantly use, and somehow, I recognise my true Self there, in recognising God, and an ease comes to the Spirit.

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.

Mahatma Gandhi

Silence, as Presence, as Beingness, is the background which holds all else, and into which everything is absorbed and dissolves. It is Silence in the presence of turmoil, peace, fear, frustration, joy, disappointment and inconsistency. It is Silence in spite of noise, interruption, disharmony, joy, progression, success. It is the Silence within which our inner knowing is revealed.

In an attitude of trust and silence, we bow everything to God. Contemplation confirms that a higher order of balance and harmony is working its way out in us and in Life itself. These moments of turmoil take us beyond Resilience. We just need to keep our eye on the light, and watch it continue to shine forth in and around us.

Returning to silence is returning to peace.

Returning to peace, the world reharmonises itself.

Lao Tzu

Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton was born on 31 January 1915. Worldwide seminars and gatherings are planned on this date and throughout this year to commemorate his centenary and honour his spiritual legacy.

Thomas Merton was born in Prades, France. His father was an artist from New Zealand, and his mother, also an artist and diarist, was American. He suffered much bereavement and isolation in his younger years, losing his mother to illness at age 6, and his father at age 15. His only sibling, a younger brother, died serving in the second world war when Thomas Merton was 28, shortly after joining the Abbey of our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky as a Trappist monk. He also had health troubles from time to time, and was once gravely ill with sepsis.

He had grown up with very little faith or religious training, though his father possessed a deep faith from his Church of England upbringing in New Zealand. Thomas Merton had always admired the ruins of the many monasteries surrounding him in rural France, and at the age of 18 was suddenly engrossed by a visit to the many churches and basilicas in Rome, and even remarked during his visit to a Trappist monastery there, that he would like to become a Trappist monk. Around this time also, he began a lifelong resonance with the poetry of William Blake.

He moved numerous times with his father in his early years - from France to New York, Bermuda, back to France, and then settled for a period in London. His writing endeavours began as a young teenager in a French boarding school where he wrote two novels, and continued once in London by becoming one of the editors of the school magazine. After his father died, he went through a wreckless phase partying and socialising, adjusting to his independent life, and travelling around Europe.

He attended Cambridge University under the support of his guardian, a friend of his father. He had very little sense of faith at this time, and even held the Catholic Church and institutional Church structures generally, in disdain. His guardian elected to send him back to New York in an effort to curb his excessive ways, and after he had finished his exams, he duly relocated back near his maternal grandparents and enrolled at Columbia University in New York.

 He became quite dedicated to his studies there, and had some prominent and inspiring lecturers, including Mark van Doren and Dan Walsh, who became lifelong friends. This was also a time when he began studying the philosophies and theologies of the world in great depth. He also began to truly explore Catholicism and mysticism in earnest during this time, and began to pray again. He was greatly impacted by the writings of Étienne Gilson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, CS Lewis, the lives of the saints, and meeting with lecturers and philosophers such as Jacques Maritain.

During this period, he followed a strong internal pull to join the Catholic Church, and in 1938 he was baptised and received Communion in Corpus Christi Church in New York, followed by his Confirmation there the following year. This strengthened his vocation and he began to speak to religious advisers about the prospect of joining an order and becoming a priest. Partly due to his wreckless phase in England, he was initially rejected by the Franciscans, causing him much grief. However, his faith and prayer life continued to deepen and with it the certainty that he wanted to become a priest.

Having completed his MA in English from Columbia University, he began teaching at St. Bonaventure University in New York. The University still holds a volume of Thomas Merton's materials. He also became briefly involved as a volunteer with Friendship House in Harlem, working with its founder, Catherine de Hueck, and was greatly affected by the poverty and conditions there. He was very impressed with the impact Friendship House was having, especially on the children.

In 1941 Thomas Merton went on an Easter retreat at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, a Trappist Cistercian Abbey, which impacted him profoundly. He felt drawn to the Silence of the contemplative order there, in spite of the severe Trappist traditions, and finally, on 10th December that year, he arrived at the Abbey and applied to join the order. After three days in the guesthouse, Thomas Merton was accepted, and so began his monastic journey and his development as one of the world's most profound thinkers and communicators of Contemplation and spiritual wisdom. He was ordained Fr. M Louie in 1949.

It is a great thing when Christ, hidden in souls ... manifests Himself unexpectedly by an unplanned expression of His presence. Then souls light up on all sides with recognition of Him and discover Him in themselves when they did not even imagine He could be anywhere.

From The Sign of Jonas

He was a prolific writer, and has written over 60 books as well as hundreds of poems, essays, journals and letters. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, became a bestseller, and inspired many others to seek out their own vocation. Other popular works include New Seeds of Contemplation, No Man is an Island, The Secular Journal, Mystics and Zen Masters, and The Way of Chuang Tzu. There have been numerous posthumous publications and it is believed there is still an enormous body of work as yet unexamined, which will hopefully be published in the future. His topics ranged from Contemplation to monastic spirituality, interdenominational faith, peace, non-violence and civil rights. I have found his most inspiring material to be his own self-reflections in his body of personal journals, and books such as The Sign of Jonas and Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. He is one of the most influential Catholic writers, and his relevance and inspiration in today's world is exemplified by the publication of over 40 books about him in the past two years.

A year before he died suddenly from accidental electrocution in Bangkok where he spoke at an inter-faith conference, he set up the Merton Legacy Trust, naming Bellarmine College (now University) in Louisville, Kentucky as the repository of his material. A Thomas Merton Centre was set up there in 1969 and is now located in the Library at Bellarmine University, and houses over 50,000 items in a vast collection of his written works and memorabilia. He died on 10th December 1968, exactly 27 years to the day since he entered the Abbey at Gethsemani. At that time, he was in a profound place of good health, expansion, clarity of mind, with a tremendous contemplative heart.

... the greater grace for each individual is the one God wills for him. If God wills you to die suddenly, that is a greater grace for you than any other death, because it is the one He has chosen, by His love, with all the circumstances of your life and His glory in view.

From The Sign of Jonas

He was a true academic, with the patience and determination to write to experts in all fields across the US and the world, to get the deepest possible understanding of matters philosophical, theological, psychological, religious, and linguistic. He also had skills in photography, poetry, calligraphy, drawing, and languages, and translated many manuscripts from Latin, and French.

He corresponded, researched and examined the mystical dimensions of the other world religions, including Buddhism, Zen philosophy, Sufism and Hinduism. He wrote books on Buddhism and Taoism, and many Buddhist monks were invited to visit him at the Abbey. He corresponded in writing and became friends with DT Suzuki, Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama. In 1968, having received permission from his Abbot, he embarked on an extensive Asian tour, including a visit to Dharamsala in India to meet the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama felt he had found in Merton what it meant to be a true Christian, and concluded that there were very few Christians to have as deep an understanding of Buddhism and Zen as Thomas Merton. He was fascinated to recognise the depth of spiritual experience present in these Eastern traditions, and equated it with his own. He could recognise and saw examples of the contemplative life in these traditions.

What characterised him most in his latter years was tenderness and holiness. He taught the novice monks, and strengthened a bond of brotherhood. He championed the saints - St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, The Cloud of Unknowing. He had been transformed internally from a wreckless youth to a contemplative, prayerful monk. He was quick to admit his failures. He felt tremendous pain for his failings, but through it showed his humanness and humility to re-affirm his faith, time and time again. He was very restless for many years, and battled with an internal pull to leave the Cistercians and join the Carthusians. He struggled constantly with the call to write, eventually realising his very Being, his very Peace depended on continuing to write. He understood that sanctity for him was precisely through the challenges and difficulties he faced with writing. He had many arguments with his early Abbot regarding a desire for his own Hermitage on the grounds of the Abbey. This was finally granted in his final years, and is now preserved for visitors to the Abbey. I think it is his failings and struggles which most inspire and help me, knowing that he too struggled with his weaknesses, knowing God's emptying process was taking place in him.

He warned against spiritual self-indulgence, quietism, and retreating from life. That is not contemplation. It is the bearing with life, the surrender to life as it is, day by day, and the courage to go through the challenges and joys, which allow ourselves to be utterly emptied out of our superficial exterior selves, and to finally rest in God, in Being, in Truth.

No life requires a more active or more intense formation, a more ruthless separation from dependence on exterior support, than the life of contemplation. 

From The Inner Experience

His was a fully questioned life. His experiential awareness brought him from a place of no faith, to a place of surrender, tenderness, clarity and ultimately to a place of deep love.

Photograph by John Howard Griffin

Withdraw yourself from all care

Withdraw Yourself

Presence speaks in many wordless ways. The events of our life as they unfold are the clearest words. Life is endlessly speaking wisdom into our hearts. Life is challenging us to allow even greater ease, even greater freedom, disguised as hardship and limitation. Once allowing is allowed, it presents our deepest places yet longing for freedom, longing to be allowed. Present all to the Presence that breathes wisdom and clarity into our being. We will know what to say when the time is right.

Withdraw yourself from all care; trust not in yourself but in Him; do not be anxious or solicitous to perform great works for Him until He leads you Himself, by obedience and love and the events which His providence directs, to undertake the works He has planned for you and by which He will use you to communicate the fire of His love to other men.

Thomas Merton

The First Snow

The First Snow of the Season

The New Year has started with an urgency to put some sense on what lies ahead for us in 2015. Resolutions, prayers, hopes and wish lists are made. Decisions are finalised. We're determined and confident, yet mildly unsure and perhaps overambitious.

Mondays are often like that. We get an overview of what our demands are for the full week ahead, and often catch ourselves trying to get it all done by Monday evening. By Tuesday, we have made steady progress. On Wednesdays, we find time for a cuppa, and to reach out to a friend. On Thursdays, we wonder what all the fuss was about on Monday, as we find the demands diminishing, our perspective shifting, and we sail easily through lists and emails and housework and activities. By Friday, we are enjoying the bigger picture. The weekend gets busy with non-routine, with family time, with walks, with some sacred time, and we seek out time, places and people to balance and inspire us. Inevitably we find ourselves slowly gathering momentum, and by Sunday evening we're getting organised wondering how we will manage it all again next week! 

I sense the Tuesday energy kicks in around mid-February. Wednesdays are probably around Easter. Thursdays are May. Fridays are early August. Saturdays are late September/early October, and Sundays are November and December. Then there's the opposite rhythm of the Southern Hemisphere (It's probably a Thursday or Friday there now), and the rhythm of the Earth as a whole, and on and on to infinity.

There's nothing like Nature's Rhythm to interrupt the cycle of our routine. The first snow came into our lives this week with much childish fun and excitement. There were moments of Glee! We also had delays and cancellations and had to re-think our plans. Icy roads, car trouble, frozen water pipes, heating problems (or cooling problems if you're like my friends in Australia) all cause havoc. Cancellations in transport, work, school or even an appointment to the doctor can frustrate and delay our tightly planned schedules.

I've started to not worry about delays and cancellations. I've seen many last-minute re-directions come into my life, swerving me from going off on unnecessary tangents, or perhaps saving me from untold anguish. They are Blessings in disguise. Life is interrupting us to bring us home. It's not vital to finish what you are doing this very moment. It really isn't. It will get done. Change your energy. Get out and move, or get home and rest.

An Irish cup of tea is one of my most valuable companions. I've endured and celebrated many of my deepest trials over copious cups of tea! Even when I became too upset to eat, I could always handle a cup of tea! The tea makes me sit down and look out the window, across the fields to the horizon. It makes me stand at the doorway and listen to the birds outside. It makes me take a deeper breath. It makes me sigh. It makes me take a moment. It makes me share a moment with family or friends. It soothes the effort and the trying inside. It moves me into a place of trust and surrender. There's always water in the kettle!

Look across the fields to the horizon

Sometimes, beauty is so beautiful, we have to pause, whether it's Monday, Tuesday, April, May or November. The first snow - it is a new beginning, when the purity of the landscape and lives around us shine white and bright. It is a welcome interruption.

Beauty and simplicity preserve the spirit from distraction and lead it to God. Beauty leads to Contemplation and is a sort of sacrament of the eternal beauty of God.

André Louf

Find the rhythm of the day. Instead of time and task management, intuition can find the natural pulse and rhythm moving around and through us. An enormous sense of natural effort and progress merge in this rhythm. Tasks get done, but with a greater sense of well-being and inner quiet. Loosen the schedules and pause. A deep breath and a long look to the horizon can refresh and reconnect our attention inwards to re-align with that natural rhythm. Be Yourself. Be present to the Presence.

Contemplation tells us to allow the interruptions. Allow the setbacks. Allow the frustrations. Allow them all. Then, wait for the pulse, and begin again. Nature's Rhythm is eternal.

Nature's Rhythm

It's a New Year. May goodness, blessings and good fortune surround you this year.

Karl Rahner - Light The Candles

Light The Candles

 

And now God says to us what he has already said to the world as a whole through his grace-filled birth:

"I am there. I am with you. I am your life.
I am the gloom of your daily routine. Why will you not bear it? I weep your tears - pour out yours to me, my child.
I am your joy. Do not be afraid to be happy, for ever since I wept, joy is the standard of living that is really more suitable than the anxiety and grief of those who think they have no hope.
I am the blind alleys of all your paths, for when you no longer know how to go any farther, then you have reached me, foolish child, though you are not aware of it.
I am in your anxiety, for I have shared it by suffering it. And in doing so, I wasn't even heroic according to the wisdom of the world.
I am in the prison of your finiteness, for my love has made me your prisoner.
When the totals of your plans and of your life's experiences do not balance out evenly, I am the unsolved remainder. And I know that this remainder, which makes you so frantic, is in reality my love, that you do not understand.
I am present in your needs. I have suffered them and they are now transformed but not obliterated from my heart....
This reality - incomprehensible wonder of my almighty love - I have sheltered safely in the cold stable of your world. I am there. I no longer go away from this world, even if you do not see me now.... I am there.

It is Christmas. Light the candles. They have more right to exist than all the darkness. It is Christmas. Christmas that lasts forever."

Karl Rahner

 

 

"Wishing you a New Year filled with surprises. Poverty or riches, good health or sickness, joys and sorrows, let us receive all with faith, hope and love, mindfully aware it is all God's gift to us."

 

St. Mary's Cistercian Abbey, Glencairn.

 

Image courtesy of Christmasstockimages.com

A Christmas Wish

Rest
Let a quietude come upon you.
Take a breath and come into the present moment.
Put aside your cares, worries, frustrations and distractions.
Allow your current state to be as it is.
Have one long unhurried moment.
Forgive your failings. They're part of being human.
Be present to the Presence.
Let Silence nourish you.


This Christmas
Get out into nature. Walk. Run. Swim. Sit. Laugh. Play.
Share a moment of complete beauty with someone you love, and with someone new.
Let something impact you. Let someone inspire you. Let your Heart fill to overflowing.
Look for the Absolute in everyone. Recognise the Absolute in you.
Notice one magical happening. They’re all around you.
Silently help someone who may not even know they need it.
Forgive someone.

In the silent, still night, may the blessing of Jesus’ birth embrace you. 

And may Presence cause a thorough contentment in your Heart.



Image copyright Lucy Learns Ltd.