That’s Just the Way It Is offers a collection of thoughts, poems and meditations linked with inspirational original photographs. That’s Just the Way It Is offers the reader a chance to reflect on their own well being, ever changing journey and spiritual awakening. To contact us please go to: www.inbetweenthewords.co.uk
Tim Carter
That’s Just the Way It Is
Photographs Chris Burch
For the love of it all The reaching The searching The stretching The yearning The hoping The mystery The contradictions The dead ends The learning The receiving The growth The reflection And one day I will know And I will have the answers And there will be no loose ends And the world will make sense But that is not for now The journey is to be travelled The life is to be lived The task is to give more than I receive To know when to listen Rather than simply not speaking And to be open to the revelations that are waiting At every corner
Running away from it all But it just wouldn’t happen for him He tried and tried Everyway he could think And each avenue he could find The harder he looked The less he found The more he asked The quieter the answers The smell, the taste, the feel Had all lost colour, definition, sense An eerie emptiness was engulfing him Something that he recognised from his earliest memories And had spent most of his life running away from So the running had stopped The chattering voices in his head were no more Now was the time to face the questions And sit until he could see deep into his soul Only then would he know Really know And join the rest of the searchers He wouldn’t look any different But he would be of course For then he would have knowledge of the heart And nothing would ever be the same again
The Pursuit of happiness So much of your life you are taught to be happy To seek continued self-fulfilment To maximise your opportunities To enter into a state of perpetual pleasure And as a result Most of us face regular failure For we cannot achieve this all the time Yet we can achieve those things some of the time Precious moments of illumination Glimpses of how we can all live together Insights into ourselves Unexplained generosity from complete strangers And this is the pursuit of happiness. The linking together of moments in time Until we begin to expect the unexpected Imagine the unthinkable Pray without ceasing
Patience And sometimes it feels like it’s lost And nothing will bring it back You search, you ask, you pray But not even that feels the same now And then you learn You learn that there are times when You wait You don’t have to do anything You wait And the easier you are in your waiting The sooner the answer arrives And you have to struggle to remember Where the problem was in the beginning
Everyone is looking for something Searching for an answer Wanting to discover You may search under your bed Or look in your cupboard You might buy a book Or join a class Maybe you can book a holiday Undertake some self-improvement Get some therapy Or take some pills Because everyone is looking for something But its harder to look at your self When we are so busy searching for the answer But how to look inside? How to question yourself? Everyone is looking for that something
I can’t tell you why you mean so much to me Your face Your touch Your smile Your hair Your voice Your smell Your eyes I can’t tell you why you mean so much to me And so I’m writing it down today And hope you can understand
Punching holes in the darkness He didn’t really know if he was coming or going anymore One day she wanted him, the next she didn’t He couldn’t understand it Not now, not before and in the future? Well he just hoped in the future it wouldn’t be like this For it was dominating everything The last thing he thought about at night was her And the first thought when he awoke was the same Yet there was so little joy now Most of the thoughts had a sense of dread to them If they had a colour it was grey They dragged his energy down and sapped his vitality And he only knew he had been drained When he caught himself thinking about her again
‘Please, please, take it away’ he cried But these were silent cries Uttered only to himself In the solitude of the pit He had constructed around himself And then he looked up To see more stars than he had ever seen in the night Sky staring down upon him Like a dome sheltering his head Punching holes in the darkness And his heart was lifted Far beyond the limitations of his thinking