Have you ever been to Windsor? Have you ever spent time in the Great park, walking the paths across the fields? Or stood under the canopy of the great ancient oaks?
Today, I thought I wanted to write to you about something serious, like the power of presence, or dispelling shared loneliness, or stress and its impact on leadership.
But as my fingers move over the keyboard, I find that I simply want to bring you here — to the fields that I have walked for 19 years. I want to give you a little bit of what these acres regularly give to me.
I think of you reading this from your desk in one of the big cities, wishing for less concrete, more green, and a slightly less soggy sandwich. Or maybe you sit with tea, in your home, in a small town with a romantic-sounding name, like Beacon, or Aurora. Or perhaps — as my imagination gallops off with itself — you live in a villa, with a view of the sand dunes of the Sahara, or on the edge of a rainforest in Thailand, near the elephants.
No matter where you live, the news, today, is full of war, and bombs, and sunken ships. There is a serrated edge to the alertness in the atmosphere. Sleep is being disturbed. Even in the rainforest, and in Aurora.
Please, then, come with me to Windsor.
This week, little by little, the thick-woven winter’s grey is being drawn back from the fields. There is an expanse of blue that feels bigger, and wider, and clearer than I remember. Perhaps, simply, because we haven’t seen it much in the last several months. The birds determinedly try to pull everyone’s gaze upward with their delighted swooping, as they search for bits and twigs to build this year’s homestead.
I know that it’s important to write about peace and presence, and how to connect with your own authentic leadership.
Those will be topics for another time.
Today, you get to be here with me. With the ancient oaks, who have been standing in these fields for 500 - 1000 years. They have been through all of it — the wars and the peace treaties; the astounding discoveries, the miracles and the most radical of human mistakes.
I would love for you to feel held by the majesty and strength of these oaks. Each of them is unique with their branches patterns, like fingerprints.
This is your invitation to place your hand on the thick, buckled bark of the oak that calls to you.
Close your eyes. Raise your face to the sunshine. Fill your ears with the birds. Let the oaks welcome you, even as your feet sink slightly in the soft, muddy earth.
I want you to be delighted to discover two, chocolate-brown mushrooms in the grass at your feet. I would like for you to see the way the Spring-strengthened sunlight is caught, and split, into streaming beams by the winter-bare branches.
Feel the slowing down. In your breath. In your cells.
This morning, the fog was so thick, it made the world a smaller place. Once the sun rose, the smallness disappeared into a clearness that calls the bees to the blossoms in the hedgerows.
Ask what you need most as you unplug. From all of it.
There will be an answer, if you listen.
Return to yourself. Move from your head to your heart.
You have time before you need to pick up the next thing in your day.
You are, for now, in a place protected.
Feel what the oaks feel. You are safe.
This is a place where the double rainbows choose to shine.