Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott and you join me at Whitby Abbey in England.
I've come away from Scotland and I'm heading now slowly down south and Whitby Abbey is a beautiful old ruin of an abbey that was built hundreds of years ago in the 600s.
It's a 1400 years ago and from the vantage point I have at the moment I'm just leaning on a bench somewhere away from the abbey and in front of it is a golden area of swaying grasses and the backdrop of this abbey which is perched high on the cliffs near the North Sea is a bluey white haze of cloud and sky and the abbey itself is just a ruin.
You can see the brickwork reaching into the sky,
The jagged leftover edges,
There's no roof,
There's no windows,
There's some arches,
Some of the walls have completely gone and it's so hard to compute that this abbey was once so renowned in Europe.
It was a centre of learning,
Of excellence,
Of religion and now suddenly something that seemed so new and modern and permanent is just a ruin and it kind of reminds me really of what we're up against in life because much of what we come up against in life has this sense of feeling permanent and never-ending,
Something that's going to be with us forever and yet the truth is that pretty much everything we engage in in life is impermanent,
As impermanent as this abbey which in its time looked like it would go on forever.
So if I look around me and I look at the houses and I look towards the trees and I look at the people that are wandering around we know that we are all at different stages of being in this life and then disappearing from it and eventually this abbey too will disintegrate totally into the ground and I don't say that from a place of negativity,
On the contrary,
I think it's just a good reminder because often we set our sights on things that really are impermanent.
We give a lot of credibility,
We give a lot of credence to that which is not going to last.
We get caught up in stories and beliefs and news stories and cycles and people and relationships and find ourselves lost in anxiety and worry over things that are not real,
That are not permanent and so the challenge today and for me it's been such a positive reminder is rather than place my attention on that which will not last,
It is to look within me to that which is ever present and when I talk about that it's looking towards that creative energy of love,
Of compassion,
Of joy,
That space within us that is here and can always be accessed.
This abbey was actually built for God and although the abbey itself has disintegrated,
What it was built to represent and to honour and to worship and to revere is actually the same thing I am pointing to,
But maybe with a different language.
If you don't like the language of God,
Look to the language that works for you,
The creative energy,
Universal energy.
So I can look at the abbey and feel the sadness that the building is gone,
But also look at the abbey and know that what it was actually built for still remains and will always remain.
So today the challenge for you is to look within,
Is to look within for that which is ever present,
To look for that within you that is,
That doesn't change,
That is always there,
That is constant,
That cannot be created and cannot be destroyed.
Because in essence that,
In my opinion,
Is the most important place to look.
And this ruined abbey is such a great metaphor to remind me to remove my attention away from that which will eventually founder and die and to bring my attention to that which is everlasting and always present.
