This afternoon, I spent a little time sitting outside on our back patio, just watching clouds drift by. It was one of the first warm and truly "summery" days, here in the Pacific Northwest.
The moment reminded me of days spent in my childhood, at my auntie's country cottage (pictured above), which was one of the few safe refuges during an otherwise pretty turbulent part of my life.
It was one of the few places I could go to find a sort of "inner quiet."
It might sound odd to you that a 9-year old boy would have such thoughts, but I did.
Without even knowing it — because she was not actually a particularly "spiritual" person — my auntie taught me to meditate: The practice was called, quite simply, "sitting and seeing."
Much like this afternoon, it was a time to stop talking, and instead to simply BE and observe was was going on around us. A time to truly pay attention to what was in front of us: The song of a particular bird; the way the sound of birch leaves rustling in the wind was different from the sound of oak leaves; the sound of grasshoppers in the thicket; bees buzzing by and doing their thing in the wild roses.
It was peaceful, because there was nothing that "HAD to be done;" there was no homework I would be "judged" on; no expectations.
All these years later... it has been almost 50 years now... I have much gratitude for those small patches of "sanity" in my life. And much gratitude to my (now long deceased) auntie for making them possible.
How about YOU? Do you have any such strong memories of people or places from your childhood that helped shape who you are today? Leave a comment — share your own experience!