Hello and welcome to 5 minutes in nature with me Liz Scott and I'm bringing you outside on a January evening.
It's dark and I'm walking in the dark just outside my house and as I walk up there's a patch of trees,
A few trees,
Conifer trees that stretch up high and as I look up in the sky I can see that a half moon is just appearing from behind the clouds.
It's damp,
It's wet,
There's wintry showers around.
A few minutes ago it was sleety rain that was settling with.
.
.
I can just see it in the dark.
I don't use a torch if I can help it but I can see on the edges of the road and on the grassy areas there's a thin layer of white where it's settling as snow but it's so damp and wet.
I don't think this is going to last and today I'm bringing you out because I just want to reflect on friendship.
Earlier today I met up with a friend and we've had some tricky times over the last few years with our friendship.
About six years ago we had an upset and a fallout that felt really unsettling,
Unsettling for me and I'm sure unsettling for her too and over the time we have not lost touch but we've never really connected in the same way that we did before the upset and yet today when we met there was something different that happened and we sat and we had breakfast together and we were drinking coffee and we were chatting and it felt like the old flame of friendship was reignited once again after all of these years and for both of us we knew that if we just held out that we could potentially rekindle our friendship again and over the past few years we've kept in touch and we've met up with each other but there's always for me has felt like there was a bit of distance,
There was a little bit of uncertainty about the foundations of the friendship and yet today it felt like we were back on solid ground and I'm raising this and I'm bringing this up because there was one thing that we both knew.
We both knew that there was no answer to us rekindling this friendship.
There was no answer if we were to get lost in the story,
In the story of who was right and who was wrong.
There is no answer there.
We also knew that there was no answer in fanning the flames of the story,
In repeating it,
In telling other people,
In trying to enroll people in the story that we had about each other,
About who was right and who was wrong.
There is no answer there and I knew that I wanted to keep open the potential of this friendship to reignite and I've held on to that and I've seen through the stories to her,
To who she truly is,
To that connected part of her,
The part of her that connects with me and I'm pretty sure that she's done the same.
So this friendship that had the potential to disintegrate,
This friendship has actually just slowly reignited and I feel as though we're starting the friendship again from a really deep loving place.
So my reflection in nature with you today is around friendship,
Is around connection,
It's about relationships,
It's about knowing that relationships and friendships have their ups and downs,
They will be upset and my request is that you become curious,
That there isn't a right or wrong,
That you are not the victim or the hero,
That they are not the villain and that you hold out and you look within yourself for that loving space of connection that connects you and everybody else and you look for that connection within your friend or in your relationship and the stories will rise and the anger and the unsettledness will rise and want to grab your attention but don't let it.
Keep seeing through those stories to the friendship,
To the love that exists deeply there and as I look up at the moon,
The moon has been hidden behind clouds and it's this evening it's just reappeared again,
That just reminds me a little bit of what it's like just to hold out for that thread of love and connection with other people.
It might get clouded over but the thread of friendship,
Of love,
Of connection still exists.
So hold on to that,
Keep looking for that and eventually it will come out from behind the clouds and you will reconnect and feel that love once again.
