The Blackbird and Sven

Watching you work, completely focused, single-minded, bringing all you are to make this one thing alive, creating meaning, beauty and function in one whole piece; generated through instinct, and coming into being as we watch, though still invisible to the wider world. Meticulous, patient, bit-by-bit becoming until there it is, in the light: complete, unique and perfect. (And so it is with each of us: one by one each thing has it, one by one each thing is complete.)

As Sven’s fingers move over the keyboard building this website with colour, fonts and photographs, an about-to-become-a-mother blackbird inspects the corner of a shelf against the white-washed wall of our city yard. She hops and settles, repeats. Is this the right place to build a nest? She moves aside some clematis vine to make a space behind it, flies off, and returns with her mate. He looks too and they agree, and so she weaves a bowl of feather, leaf and twig. When Sven and the blackbird each have finished building, he the website, she the nest, you don’t see either of them anymore, but each is present in their creation.

Thank you, Sven Mahr, for building the website for York Zen Group and taking the brilliant photos. You have completely realized our vision, laying out the warm welcome we want to give to all who already enjoy Zen meditation and all who might like to begin. Sven Mahr is based in Leipzig and can be contacted via his website here.