'Fox Holes and Bird Nests...' (...a new cure for dullness!)

                                       
    DREAMILY WALKING BACK TO OUR FARMHOUSE through the fields, my head was full of its usual round of ideas. Thoughts and opinions which had for so long arrested my attention it seemed like they had come to stay. Or, more truly, that I had come to stay in them. Yes, and I was stuck there!
   As I wandered homeward along the river edge of the field, hardly looking where I was going, suddenly I tripped and fell. There was a small hole in the ground beside a long narrow rut and my left foot had got stuck in it. It was fortunate that I did not twist my ankle because I had a long way to go before I reached home. Although I had not hurt myself too much, I walked on more slowly, limping slightly; and as I did, I became more aware of my clogged up mind.
   Something in me was sapping the carefree life I knew in my inner realm of Everland. There was a gnawing sensation in my middle. It was as though I were missing something. Some key of truth I had not yet found? As I went through the next decrepit wooden gate into the home paddocks I began to realize something was wrong; but I didn’t know what it was. But, whatever it was, it was something hindering me on the inside and my adventure of life and light was paling in some kind of inner limping; and my joy seemed to be fading; and even about to stop.
   Eventually I reached the homestead, our large white farmhouse, and went to my room. I sat in the wide, red-damask-upholstered window seat there; the bay window was cantilevered out over the gravel path below. I gazed out at the view. It was beautiful. Sweeping lawns, flowering shrubs, large ornamental trees dotted here and there; and beyond the garden, five hundred acres of rolling pasture with sheep and cattle; and beyond the meadows the distant hills, dark with native bush, and then the pine forest along the skyline to the west. Resting from my walk I was pondering in my heart; wondering what was happening to me and why I seemed to be at a standstill. I knew that if I questioned my heart I must be patient and not think that I could guess the answer. So often it was right there, right in front of me, and before I had even asked; but I would need the eyes of Everland to see it.
   There was a tall rimu beyond the lawn. This native tree is truly beautiful. It has long, very narrow ‘feathery’ leaves; which in the way they dangle give it a delicate weeping look; yet it is a very stately tree. The children call it ‘The Sparrow Tree;’ it was full of nests. It could be seen from my window seat, and I found myself looking at it, and at the ground around its trunk. The season was changing. Summer was over and gone. It was the middle of May now. And in this month of the southern late autumn, we had strong winds and often found nests on the ground which had fallen out of this huge and beautiful tree.
   As I stared at it idly now, it was as though I was peering through a mist. Not a visible one, but the type that comes when I am looking at one thing but seeing another. And the more I peer from the inside of me, the wider the space in my midst and I can see right through my misty thinking there, in an ever increasing lowering. Intuitively, I realized that something like a key to my condition was being given to me.  Little by little I let this key – the willingness to be undone – unlock a series of inner doors in the mind of my heart; and in the connecting of one thing with another, the visible with the invisible, the things which I could see became allegories of the things I couldn’t see: hidden heavenly truth and insight into my own condition.   I picked up my notebook, which I always keep on that red damask window seat, and I began to write down what came to me, as it came. And it came out in a sort of a list, after this:
    ‘. . . birds of the air have nests;
   but the Son of man hath – not where – to lay his head.’ 

                        UP ABOVE:

A nest – up in a tree.

A tree full of nests.

A head full of nests:

I have nests in my head.

Above – in the heavenly places of my mind –

Housing my thoughts –

Up there in my branches – is lofty thought –

But nested thought:

Habitats of habits, unmoving:

Ingrained patterns of thinking,

Lodging, in nests in my head!

And, in having ‘where,’ to lay my head:

Stopping there,

And sleeping there;

All unaware:

Locked in my nests!

And whole tree full of them!

A whole head full of them;

And I didn’t know!

I had no idea!

    

   Then another picture came to me. Another ‘telling-thing’ or allegory of heavenly truth: of my tripping up in the field…and falling over. And another chain of thought unfolded: unlocked:

    ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests;
   but the Son of man hath – not where – to lay his head.’ 

                       

                                  DOWN BELOW:

A hole – down in the ground – 

A ferret’s hole – a creature’s home:

Yes, but a pest – in a hen house!

Oh, a noxious thing!

Below – in the earthly places of my mind –

A foxhole!

A dank hole for lodging in:

A habitat for fears:

A dark place to be in:

Worries to be holed up in –

And a sad place to get stuck in! 

  

   The mists of my own mystery then vanished completely! And I understood, instantly! Though I am unaware of such a thing, I am all the time building nests in my thinking out of my ‘lofty’ thoughts: my highest ‘flowers:’ my ‘lovely flowers of Sensennae:’* my own pet opinions that make me something! There, I lay my head; for I have, ‘where,’ to lay it! There, I nestle down. Sometimes for a long time. Sometimes forever. Why? Because I settle into my ideas of things. And settling into them I become so comfortable in them that I do not know I have stopped there! And so, there, I do not move on! There, I go no further! I go no deeper and higher into light and life:  – stuck!

  Suddenly, my left foot started aching again. I bent down to rub it. And as I did I remembered more about the field along the river; the long rut it had, beside the little hole where I had got my left foot stuck.
   It all came clear, in a rush – in a flash of light.
   ‘Left foot!’   Oh, of course! My thoughts for too long had been left to run in a groove – in a deep rut – and I was left behind in an inner lifelessness. And what is a rut? A rut is simply a grave with the ends knocked out.
   Left behind was death! (‘...for one shall be taken, the other left.’ Luke 17: 33-37) 

   And 'the little foxes:’ they make - little holes:
   Waiting to trip me up...
   And trap me!
   Oh, I make homes – for my pests! 

   It’s‘the little foxes that spoil the vine.’  (Song of Solomon  2: 15) These were the deep, dark homes for my lower thoughts and my fears; hiding in the deepest places of me! I trip. I stumble. I fall into them. And I lodge there: because I have ‘where!’ I have place for them!
   Had I ‘not where,’ I would not have become stuck, and made blind; made unaware that I was holed up and not moving - deprived of my usual joy
    Not moving:  not alive!  Living things not moving, stagnate; and die!
   Oh, I always think that I am moving; but, I am not! Because nestled down in my beautiful opinions, or holed up in my buried fears I have 'where' to lay my head; and so, all unknowingly, there, I sleep. 

   Sleep: ceasing.
   Ceasing to live and move and have my being in my happy Everland…
   Oh!
   My own condition!
   The fading of my joy in life –
   The subtle, insidious dullness that had crept over me recently –
   Oh, it was gone! 

  It was now gone. It was gone in the very instant of revelation: Light: and Life! Light is instantaneous...!    

   For joy I bounced up and down on the window seat; for
   I had just been shown: 

   a.)  How I got it  – (How I got my boring dullness, I mean.) 

   b.)  Where it came from  – (From having fox holes and bird nests.) 

   c.)  What to do about it  – (Empty them out!) 

       For in Everland, Heaven on Earth, no such stopping places exist to stop me: ‘not where’ to lodge my thinking I am free to follow Life and Love, into all the Light!  Entering in – into the kingdom of Heaven – in (actually) entering in – the Unknown.
   In the days of grace which followed I identified many of my ‘nests,’ and spied some of my ‘holes;’ and in tipping them out was set free once more to run the race and dance and delight in my Everland.

   ‘Further up, and further in!’   (- The Last Battle; C.S. Lewis.)  

     ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.’   (Luke 9: 58 ) 

                                                             *

    * ‘The Lovely Flowers of Sensennae;’ from The Ragged Writings of Everland.