9 September 2020

I left early this morning to drive all the way back down to Cintsa, needing to arrive this evening so as to receive instruction tomorrow from my parents about how to look after the house and the plants and the sewage system while they are away. It was an even harder drive than yesterday.

I hit a mongoose which ran out into the road and then stopped in terror as it realised its miscalculation. I wasn’t fully aware at the time and still feel terrible about it. What a mess we are, us human beings. There is always a price to be paid: “the beauty and the cost” as Paul puts it.

Eventually, I stopped at a picnic spot outside Komani, in the mountains. I ate an amazing veggie roti roll, laid out my prayer mat facing one of the great rock faces and disappeared into salaat, followed by a long dhikr on the grass as all the trucks and traffic rolled past. I put myself in the mongoose’s position and apologised from my heart and sang of my sadness for yet another slip, for yet another mistake, and all the many lessons I still have to learn.

No great light descended and no burden was lifted, but it was soft in that grass and the wind blew as I chanted the final chorus, and a few birds flew overhead once I returned to silence, singing their own version, and one cricket joined me all the way through. I read a poem of SFH’s which I’ll include below, and sat quietly for a little while, before finally getting back in the car and continuing on.

I tried to put on a CD of dhikr from SFH entitled “The Meaning of One God.” The car’s CD player accepted it and displayed “Track 1”, but then seemed to get stuck and it just played pure silence. At first, I was a little impatient, but then the vastness of this truth dawned on me.

I drove home, drenched in silent meaning. This life is awfully funny.

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Time has come,
honoured by afflictions.
No refuge,
no respite,
only patience,
or death-perfecting stillness.
Nearest to source,
absolute,
constant.
The origin of every instant!
Known to us,
who live here
in life itself.