From halfway across the world, my soul-sister Linda walked with me in some ether space. We often do, holding hands across the miles, talking about children, relationships, partners, life, us, childhoods, future, as if we were sitting in the same country. We are both religious, but our religions are different – or are they? At the heart of both our religions is Love.
On Friday, 1.41am my time and 7 hours ahead her time, she wrote:
It’s Friday and it’s raining here. It’s a double blessed time for prayer.
This came after our long conversations the previous day about Love. Love is indeed a conscious choice: we fall in love because of hormones, but to make it last a lifetime, we have to feed it. It needs to be served by both parties. But serve the Love, and it lasts for all eternity. This post is about the White Horse of Uffington, which had lasted over 3,000 years, because of the small things people do every year for 3,000 years to serve it. After 3,000 years, it is still breathtaking. This ancient Horse wouldn’t have lasted without the commitment to beauty and the effort invested selflessly to keep it alive, beautiful and breathtaking.
Want your long-term love to be the same, still awesome and exciting after all these years, despite the pummelling of life and the elements? SERVE IT (there is no other way).
So what did I do? I went off on my own for hours and reflected on my partner and our relationship. I came back more grateful for the gift of him, however difficult he sometimes makes our journey (or maybe it is I, as Linda kindly pointed out to me 🙂 )
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In my book, Catching Infinity, I wrote about 14-year-old Alice biking all the way from Jericho in the city of Oxford to the village of Uffington, where the White Horse had danced for 3,000 years, so big that it is visible from the skies. Here, she had lain quietly, alone, looking at the stars and thinking about her love 8,272 miles away in Cape Town, South Africa.
Nobody knows precisely who or what civilisation created the White Horse of Uffington, only that every year, on chalking day for thousands of years, people had come here to clean the Horse. This tradition still goes on to this very day, with teams of volunteers turning up to clean and chalk this ancient monument of beauty. You can read the article on Smithsonian here.
I wrote this poem on May 16th, 2016:
ON BEING ENGLISH
When I close my eyes
And kiss your lips
I hear the winds
Of Uffington Castle
Singing in my ears
And the White Horse
Of Oxfordshire
Dances behind my eyelids
Hooves pounding in my heart
As the unmistakable taste of
An Englishman
strong on my lips
Each time I kiss you
Open your eyes
Show me your colours
Whatever you may say
Stop fighting me
Lay down your sword
Let go of
Your strength
Love yourself
And love me
Don’t give away
Your nationality
Don’t give away
Me
Together we are bound
By the heartbeats
Of our fair England
For Cross of St George
And my Englishman
My fire burns
If you are interested to become part of the white horse of Uffington’s chalking team, please click on the National Trust’s website to volunteer.
www.lifeGO.me 