Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
It's one of those blustery days and I'm looking above me at the white fluffy clouds in the blue sky and seeing the ferns around me.
I'm up on Dartmoor blowing in the wind and I've come and sheltered so that I am out of that blustery blustery breeze.
It's got a real sense that autumn is in the air,
I love it,
I love this time of year when things really feel like they are shifting and moving.
The ferns are starting to go brittle and brown,
The weather is more damp and blustery,
It's just this sense of the seasons changing,
It's wonderful.
And today my reflection is on a graffitied sign that I saw that gave me a little bit of a boost.
Now I'm not usually one for graffiti,
In fact in recent weeks in England there's been quite a proliferation of the Red Cross of St George,
Which is the English flag,
The Red Cross of St George,
Being graffitied onto different places,
Onto roundabouts and buildings and just different places.
Now the flag of St George,
The Red Cross,
Has in the past been hijacked by nationalist groups so it can have a bit of a threatening unsavoury feel when people are brandishing the St George's flag.
And I say that to give it context in so much as these flags have been popping up in different public spaces,
Graffitied in places.
But it just feels,
For me as somebody using the space,
It just feels really disrespectful.
And so I was rather surprised because,
Like I say,
I'm not a great fan of graffiti.
I find most graffiti is untidy and thoughtless and ugly.
So I've been seeing the graffitied red St George's flags go up and I've just been feeling a bit unsettled at seeing them kind of going up all over the place.
And then as I was driving home today,
As I was making my way back home,
I saw somebody had graffitied on the back of a road sign but it was facing me,
The back was facing me of this this road sign,
So I could see what it said.
And somebody had graffitied,
Choose love,
Choose love.
I just broke into a smile when I saw that.
I've been in a little bit of a reverie,
You know what it's like when you're driving and you're kind of just making your way on the familiar route,
Making your way back home.
And there was something about this sign that just woke me up,
Woke me up and had me reflect inward,
Give myself a sense of looking inside and asking the question of myself,
Am I choosing love?
Choose love.
And it was almost as if it was an answer,
An answer to all the graffiti that I've been seeing going up and the unsettleness that I've felt as I've wondered what the purpose of this graffiti is.
But it seemed like an answer to that graffiti,
So it was a piece of graffiti giving me an answer to other graffiti and that is choose love.
I think whenever I come up against anything,
Whatever it is,
The simplest way of navigating through those unsettled thoughts and feelings is to use them as a sign to look within,
Always use them as a sign to look within.
And as I look within,
I realize that this is always,
Always about connecting and reconnecting with my essence,
Which is love and compassion.
So today,
Today's reflection is asking you to reflect on that graffiti design that I saw.
Choose love.
And I'm just curious how that lands for you today.
How are you about choosing love?
What might that look like if you were to choose love today?
