Swanwick Star Issue No. 13 (2020)

Our Little Friends

 

It has been a challenging year with the advent of the novel coronavirus pandemic. As a result, the Centre facility has been closed since March and all our workshops and other sessions are now held online only.

We have all probably spent a lot of time indoors by ourselves with time to contemplate our lives and their meaning. It has also given us the opportunity to realize how deeply we need a connection to Nature and, how fragile that connection can be, if we do not respond to the immediate requirements of climate-change.

Many of our little friends that bring joy into our lives will be lost and some may already have been lost because of a lack of caring on our part. In this regard, here is an apt quote from K below and a series of photos that celebrates our fellow creatures who are so sensitive and vulnerable to these changing conditions on the planet.

 

“In the modern world where there are so many problems, one is apt to lose great feeling. I mean by that word feeling not sentiment, not emotionalism, not mere excitement, but that quality of perception, the quality of hearing, listening, the quality of feeling, a bird singing on a tree, the movement of a leaf to the sun. To feel things greatly, deeply, penetratingly, is very difficult for most of us because we have so many problems. Apparently, there is no end to man’s problems, and he seem utterly incapable of resolving them because the more the problems exist, the less the feelings become”

– J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life