This blog comes with all the magic and power from one of Mother Earth’s most glorious healing elements, water. Water is the source of all life. It feeds us, soothe us, heals us, bathes us, quenches our thirst, keeps our bodies in working order and without it we cannot survive. In the same way our soul starves without nurture and sustenance too.
Water also attracts one of life’s great pleasures too.Boating. I’m away enjoying a few days on the canals in a narrowboat, to nurture my soul. But although we choose the quieter places to sail along away from the towns and built up canal systems we’re never lonely. This is a very social and friendly way of getting about as everyone who passes nods, waves or gives a little advice about the locks (or pubs) on the way upstream. And, even if we don’t see another boat, we are definitely not on our own.
Water has a unique and beautiful life system that intrigues and entertains (from both sides) even the most cynical of observers. We have been watched nonchalantly as we gently chugged along the quiet leafy waterways by herons, cattle, sheep and horses. We’ve spotted 3 kingfishers (on different days) swooping, been heckled by swans for something to eat, woken by a honking flock of geese as they set off to relocate in the early hours, and this morning as I was writing at 5am a little moorhen trotted around at the back of the boat then landed on the window cil to look in (though he squeaked and flew off as soon as he saw me looking back at him!). One of the mesmerising features of the canal banks is the array of wonderful reeds and bullrushes which bow in the wash of our boat as we sail past. On this particular canal trip we’ve noticed loads of gorgeous water-lily pads too, though sadly no matter how hard I look I can’t find any frog choruses sitting croaking a serenade.
Whether you choose water or land, it is just so good to go deep into the countryside and be simple for a while. For a week every year we have no tv (no signal), no emails (no signal) and no smart phone (you’ve guessed it, there’s no signal). I get terribly frustrated from time to time but remind myself that I’m here just to ‘be me’ If only even for a couple of days. On a canal boat I can be away and connect to the earth as I moor up by fields and trees. Even with a sound spiritual practice life can become way too hectic at times. Here I can quieten myself with the soothing blessing of the moving water. I can become calmer again. I can ground my frazzled energy and open my soul to the sounds that whisper to me from deep within. Mother nature strengthens my connection once again.
To go back to being truly at one with nature is deeply uplifting, whether our feet are standing firmly on a boat as we sail along the waterways, or in the grass on the banks, hearing the air in the trees and looking at the sky. With the bright stars, and the beauty of a new moon, the amazing cloudscapes that bring messages and delight as we gaze their way balances our energy. It brings us back to centre. There are no religious connotations yet it is a deeply sacred and spiritual experience. Every thing in the earth is in us, every cell in our body is created from the same chemical components as those which make up as the earth herself. Water flows within us and our emotions flow within. Sometimes we need to go there, with gratitude, to remember to stop and feel it!
