Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me,
Liz Scott.
It's blowy.
I do hope you can hear me okay.
I'm sheltering behind a grassy bank and I've left beloved Dartmoor and Devon behind,
So I'm no longer in England at the moment.
I've come to Ireland,
Visiting Ireland,
County Clare at the Cliffs of Moher.
And these are limestone cliffs that drop,
I think it's like 800 feet from top to bottom.
To bottom sheer cliffs and they are extraordinary to see.
Apart from today,
We've turned up and there is a thick mist and a wild wind coming off the Atlantic Ocean,
So we can't really see anything at all.
But we've come anyway,
Me,
My friend,
My husband and her son,
In the hope that maybe this mist will momentarily clear so we can spy the cliffs and take a few photographs.
But my reflection today comes after having stopped on our route here to visit a ruined abbey.
And it was an abbey that was beautifully kept,
Even though it had no roof,
And that it was,
During the Reformation,
Which was back in the 1500s,
It had been ruined by the orders of Henry VIII,
Who,
All the Catholic monasteries and churches and abbeys,
He pretty much razed to the ground.
This one was in ruins,
But it was beautiful.
It had an incredible energy and essence about it.
And as we walked with these tall walls,
Which were grey stone walls,
And looked up,
And there was nothing for a ceiling because it had all fallen away,
We were wandering around gravestones and grave slabs that had still been put there,
Even though,
Over the years,
It was no longer a working abbey or church.
Church.
So there were tended graves,
There were flowers around.
It was a very magical place to stop.
It had an energy about it that was hard to put my finger on.
My friend and I,
We just paused because the altar was still there.
The old framework of the windows,
Although the windows were gone,
That would have been facing east with the altar in front of it,
That was still there.
And we both independently felt compelled to go and find something to offer and put on the altar and between us we gathered feathers and flowers and just made a little offering on the altar.
And today's reflection is that really,
It's about leaving behind something to make a place better,
To communicate,
To be in relationship with a place,
Whether it's the land,
Whether it's a favorite tree or rock or space or maybe building,
It doesn't really matter.
It's about leaving something behind and Being in connection with it,
Noticing that connection and feeling it,
That's what today's reflection is all about.
So do you have a place where you go and you feel a real sense of wanting to leave it in a better place than when you visited to show a sense of gratitude and to offer a gift?
For me,
When I fall out of my busy mind and I feel this sense of connection,
It makes absolute sense to leave behind a gift,
To leave behind an offering.
So that's what today is all about.
What do you leave behind when you visit a place?
What is your offering?
Let me know your reflections.
And of course,
Don't forget to join me for another five minutes in nature tomorrow.
