Conversations with Nature by Peter Owen Jones
One of the comments made when I was offered this beautiful book for review was that it's not very long. Having read the book twice over, I'm brought back inescapably to the Spanish proverb that Life may be short, but it is broad. In this case I'm brought to the idea that the length of life is not the point; the point is its depth. Peter Owen Jones dives deep.
| Conversations with Nature by Peter Owen Jones | |
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| Category: Spirituality and Religion | |
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Reviewer: Lesley Mason
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| Summary: A truly profound book that seeks to reconnect us with the rest of the natural world, through short conversations that meditate on the ability to live, rather than the meaning of life. Not the easiest of reads, not the lightest of language, but thoughtful and worth coming back to. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Maybe |
| Pages: 92 | Date: October 2022 |
| Publisher: Clairview Books | |
| ISBN: 978-1912992416 | |
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The book was unexpected. It is not what I imagined it would be. In fact, it is easier to say what it is not than to say what it is. It takes me unawares. Present tense. I have not finished reading this book. I feel that I have probably not begun reading this book. Only when I got to the first ending of its pages did I fully understand what Martin Shaw meant when he says in his Foreword that he will carry the book in his pocket and read it on buses and on moors, when he says that Just a few sentences a day will fill us with protein.
He means, at least I take him to mean, that a few sentences a day will fill us. That a few sentences a day is how this book deserves to be read. To read it the first time as I did, on single hour's train journey, is merely to accept the invitation to dive in deeper, to know there is something here deserving of being understood.
Reviewers are expected to share their views almost instantly, and some books deserve more careful reading than allows for that. This is one of them. However, I will share what I have on the first few readings.
The book is a series of 'meditations' for want of a better word, musings perhaps, imagined conversations with animals and earth-structure about the nature of the universe and humanity's place within it. They are not easy reads. They are mystical. Perhaps they are not intended to be “understood” with the mind's way of understanding. Perhaps they are meant to simply echo in the subconscious until some other part of us grasps at understanding.
Certainly they are not meant to be read one upon the other, as if it were a book we are reading. They are meant to be absorbed, in quietness and stillness. Ideally, in nature. So that we can imagine ourselves listening directly to the beings who speak: the Khamsin (a hot southerly Egyptian wind) who speaks of storm, the wildflower who speaks of flux or the fox who speaks of exile.
My personal favourites on first reading were of the Bear who speaks of carnage, the heron who speaks of sadness, and the moss who speaks of intimacy… but of course that is because of who and where I am at this time in my life.
Each of the conversations is only a page or two in length, a page or two of a pocket-sized book, but there is so much wisdom, so much calling to think again about the way we are living in these words.
Each meditation is a call to come back to nature, to connect or reconnect with the nature on our doorstep and that far away, and to remember that it is all part of the one planet. It is a reminder that we too are part of the planet, not separate from nature. We can have these conversations with our neighbours (heron, fox, robin, starling, painted lady butterfly) – all we have to do is listen. Some call to us directly, urge us to come with them. Some speak of the need for courage, others for the bliss of dance. All speak of who they are and who we are.
And it is worth the reading – and the answering of a call to go out and listen for ourselves.
Some of the words will prove a challenge to most readers. They are gathered from cultures and places around the world. There is a glossary at the end, but I would urge you to read first the way I did without referring to it (in my case because I hadn't spotted it) – read without knowing the meaning of Jannah, or Kthonios, or which strange words are the names of animals or mountains – read it to feel your way into the ideas the earth is trying to share with us. We do not need to name everything to understand its beauty or its song.
That is the strong message for me from these pages. The words have given birth to much, but much of what we have made of words we would be well to let go. We would be well to go back to the time before words, or the place beyond them. That's where the beauty and the wisdom lie.
Ah but still…I am a wordy individual…so I am grateful also for the words that I did not know, and in particular for the Sanskrit word Sphurana which, the book tells me, means glittering, trembling, sunlight on water. I just KNEW there had to be a word for that.
I am not done reading this one yet.
For anyone interested in connecting with nature there is so much beautiful writing out there, one of my favourite authors is Mark Cocker or for a more scientific take try Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin.
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