When I need a timeout I always seem to wind up at Wright’s Pond. It offers a gentle serenity, a timely repose from life that transports me into another place in time.{{more}} It’s a world I really belong to in heart, mind, and spirit: an oasis that welcomes our retreats, and like a mother would, opens its arms to receive her lost children. The pond’s an ace in the hole that brings us back to who we really are and maybe where we need to be. And in that rest we are resettled and encouraged to come back stronger. It’s where the gulls dance with abandon just to be alive, knowing the pond from within. And they will gladly put on a show for you for a slice of bread. And if we have the time…they will welcome us with open wings.
We flew with the grace given us, the hand of the great wind under our wings, sustaining us as a father would.
We flew off the glow of the great pond that reflected our own images – mirrors of delight and touches of pure grace gliding over still waters…off the smell of minnows that shimmer like lightning flashes, rays of light in the blink of an eye.. We are at home here, enveloped in the gifts of spirit and tender retreat.
The arms of the pond reach out to us like a long, lost friend, filling us with its quiet sanctity, its unfathomable serenity – making us dance to rebirth as the children of Namaste. We fly over the fishers casting out rays of silver line into a sea of glass; over the little children feeding wild ducks their own lunch; over pilgrims immersed in gentle meditations of great escape; over the myriad of skaters weaving figure-eights of pure design and leaving their signatures as calling cards that they are here; over the tired and exhausted now communing with nature’s small voice; over the mist of rustic white-capped greenery that envelops and seduces us by its calling.
We let slip the shocks of life embedded in our souls allowing the unforced rhythm of grace play itself out. We fly through whispers in the wind echoing our true worth- who we really are in the scheme of all things. We revel in wonder every day here, in odes of joy that we have one more day to fly…we are safe in the middle of nothing, feeling at one with everything around us with no need for a life elsewhere, enjoying the visitors who come as fellow gulls at heart. And we make this pond our home, between the soft songs of sunset and yellow glories of sunrise…in stillness, assured of the things hoped for in the day before us.
John has several photo books at the Case Memorial Library on Orange Connecticut.