Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me,
Liz Scott.
Well,
You find me in my very,
Very happy place up on Dartmoor beside a burial mound,
A burial cairn called Cuckoo Ball.
There's only a couple of big grey granite stones remaining and it's probably three to five thousand years old.
It was constructed as a burial cairn and all that's left are these two big stones that are coming at the moment out of the greenery of the bracken.
They look like two little islands sticking out over the top of the bracken.
And from this vantage point,
I'm quite high up,
I've got a wonderful vista and view of the arable landscape below me.
Lots and lots of fields separated by the greenery of dark hedges.
There's a lot of brown and yellow fields there,
Not a lot of green going on.
This has been a very,
Very dry period of the year.
Behind me is a big,
Black,
Ominous cloud.
And with it,
Because the sun is shining at the same time,
But with it is that intense,
Humid heat that means that I think rain could fall any time.
I might even get caught in the shower.
But I'm out with this lovely black Labrador and walking a neighbor's dog.
And I want to talk actually about wisdom and how it shows up.
If you remember the story of the Labrador that went missing yesterday,
He was called Ronnie and he escaped and ran away after a deer and then couldn't find his way home and his owners were beside themselves and lots of people went out looking and I talked about this yesterday.
And this morning I had a chat with the owner who explained,
I filled in a couple of gaps and she said that they had found him not far from home,
Less than a mile away from their home in the barn of a local farmer.
And it looks like Ronnie had been scared and he had found his way into this barn and the farmer got hold of them and said,
Look,
I think I've got your dog in my barn.
He's,
He seems quite vicious cause he's growling and,
Um,
He won't let me near him.
And even when I give him a bit of cat food,
He's,
He's growling at me.
Um,
And they thought,
Hmm,
That doesn't sound like our dog cause our dog is super friendly,
But let's go and check it out.
And it was their dog.
And,
Um,
I'm talking about wisdom here because the dog,
When he then saw his owners,
Just absolutely for joy came and saw them and they were joyful.
And,
You know,
It's a wonderful,
Happy ending.
But the piece that I'm really interested in is the wisdom of this young dog.
He's less than a year old and he didn't find his way home.
He was really spooked.
But what he did is he found somewhere safe and he growled because he didn't trust,
Didn't know to trust the farmer,
Didn't know that the farmer was on his side.
And that for me shows incredible wisdom,
Even in this boisterous young dog that was scared.
He found a place of safety,
And as it was,
His owners were able to find him.
And it just made me wonder whether there are some sort of stories there that link up around people that you maybe have come across,
Certainly I've come across,
Who might give the appearance of being a bit tetchy or grumpy or annoyed or defensive.
And actually,
If you kind of overlay what I've seeing with this lovely black dog,
Ronnie,
Is that his wisdom came through.
It came through in a defensive growl,
But that's because he was scared.
And sometimes it's really helpful for me to see that actually people who are defensive and who are short and who are snappy,
Well,
Maybe they're scared too.
Maybe that's their wisdom coming through.
It doesn't know another way.
So the only way it's got is to be snappy.
So that's my reflection today is that wisdom kind of takes on a different guise.
It doesn't mean,
Wisdom doesn't mean that it guides you exactly in the right direction and everything is okay and happy and cheerful.
Wisdom is the best you can do in that moment with the thinking you believe in that moment.
That's what wisdom is.
And that's what everybody is doing the best that they can in that moment with the thinking that they believe.
That is wisdom.
Reflections on that,
The idea that wisdom is at play all the time,
But it just shows up in different ways.
And wisdom maybe shows up in ways that we're not expecting.
The most important thing I find in the journey I'm on is to understand the nature of thought and to understand which thoughts to believe and which thoughts not to believe.
And when you combine wisdom with that,
Then as far as I can tell,
You are on a really nourishing path in this life.
Let me know your reflections on wisdom and the different ways that it shows up.
And don't forget to join me again tomorrow for another Five Minutes in Nature.
