Ship of Fools: Time to stop and stare

Thread: Time to stop and stare Board: Heaven / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on :

I had a dentist appointment this morning. It was bright sunny and cold. On the way there I passed a children's playground; empty as you would expect in the weather conditions and kids in school. The absence of pigeons was perhaps a bit harder to explain. About halfway along the path beside it, I felt the urge to just and stare.

There was a warmth coming from the playground but apart from some play equipment on a grass surface in bright daylight, nothing special. Yet that stopping lasted for a while and as I came out of it I noticed another guy staring at the exact same spot from a different side. Both of us seemed reluctant to go on.

What was going on?

Other than this, chance to discuss those small moments that take you out of the daily grind.

Jengie

[ 07. February 2018, 09:22: Message edited by: Jengie jon ]

Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :

I remember bunking off from school on day, and being absolutely mesmerised by the sight of a black water rat/vole? in some scrub land. It was time out of the time out of school!

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

Snow really is so beautiful, we probably shouldn't complain about it so much. Jengie Jon reminded me of the Robert Frost poem:

quote:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :

There's a magic moment in examining a snowflake before it melts in your hand.

For longer periods of calm, a log burner going, and a cat or two on the lap can take me out of time quite effectively.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

What was going on - you probably both saw the spiritual presence there. The quietness, the lack of chatter was a spiritual presence, You could say it was just coincidence, but I think that is what spiritual moments are.

In past times, you would have said there was a ghost there, but a benign or friendly one. I think you both saw the presence of God.

Posted by sabine (# 3861) on :

Sometimes the combination of something interesting (to me, at least) will draw me into a space where I no longer hear what's going in around me and maybe stop focusing on the thing in my view. I just linger for a moment in that fuzzy boundary between exterior and interior space. It can be very refreshing.

If, after a time, I notice someone else also paused, I wonder if they are having the same experience.

sabine

Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :

Sabine, that sounds like meditation. What a gift to be able to do it so naturally.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sabine:
Sometimes the combination of something interesting (to me, at least) will draw me into a space where I no longer hear what's going in around me and maybe stop focusing on the thing in my view. I just linger for a moment in that fuzzy boundary between exterior and interior space. It can be very refreshing.

If, after a time, I notice someone else also paused, I wonder if they are having the same experience.

sabine

[joke]That's what I told the magistrate when I got done for careless driving [/joke]

Posted by DonLogan2 (# 15608) on :

JJ; I have had a couple of moments like that. The first was aged about 3-4 years old and I had sneaked out of our garden and into the neighbours and crawled into their cold frame. It was warm and there was a smell which I now know as the smell of a tomato plant and I was just mesmerised.
The other was at a stables which had recently, in another part, been on fire. The sun was rising, there was a smell of horse and I just had to sit down.
Thin places, spiritual places? Just a good place to unplug the mind, or knock it into neutral

Posted by Diomedes (# 13482) on :

My mum called these 'Holy Moments' - and considered them a time of prayer without words. She was a wise woman.

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

The experience in the OP sure sounds like something sacred. I'm reluctant to say God was present because of the stillness/emptiness (or is God not present when the kids are out playing?). Maybe that unusual emptiness just helped in noticing.

There could also be an element of the uncanny: a place we all associate with noise and play being totally quiet and still.

That sense of the uncanny comes up a lot in the literature on modern ruins, for precisely that reason: they are sites where human activity should be teeming, but it has just stopped, sometimes inexplicably. Or even if you know the reason (like, it's too cold to take the kids outside for recess), the feeling can still be uncanny.

The uncanny and the presence of God, of course, are by no means mutually exclusive! Feeling or otherwise perceiving the presence of God is uncanny to us mortals.

Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :

For "uncanny" read "numinous." IMO

Posted by MaryLouise (# 18697) on :

I was thinking too of Gerard Manley Hopkins' word 'inscape', discerning the particular 'genius of place' and uniqueness at work in a landscape at a certain time of day. He understood this attention to inscape as an approach to the transcendent hidden within the immanent.

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