Saturday, November 10, 2012

A Special Place

THE MAGIC OF A SPECIAL PLACE By William Samuel

We should all have a special place. Let me tell you about mine.

Not far away is a rolling hill, a green pasture now, and down those smooth slopes at the bottom lies a square field, corn and cotton in the Summer, vetch and oats to re-kindle the soil in the Winter, surrounded with old, black hardwood posts and rusty wire, wild ivy wrapped around—and honeysuckle, blooming and sweet and droning with bees.

Along the west edge of the field and down to the river stretches a cool forest, not virgin, but many years since it was timbered, filled with shaggybark hickory, pine, scrub oak and those noble sycamores patched with pure white and crowned with thin silver leaves that flutter in the least wind.

My path takes an unnecessary turn from the straight way to pass a special cluster of those soft regals of the woodland. I have a friend among them, an elder statesman that stands a hundred years tall, has seen many an Alabama thunderstorm, and oversees a small opening in the woods marking who knows whose once-upon-a-time patch of melons and greens. If I’m not in a hurry to get down to the river I stop there and sit down and lean back against my sycamore and watch its shadow grow long across the opening while distant birds go soaring in the Summer wind. It is a warm place to dream and turn loose cares and let troubles go winging with the clouds from the south.

Everyone should have such a place when things seem oppressive. Everyone has such a place. Maybe not in a patch of wood along a river bank, but mayhap in the Tennessee hills or the mountains of the West, or a backyard garden or the shady corner of a porch. It may be a special chair alongside an apartment window overlooking a glistening wax-leaf privet and walkway grass, untrimmed and bending in the West wind. But wherever, all of us have a “place” wherein thoughts come forth of an especial feeling quite beyond the usual—clean thoughts of wistful grace and gentle uplift like a sycamore—warm, tender and powerful.

These “places” are not mere locations bound about in finiteness and time. Dear reader, I suspect you already know that they are the manifestations of the Heart’s Secret Place. They are the products of the Within.

This wondrous place of mine with its guardian sycamore is not bound to a dimensional woodland a few miles away. It is here right now, closer than breathing, closer than fingers and toes, a simple second’s silence from seeing and being. It is in the Mind’s eye and I may visit it in a twinkling!

Come with me and I will take you there.

Excerpt from The Awareness of Self-Discovery by William Samuel

Available on Amazon

If you would like further guidance in understanding any of William Samuel's work based on Self discovery - you are welcome to contact me, Sandy Jones -- samuelandfriends@gmail.com - Ojai, California -