Ros with Dan and Joe on their recent road trip.
Last year, long-time meditator Dr Ros Harris spent six weeks on the road with her husband and adult son, whose intellectual disability dictated much of where they could go and what they could do. She reflects on what this experience has taught her about the pure gift of learning to see, and truly behold, what may appear ordinary or mundane.
When did you last go on holiday to somewhere new and unknown? I imagine you planned that holiday in advance by browsing websites and asking friends for recommendations. If you are old fashioned, you may even have read a few travel books. Short of a natural disaster or medical emergency you would form in your mind’s eye a bucket list of things to do and places to see.
And there is nothing wrong with that. If I go to Paris for the first time, I will want to see Notre Dame. If I go to Cambodia, to see Angkor Wat. And if I travel to Coober Pedy in South Australia, I will want to sleep underground.
But what if you were planning to holiday with someone who, through no fault of their own, put limits on what you could see and do? Toddlers or a baby. Or a friend with a walking aid. Or a parent or partner with dementia. Or, in my case, an adult son with Down syndrome and autism.
Last year when I suggested to my husband that we go on a six-week road trip to South Australia with Joe, our eldest son, my husband took some convincing. As a family, we hadn’t holidayed for longer than five days since Joe was born because it was such hard work. And, in nearly 26 years, we hadn’t spent more than two nights away without the children. How would we manage six weeks?
My husband asked sensible questions: How will we explain to Joe that he will be staying in different places for over 40 days? What will we do if he becomes distressed and needs to come home? What if our younger son needs us, or the frail labrador needs to be put to sleep? Who will visit dad to check he’s okay? Who will drive my sister to church and to the op shop where she volunteers?
And I offered optimistic solutions: We will use social stories and visual cues to reassure Joe; we will call on the kindness of friends and family to check on our younger son, the dog, your father and your sister. Above all, we won’t attach too strongly to the idea of our long-awaited holiday being anything other than what it is.
And so, late last year, we took off – trepidatious, hopeful and realistic in equal measure.
It came as no surprise that our holiday bore little resemblance to the promised delights in the glossy brochures. Endless long al fresco lunches by the sea and in the vineyard? Joe will not sit in a restaurant for more than five minutes, and we cannot put our own food on the table because he only tolerates his own plate being there. So, dining out was … out!
The brochures also offered itineraries to help visitors see as much as possible in half a day, one day, or two days. But in an unfamiliar environment, Joe will only get out of the car once a day. That meant choosing very carefully what we would do. Even then, there were no guarantees – Joe might go to the beach one day and the next choose to stay in the car.
It was not easy. But what surprised me most during that long-awaited road trip was how missing out on the usual sights led me to see more deeply, again and again.
On Kangaroo Island, we stayed in a very old 1820s farmhouse overlooking Antechamber Bay. One morning, I spent time with an old man learning about bee keeping. On the way back to my car, we passed a massive row of broad beans. Guess it’s time to rip them out, he said. No one eats broad beans anymore. Well, I replied, I do. And so together he and I picked a large bag. That afternoon, I sat on the verandah of the farmhouse, shelling broad beans.
If you have ever shelled peas or broad beans, you will know there is something immensely satisfying in this age-old ritual. You need three bowls. One for the picked beans. One for the skins (or pods). One for the beans that are nestled inside the pods. I have memories of doing this with my grandmother, sitting in the sunshine on the back porch with her scrappy dog at my feet. After one or two false starts, the movement becomes smooth and rhythmic.
On this day on Kangaroo Island while podding beans everything intensified and shimmered. And I was no longer in chronos time, but deep time: kairos.
Imagine yourself with me on that verandah:
There is a haze over the bay as I look toward the mainland from the clifftop. It’s late afternoon and the insects are whirring.
Birds begin to gather on the lawn below: house swallows, pink galahs, magpies and fairy wrens.
Feel how cool the pods are in your hand.
Feel the bumpy contours. No two the same.
Feel the action of ripping and pulling. Sometimes this is clean as you gently pop the bean out; sometimes you give a gentle twist; sometimes the tear is ragged, and the skins need to be removed piece by piece.
See the late afternoon sun lighting up the grey-green skins of the beans still to be podded.
See those matte, fat little kidney-shaped buds reveal themselves.
Give a slight tug and loosen them from the skin.
Hear the plop as you shake the beans into the bowl.
Notice the torn skins. Hold one to the light and see the membranes glow. Run your finger along the inside skin and
feel it downy and soft.
No sightseeing experience on my holiday came close to the love I felt for the world in those precious minutes. A deep sense of connectedness to all things. To the sky and sea and light. To the old man who had picked these beans with me and talked to me about bees. To my grandmother and her little dog.
Everything slowed. Everything was one. Pure gift, not of my making.
And I was on that verandah, at that moment, in that afternoon light because, on that day, we could not go anywhere else with Joe. The experience is perfectly encapsulated in the following poem by Noel Davies.
‘Come to your senses my friend’
Smell … the fragrance of being
Feel … the touch of the stillness
Rejoice … in the chorus of silence
Behold … the beauty in each other
Taste … the infinite in love's glow.[1]
On another afternoon at that same homestead my husband, a composer and musician, came into a small room off the living room and began to play an old piano that had keys missing and had not been tuned for many a long year. He appeared completely unaware that I was sitting in an armchair behind him. He was totally immersed as he improvised.
And as the light came through the windows and fell on my irascible, difficult, brilliant husband, I was suffused with love for him. It had been a long time, I think, since I had really beheld my husband. We had become co-workers who’d found an efficient routine in caring for Joe, our younger son, my father-in-law and my sister-in-law. Like many couples lucky enough to have been happily married for many years, we were so used to each other, so focused on those that we cared for, we did not always see each other.
It is a powerful thing to behold someone. It is a beautiful thing to feel yourself beheld. A friend of mine turned 90 earlier this year and I asked him how he would celebrate. He told me he had a few friends coming around and had written a small account for each one of when it was that he first beheld them. What a gift to offer a friend!
Richard Rohr writes that someone who is truly beholding is, firstly, silenced with the utter gratuity of a thing, a tree, a bird, even an insect. (Let me add: a broad bean and a husband.) We find ourselves allowing it to have an inherent dignity and voice. We let it give us a leap of joy in the heart and in the senses. I have had this experience with specks of dust in sunlight.
Beholding, Richard Rohr says, happens when we stop trying to “hold” and allow ourselves to “be held” by the other. We are completely enchanted by something outside and beyond ourselves. We feel ourselves being addressed more than addressing something else. This radically changes our situation and perspective away from ourselves.[2]
In that moment on Kangaroo Island, the eyes of my heart opened, and I beheld my husband in all his brokenness and beauty. Pure gift.
And we were there in that house, at that moment, in that afternoon light because we could not go elsewhere with Joe.
* * * * *
We cannot create or demand such moments. They cannot be imagined before we set off on a holiday. They are not part of a bucket list to be ticked off! These are moments of grace when we breathe in love and breathe out love and everything is a ‘thank you’.
Are they spiritual experiences? I prefer the word used by Sarah Bachelard during a 2023 Advent retreat. She says such moments are encounters that invite us into relationship with the divine. We enter the dance of the Triune God – God the lover, Christ the beloved and the Holy Spirit of love. Such moments are (or give a glimpse of) the one-ing of which Julian of Norwich speaks.
So, no – we cannot create or demand such moments. But we can dispose ourselves to receiving them. On both occasions I was unhurried, just sitting. Not thinking, not expecting anything to happen. Fully present.
Thanks, then, to Joe for coming with us on that road trip. It wasn’t always easy and there are tracks I would have liked to walk and caves I would have liked to explore. But in missing out I found myself learning to see, again and again. I came to know the truth of what Richard Carter tells us: that the holiday may have been planned in advance, but the holy day is now.
We plan the holiday in advance
But the holy day is today. [,,,]
Our monastery is here and now
Where you are today
The person you are speaking with
The room you are sitting in
The street where you are walking
The action you are doing now
This is your monastery
This is your prayer
Eternity is now.[3]
This article is based on a recent talk Ros gave for the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) in Victoria Australia. For the past two years she has co-led the national WCCM online Essential Teaching Weekends. She also hopes to complete her studies to be a recognised lay preacher in the Uniting Church this year.
Footnotes:
[1] Noel Davis, in Love Finds a Way: Little Meditations and Reflections from Its Encounters, Thornleigh: Shekinah Creative Ministries 2000.
[2] Richard Rohr, We are called to ‘behold’, Centre for Contemplation and Action, 8 May 2025. https://cac.org/daily-meditations/we-are-called-to-behold-2021-08-16/
[3] Richard Carter, The City is my Monastery: A contemporary rule of life Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2019, pages xix-xx.