For one reason or another, I was browsing at one of our local libraries (I might have been working, or just filling in a few minutes) and, not for the first time, became the beneficiary of that wonderful serendipity that swirls about the shelves. After a couple of weeks of being busy with all sorts of work and family issues, a quick browse of the non-fiction shelves put me in temporary possession of a brace of books that carried within their covers both hope and inspiration.
One, small enough to fit in my coat pocket, was
What W.H.Auden Can Do For You, by Alexander McCall Smith. At 137 pages it seems a quick and easy read, but is worth taking time over - a chapter or two each day, followed by some thoughtfullness and gratitude, and perhaps a diversion into the whole poems from which the various excerpts contained in these chapters have been taken.
Gratitude is a theme addressed by so many poets, preachers, and philosphers, from
Horace through
Marcus Aurelius, and on to
Auden himself; gratitude that often arrives all unexpected, lighting up an otherwise dark time.
In the final chapter of McCall Smith's book there is a quote from Horace that reminded me just how fortunate I am, and which took me at once out into the garden and wood which I so love, and within which I so often find peace and inspiration........
This is what I had prayed for: a small piece of land
With a garden, a fresh flowing spring of water at hand,
Near the house....
It's perfect. I ask for nothing else, except to implore,
O Son of Maia, that you make these blessings my own,
For the rest of my life....
Auden wrote something similar only a couple of millenia later, in his "Thanksgiving for a Habitat"....
....I, a transplant.... at last am dominant
Over three acres and a blooming
Conurbation of country lives.......
.....................
What I dared not hope or fight for
is in my fifties, mine, a toft-and-croft
where I needn't, ever, be at home to
those I am not at home with......
Each of us needs a spot we can claim as our own safe place, a place where we need not keep the company would not wish to keep. We own it, or borrow it; we may be a caretaker, or squatter, or regular visitor - but we need that place we can feel grateful for, in which we can feel gratitude.
We won't be immune from unexpected visitors, but they are more likely, there, to be visitors whose company and conversation we can enjoy.....
Did I say that serendipity had granted me two fascinating tomes from the same shelves? What of the other, you ask? How much do you know about Paul Otlet? No, me neither. How can it be that none of my teachers or instructors or colleagues ever mentioned this man? To be continued........
