Komorebi and Forgiveness

Thinking today of those people who I have technically and spiritually, but not emotionally, forgiven.  The odd thing is, I do not believe they even are aware there is anything to forgive.  But what they did cut so deep.  It has skinned over, but breaks open every now and then, with all its hidden poison.  I wonder if these wounds will ever heal?

I think of the people kindly and wish them well.  I regard them as being under no karmic obligation to me, and I help them when they need me, and hold their welfare in my heart, their concerns in my prayers.  But I cannot like them, although I do see that they are good people, attractive and vital personalities.  Even the sight of them sends a shiver of aversion right through me.

Years have gone by, and the bitter residue remains, rising up like bile sometimes.  Today I will go back and look at the novel I wrote, The Hardest Thing To Do, which was my first try at resolving some of the knots of pain.

On more cheerful matters, let me tell you about Komorebi.

This is a word I learned from my friend Rebecca Sylvan, a Japanese term for sunlight shining through leaves, the interplay of the light and the leaves.   I came upon it when I was searching for a name for my tiny house, and knew it was right.

So far we have the foundation.  You can see it there as a whitish patch between the Badger’s woodworking shed on the right and our next door neighbour’s shed on the left.

This is the place I always thought it should go, but when we had the garden all filled with veggie beds, it was the only place left to be just natural and simple, and was therefore very precious to us.  Since then, we have made a little orchard where the veggie beds were, and meadow grass and wild flowers grow there (the trees are still little, and hard to see without their leaves; I will show you again in the spring).  So we replaced the essence of what we would lose before filling it up with a tiny house.  The garden is not really big enough even so, but there is nowhere else, and although I long for my tiny house life, I also want to be with and alongside my family, because I love them.

To keep costs right down, and because I have no building skills and am fully occupied exercising what skills I have to earn my living, we did nothing more ethnic or eco-friendly than go to Skinners and order a summerhouse.  This one.  10' x 8' with a 4' verandah.  It will be insulated and lined with matchwood (tongue and groove) inside.  I have a little stove to go in it.  This one.

On December 9^th the men from Skinners are coming to put it up.  A few days later when it has settled, they will come back and clad the interior.  Then near Christmas the HETAS engineer (Hal Kaye, a chimney sweep) will come to take a look and quote to put the woodstove in, but he does not have space in his diary until the end of January to actually do the installation.  So, by Candlemas it will be all done.

In my soul, in my viscera, at my very core, like a fire, like a hunger, is this need for a small and simple space in which to dwell – not for a retreat or for an occasional holiday, but for the everyday.  I want not a vacation but a life. Institutions and social gatherings have become so unbearable to me that I can hardly hold still until such occasions are over.  I long most desperately for the quiet and humble, the earthy and plain.

I am hoping that the things I wrote about at the top of this post will finally be able to melt and undo in Komorebi, that in silence and simplicity, with the door open every day to the smell of grass and the sound of the wind in the trees, my heart will come home again from the distant star from where it has watched these many years.  I am hoping that here I will be able to finish the work by which I may be made whole.  God’s work, yes I know; but I have my part to do, and that is not finished.

Blessed be Komorebi.