Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
I'm just strolling on a woodland path in Strathclyde Park.
We're actually camping on this park.
It's in Scotland.
It's a big area,
Very popular with families and cyclists and walkers.
I'm here out in the morning and it's my morning walk and it's my final day in Scotland.
So we're going to be packing up the van very soon and heading home.
And one of the reasons we came here to Strathclyde.
Is that it's on the outskirts of Glasgow.
It's in a very busy area.
But one of the reasons we came here is we wanted to see my husband's aunt.
And the reason was we had a gift for her.
If you remember,
We had brought up a rose cutting.
Well,
It was more than a rose cutting.
It was a rose bush that had been grown from the cutting of a rose that my husband's mother particularly loved,
My mother-in-law loved.
When my mother-in-law died,
I took some cuttings of this rose and with the ones that survived,
I gave them to her children.
And we had one extra cutting that's been growing over the past few years,
Getting bigger and bigger,
In a pot that was in addition to the other one which we've planted in the ground.
And it really deeply occurred to me that this spare cutting in a pot was one I wanted to give to my late mother-in-law's sister.
She lives in Scotland,
She lives near Strathclyde,
And so we brought this rose cutting up,
Chopped it right back so we could fit it in our campervan,
And brought it up so we could give it to my late mother-in-law's sister.
And we did that yesterday.
It was so beautiful,
We weren't sure what her reaction was,
Cutting in a pot wrapped up in a bin liner so that it wouldn't leak earth and water everywhere.
And she was absolutely delighted that we'd given it a gift.
So I just thought you might like to know the ending of that story,
Which was really super.
And after we'd gone out for a cup of coffee with her and we had a little explore around the area,
Stu and I came back and we went for a bike ride.
And this is actually the point of the piece today.
We went for a bike ride and we just were some of the bike routes not sort of any any destination that we particularly wanted to go to but just thought let's follow some bike signs and one of the places we wanted to go to was a place called Bells Hill we just saw some bike signs we thought let's go to this place Bells Hill and we started out and the first part of the journey took us over a myriad of bridges cycle bridges that went over the busy motorways and it was the rawest of the traffic and the smell of the fumes I couldn't cycle fast enough to get over these bridges and to get onto a cycle path that might be a little bit quieter.
And when we got to look at the map,
We'd kind of managed to navigate all these road bridges.
It was still a busy road that we were on and we were like,
Where do we go next?
And we looked at the map and we realised that we'd gone very quickly in the wrong direction.
And this is what I want to talk to you about today.
And we can only assume that somebody had cheekily turned one of the road signs around.
Which had meant that it pointed in the wrong direction.
So we thought we were going in the right direction,
But actually we were going in the opposite direction of where we wanted to head to.
And so what we did,
Obviously,
Is we did the same journey back over these cycle bridges,
Over this busy road,
And wound our way back eventually to Bells Hill.
But that little piece of going quickly in the wrong direction is actually what I want to talk about today.
Because in life,
And I'm talking about this more in a philosophical level,
In a spiritual level,
In life we often have the propensity to get our teeth into something and go really quickly thinking this is the way.
But actually,
If you're going fast and you're going in the wrong direction,
Then it's taking you further away from where you want to go.
And so today is a reflection on that slow spiritual path.
And for me,
With the inside out understanding,
Also known as the three principles,
It has been a very slow unfolding journey of discovery that has not been fast.
But I don't need to go fast in exploration of my true nature.
So today's reflection is this,
Is that it is so much better.
To take your time.
To take your time and to make progress and to go in the right direction slowly.
That's all you need to do one small step at a time.
Let me know your reflections on today's topic of the difference between going fast in the wrong direction or going slow in the right direction.
And don't forget to join me again tomorrow for another five minutes in nature.
