Can you tell me when you were last alone? ...you are not alone while you know that you can have someone with you the instant you choose
Then what I would have you do is to make yourself alone in one of nature's withdrawing chairs... On a day when the weather is fine, go out by yourself. Tell no one where you are going or that you are going anywhere. Climb a hill. No book, remember. Nothing to fill your thinking place with the thoughts of others.
When you are quite alone, when you do not even know the nearest point to anybody, sit down and be lonely. Look out on what you see, with the lonely sun in the middle of it all. Fold your hands in your lap and be still.
Do not try to think anything.
Do not try to call up any feeling or sensation; just be still.
By and by, it may be, you will begin to know something of nature, and then possibly of the God whose clothing it is.
I do not know you well enough to be sure about it; but if you tell me afterward how you fared, I shall then know you a little better, and could perhaps tell you whether nature had or will speak to you.
I have been challenged by this reading and would love to hear your stories.
extract from George MacDonald, What's Mine's Mine, Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. Publishers, London 1886
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Very interesting extract! I wish that You could one day make a list of all most interesting classic Australian writers so that I could know what to borrow in Library.
ReplyDeleteToday it is raining all day long in Sydney. Good Australian book feels like a must : )
Cheers!
I would love to do this and will Pawel - this writer, however is a Scottish novelist from the nineteenth century:)
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