Grey waters

Someone wonderful recently introduced me to R.S. Thomas… here’s one of his poems that I already love! (thanks SL!)

Sea-Watching

 

Grey waters, vast 

                        as an area of prayer

that one enters. Daily

                      over a period of years

I have let my eye rest on them.

Was I waiting for something?

                                          Nothing

but that continuous waving

                             that is without meaning

occurred.

              Ah, but a rare bird is

rare. It is when one is not looking

at times one is not there

                                  that it comes.

You must wear your eyes out

as others their knees.

               I became the hermit

of the rocks, habited with the wind

and the mist. There were days,

so beautiful the emptiness

it might have filled,

                          its absence

was as its presence; not to be told

any more, so single my mind

after its long fast,

                          my watching from praying.

– R.S. Thomas

in Laboratories of the Spirit, 1975 

uniqueness – pebbles on the shore

                             

I was at the beach last Saturday morning – lovely walk. As always, I noticed some particularly special pebbles as I walked at the sea edge.

I always have to fight the temptation to collect pebbles and shells – I find so much beauty in them and enjoy to notice something special in them – the patterns, how the light falls on them, their shapes, colours…

I was thinking too – how if you look from a distance they’re just ‘pebbles’ – non-descript perhaps, uniform, nothing special. it’s the looking up close, and when they’re at their best – glistening with sea water and sunlight – that they begin to look extraordinary…

…I think that’s true for people too – maybe from a distance anyone can look ordinary, nothing special – but when we get a bit closer, take the trouble to get to know them, see them in their best moments as well as their worst, that we start to understand what’s special about them. We stop seeing ‘just pebbles’ or ‘just people’, and recognise the worth of each, and let them touch our lives with their uniqueness.