Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me,
Liz Scott.
It's still very squelchy underfoot here on Dartmoor and I'm just out and about.
You might be able to hear me walking through mud.
I nearly lost my Wellington boot there,
It was so boggy.
I just need to be a bit careful as I walk across the moorland onto some rather firmer ground.
So yes,
Today I'm going to pause here on this rock.
I'm on a little island amongst this marshland and I want to concentrate on talking to you rather than navigating across the moor.
So today I was giving a talk about the pilgrimage I walked last year and I've been giving these living room talks and absolutely loving them.
And today was no exception,
Just being with a group of people.
And the idea really is that somebody wants me to come and talk,
They find people that want to come and listen to me,
They let me come to their living room.
You know,
I talk and we have a conversation and it's an intimate face-to-face,
Very informal conversation and encounter and it's really very enjoyable.
There was a lot in what happened that was beautiful and connected and resonant and I felt deeply present and it all was exactly as it was meant to be.
And there was one person there who I think was struggling a little bit with the content of the conversation and the talk and at the end he made a comment which was so respectfully given and landed with me in a way that I want to share with you.
And to summarise what he said,
It was look,
You know,
There's so much going on in the world at the moment,
Many terrible things going on in the world and he was actually in a position where he engaged with some of those things that his job took him to those places.
And he said it just seems like here we are really privileged,
We're middle class,
We're sitting in a beautiful home,
We're having a lovely conversation,
It's like,
You know,
We're not solving anything in the world,
We're not really doing anything.
You see,
I think in a way I resonate with what he says because I have many times in my life where I feel quite helpless.
I see things that are going on in the world and I feel quite troubled and not able to engage or do anything meaningful to change world events or to sort out world poverty or wars or prevent people being involved in terrible situations.
And for me,
I understand that feeling and it comes back so strongly to something I've said to you quite recently and I will say it again because it really holds me in a steady place and that is holding the line for love.
You see,
I know I can't do a lot in the world but I do know what I can do and turning up today and speaking to a group of people and sharing what I'd learnt and continue to learn from this extraordinary experience of walking a pilgrimage,
For me that is holding the line for love.
It's speaking from love to love.
It is me being present to what wants to be expressed through me and allowing that expression.
Does it change the world?
No,
No,
Nothing has changed materially in the world as I listen to world news.
Might it ripple out?
Yes,
It might ripple out and even that is not my intention.
My intention is to come back to a place of love.
My intention is to express myself from that place of love and my intention is that when I feel a wobble and my thinking gets loud and starts questioning my motives or what I'm doing,
Well that's also an opportunity for me to recognise that I'm getting lost in insecure thinking and to,
Yes,
You've got to come back to love.
And as I walk out here today on this very squelchy,
Wet,
Muddy Dartmoor,
I have a really strong sense of coming back to love,
Holding the line for love,
Speaking from love and that's all I've got.
That's all I've got.
So for me it was a great reminder,
Not at the time,
At the time I felt a bit unsettled,
Started to question whether what I was doing was worth it or enough or,
You know,
Was I kidding myself?
All of those kind of familiar,
Habitual thoughts kind of got unsettled but when they settled I could deeply hear again the call of love,
Just to turn up and speak from love,
Turn up and speak to love and to turn up and hold the line for love.
So that's what I've learned today.
