Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott and I'm back in Exeter.
I say back in Exeter because I come here fairly regularly just to help look after my mum and it's usual for me,
My routine is that in the morning I get up quite early and I go for a walk that takes me alongside the River Axe and I'm right down by the Axe now.
Apart from the river is absolutely heaving it's so heavy crashing over the weir that I can see and the footpath which I normally walk along which goes right beside the edge of the river is completely flooded so I'm going to take a higher route today and I won't get to be walking alongside the river quite so much and I'm looking across this playing field beside the river.
There are runners out and cyclists out and there's a really thin wisp of mist just rising off the ground and then coming from it to trees poking up out towards the sky.
It is really wonderful coming out even when I'm coming out to a cityscape I find these little pockets of nature that I so enjoy discovering and today is a reflection about love.
Love is something that is so central to my reflections at the moment,
Exploring love,
What love is,
How it shows up,
How I might stand for love or hold the line for love.
Love is by its nature at the core and center of all that I do and I was reminded recently of love in action and a few people here on Insight Timer actually have said did I know about the the monks the Tibetan monks walking across America for peace and I hadn't known about it but I looked it up and now I've looked them up several times because I'm so intrigued by what they're doing and by the time you hear this they might have actually finished their their walk across America but it's 2,
300 miles I think something like that and and they're walking across America and they're walking I don't know maybe a dozen of them and they're just walking for peace I say just walking for peace they're not collecting money they're not going at a particular speed they stop along the way they speak to people they collect flowers they give flowers out they they're interacting with people but what's happened and what inspires me so much is that the people that gather they're asked to gather and not to clap but just to be very quiet and watch them respectfully as they go by but what I really see is that these monks they embody peace they're not activists they're not going out telling people to be peaceful or to lay down arms or weapons they are absolutely shining examples of love and peace as they walk and the curious thing is the number of people that are coming out to witness them walk in often freezing freezing cold conditions and so the other day I was on a call with a group of people and we were exploring different things community aspects actually of the work that we are inspired by and one of the things in the group which is absolutely grounded in love was there were a couple of people from America who were quite troubled with what they were seeing happening in their country and these people are completely and utterly grounded in love and yet in that call they found they could not escape from this habitual thought whirring in them that created fear and anxiety and unsettledness and concern and during the call somebody said oh have you seen these monks walking across America and one of the things that struck me was one of these ladies who is a really bubbly outgoing sort of charismatic woman and she was one of the ones that had been troubled when somebody said that about the monks a stillness came over her a stillness that hadn't been present for the rest of the call and that stillness was a reflection of the impact that these monks had had on her and in that moment as she remembered them she fell back into peace herself today's reminder is that love shows up in many ways we don't need to walk across America for peace all that we do is we listen in to what is ours to do for peace and love that is what we're being called to do and when you touch that in yourself people around you feel it and that in its own right can have a significant impact
