Last time in my gravel garden this year. The wind is blowing clouds, branches, seagulls to stir the grey, and the dark, damp leaves are starting to dry. I like the wind. It brings new things and disturbs the old. What will it bring this new year that is waiting in the East to come and claim its glory? It is good not to know, to be excited not by plans and concrete happenings but by possibilities, by the creative forces beyond our control that will weave their magic in their own way. Come, wind, I will breathe you in, I will open my wings to your power and fly.

The blue sky that has cheered our hearts all week has gone, hidden by sheltering clouds. From a distance the sky just looks grey but when you look up you can see white shapes and textures racing towards the east, towards the sun which sometimes peeks through. It is pearly grey above and green below. The wind that brings the clouds is a thing of beauty, muscling in on my garden sanctuary, moving then resting, sometimes reaching the high-hanging leaves, sometimes my face. It isn’t cold or warm, it must be blood-heat. It is like the breath of the air, the breath of this day.

There have been storms, there have been floods. Here the garden and air are wet but elsewhere in Britain the ground is underwater and gasping for reprieve. I can see the culprits sailing by, dark clouds pouring from the west, now relieved of their rainfall so giving us a miss. The air is aswirl with them like smoke separating and surging below the pale grey sky, hurrying east as if running a race. The leaves tremble and are caught in the wind that urges them on, wanting to go with them.

Sunshine and showers, time and eternity, here and heaven, energy and form, yin and yang. What a dance it is, being a child of the universe, being aware of the ultimate reality of timeless, beneficent energy but being earthed now, embodied in this time and place. Both are important. If I try to just live in either reality I will lose what there is for me here. Weave them together, weave them with breath and love, with a deep involvement and interest that doesn’t hold on or predict or control. Find the flesh in the spirit, find the divine in the ordinary, find eternity in this moment.

Who wouldn’t want to start the morning like this, sitting in the quiet garden with September sun filtering through the leaves and playing on my face? This is my pause after early kitchen routines, a pause to give space to inner things, to let the well of soul breathe deep and then stretch like a cat so that the unfolding day is held in its spaces. I can drink the air, drink the newness of the day, like champagne.