Seeing the Extraordinary in the Ordinary …. 5

Time for another guest post from June Angela. Yes, it’s the Tyke in Exile again. Hope you enjoy this post. More on the core values in work in the next post, later in the week:

This week I had developed the urge to dig out old silver jewellery that had taken a back seat since bling is no longer a necessity in my life. I’d found it in the back of an old drawer sulking! I began working with the silver cloth rubbing and cleaning away the collection of black grime. I felt like Aladdin and his lamp but no genie appeared just incredible shiny jewellery that had been lost in the blackness of time. It made me chuckle to see the shininess appear. I felt like a magpie at work!!!

A couple of days later the weather was the talking point in the city. The River Mersey and the city centre of Liverpool had been enveloped with a grey shroud of dense fog. The eerie sound of the intermittent horns on the river had been sounding during the night before, keeping navigators out of harm’s way. That day as we drove along Hope Street, the aptly named thoroughfare that conduits the lay line energy between the two magnificent cathedrals entwining them together, I remember looking through the windscreen of the car with amazement as the Catholic Cathedral “top” (affectionately known as Paddy’s Wigwam) had completely disappeared behind the grey fog and it looked half the building that I knew it was. The cathedral looked deceiving, not showing half its potential and then my “blogging” the extraordinary head began to kick in …

Maybe they were linked … the silver jewellery and the swirling fog …. It formulated in my mind’s eye, perhaps they have a common denominator. The incredible cathedrals majestic in structure / nature and over 100 years to construct them both, yet deceptively hidden to the eye by fog. Yet when the shroud had lifted, what an incredible view of how things really are. In the Buddhist traditions it is believed that the Buddha nature or pureness of mind is obscured by ignorance or defilements (negative states that greatly influence the mind). Certainly the silver jewellery was hidden behind defilements of black grime built up over years of neglect and the cathedrals were hidden behind a shroud of fog and if I had been a stranger to Liverpool I would have denied their existence.

I meditated and concluded on the hidden potential and magnificence of every human being … often hidden to the world, yet more tragically hidden by ourselves to ourselves …… Perhaps this is another occasion to see the extraordinary in the ordinary of everyday life.