Contemplative Inquiry

I am fascinated by how stories morph and change. This is taken for granted in oral traditions, where we happily collect and compare those versions that happen to get written down. It’s also OK with texts like the Arthurian cycle, which modern readers treat as fictional. It’s more awkward with works that count as scripture (Holy Writ). I’m thinking here of the story of the lost sheep, best known to Christians from Luke’s Gospel. In this post I’m comparing it with a strikingly different version in the non-canonical Thomas Gospel, a separate lineage of early Christianity with Gnostic features.

Luke has Jesus saying: “Who among you who has a hundred sheep, and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine out in the open country,  and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And, when he has found it, he puts it on his shoulders rejoicing, and, on reaching home, he calls his friends and his neighbours together, and says,’Come and rejoice with me, for I have found the sheep which was lost ‘ So, I tell you, there will be more rejoicing in heaven for one outcast who repents, than over ninety-nine good people, who have no need to repent.” Luke 15:4-8 (1)

Reading this story afresh, I notice an informal conversational style of story telling that creates a strong sense of community. For the sheep, there is the flock. The shepherd has friends and neighbours he can call together. Above all, there is the community of heaven, celebrating the outcast who comes home.

The whole Cosmos, here, is a set of interconnected and accepting communities, characterised by a strong and active compassion. The word rejoice/rejoicing appears three times. This story, at the dawn of a new movement, is a primarily about love, belonging and going the extra mile for a sentient being in difficulty.

The feeling-tone of the Thomas version if quite different. “Jesus said: the kingdom is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep. The largest of these went astray. The shepherd left the other ninety-nine and looked for the sheep until he found it. He was very worried, and told the sheep: I love you more than the ninety-nine.” Thomas 107 (2)

In this version, the narrative is terse and matter-of-fact until we get to Jesus’s worry and love for the ‘lost’ sheep. Strikingly, he does not return the sheep to his flock, and it is not treated as errant. Indeed, it is seems to be uniquely deserving of favour because it has gone astray. In the next verse of this Gospel Jesus goes on to say: “Whoever drinks out of my mouth he will become like me; I will also be as he is, and that which is hidden will be revealed to him.” Thomas 108 (2)

The Jesus of the Thomas gospel favours those who ‘wander’. Instead of following the party line, the favoured sheep is the one with the courage to go his own way. He models Jesus, rather than following him. The solitary path has space for a different kind of insight. The Thomas Gospel points to the personal experience (gnosis) of non-separation from the Divine, present both within and without. In this version of the story, the emphasis is on being, becoming and the solitary path of realisation. Love is there too, but it manifests differently within the parameters of this version of the story.

Although I personally identify with the Thomas version, I find both versions entirely valid. I will not fall into the trap of choosing between them, or of fruitlessly wondering what the story teller ‘really’ said. These versions fit together, however they evolved, as part of the world’s spiritual heritage, and with a continuing capacity to guide and inspire.

(1) A New New Testament: A Bible for the 21st. Century Combining Traditional and Newly Recovered Texts Boston & New York: Mariner Books, 2015. Edited with commentary by Hal Taussig; Foreword by John Dominic Crossan

(2) John R. Mabry The Way of Thomas: Insights for Spiritual Living from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas Berkeley, CA: The Apocryphyle Press, 2015.

NOTE: Matthew also has a version of this story – Matthew 18: 12-13 (1) –  but on my reading it doesn’t add anything to Luke’s.

War, fear of war  and preparations for war have increasingly marked the 2020’s. The problems with this approach to international conflict seem to have been forgotten by the world’s key decision takers. Yet they have  been known for a long time. Tradition says that Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching in about 500 BCE, two and a half thousand years ago. This puts him in the ‘Warring States’ period of Chinese history, when the country was divided into several competing kingdoms. Two verses from the Tao Te  Ching  outline Lao Tzu’s views on war. They deserve careful contemplation.

30 NOT MAKING WAR

A Taoist wouldn’t advise a ruler

to use force of arms for conquest;

that tactic backfires.

Where the army marched

grow thorns and thistles.

After the war

come the bad harvests.

Good leaders prosper, that’s all,

not presuming on victory.

They prosper without boasting

or domineering or arrogance,

prosper because they can’t help it,

prosper without violence.

Things then perish.

Not the Way.

What’s not the Way

soon ends.

31 AGAINST WAR

Even the best weapon

is an unhappy tool,

hateful to living things.

So the follower of the Way

stays away from it.

Weapons are unhappy tools,

not chosen by thoughtful people,

to be used only when there is no choice,

and with a calm, still mind,

without enjoyment.

To enjoy using weapons

is to enjoy killing people,

and to enjoy killing people

is to lose your share in the common good.

It is right that the murder of many people

be mourned and lamented.

It is right that a victor in war

be received with funeral ceremonies.

Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Power and the Way Boston & London: Shambhala, 1998 (A new English version by Ursula K. LeGuin with the collaboration of J. P. Seaton, Professor of Chinese, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

See also:

https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2019/08/06/  (The Tao of Ursula K. LeGuin)

on a cool april morning

approaching the woods –

the fresh vivid green of spring

a path provides entry

to this sylvan world

so fecund and aspiring

tracery patterns

on newly-leaved trees

enable soft light to shine

delicate petals emerge

quietly white and pink

from the branches behind

slow strong waters are rippling

beside these woods

displaying their quiet power

The St. George Cross flag flies over Gloucester Cathedral. A small emblem in the upper left quadrant links this flag to the local Anglican diocese rather than England as a whole. It presides over a tranquil and welcoming scene. This post is about St George himself, and how he came to be linked to England. I look in turn at history, myth and my personal response.

St David in Wales and St. Patrick in Ireland built up the early Church in their respective countries. Before the fourteenth century similarly local figures presided over Scotland (St Columba) and England (St Edward the Confessor).

But secular national feelings changed this in both Scotland and England. In 1320 the Declaration of Arbroath, written by the Scottish barons to Pope John XXII, celebrated Scotland’s return to independence after a successful war with England, their erstwhile temporary occupiers. It also affirmed St Andrew as its patron saint.

St Andrew, one of the original twelve apostles, was the brother of St. Peter, who went to Rome and founded the western Church. To be a recognised country in 1320 throughout western and central Europe you needed the approval of the Pope. Scotland was putting itself decisively in this  family of nations with St Andrew and his saltire flag. (St Andrew was reputedly crucified on an X shaped cross).

England adopted St George more gradually. Little is known about his life. He is said to have been a Roman soldier, credited by some as serving in the Emperor Diocletian’s Praetorian Guard. His father is thought to have been a Cappadocian Greek, from what is now Central Turkey. But the future saint became a Christian and was martyred in 303 CE* in Lydda, Palestine, where his mother, also a Christian, had been born. In 1948 Lydda was annexed by Israel and its name changed to Lod, though it still has a partly Palestinian population. The Orthodox Christians among them continue to revere St George. His day is celebrated on 6 May rather than 23 April, as it now is here.

St George’s connection with England began when the crusader King Richard I, ‘the Lionheart’, is said to have been impressed by this warrior saint and martyr. Yet it was only in the 1340’s that St. George was fully embraced by another warrior King, Edward III. The saint achieved even greater prominence after the success of Henry V at the battle of Agincourt in 1415. Later still, when Henry VIIl made himself supreme head of the Church in England, separating it from Rome, he replaced St. Michael with St. George on the reverse side of his coins. The association of St George and his flag with militant and (usually)  royalist English nationalism is traditional, though not of course mandatory.

• There is a certain poignancy about this date of St. George’s martydom. Armenia, which bordered on the Roman Empire, became officially Christian in 303. Ten years later Constantine became Roman Emperor and immediately legalised Christianity, going on to champion the new faith.

The problem with St George himself is that we know very little about his life apart from his death. To fill the gaps, he has attracted myth and legend. Indeed, perhaps George is best seen as belonging in the realm of archetype rather than history.

“Pre-dating George, with exactly the same theme and attributes, was the immensely popular Eastern figure, St  Mena. The histories of both in early lives of the saints are identical on details such as military career and their persecution by a tyrannical Emperor. By the fourth century CE there was a basilica to St Mena in Alexandria.” (1)

Archaeological research has found, beneath the Christian building, an ancient temple-cave containing Egyptian figures and images. A figure of a man killing a dragon can be attributed to Horus triumphing over Set. Stewart (1) suggests that St Mena had absorbed an earlier Egyptian cult, and then passed it on to St George. He goes on to say that the St George of English mummer’s plays, whilst “taking his name and popularity from an Eastern source, is an extension of a native hero or god.”

Stewart takes us back beyond Christian and indeed English times to consider the ancient feast of Beltane, beginning on 1 May and lasting until 4 May, which was St. George’s day until the calendar adjustments of 1752. In this context, Stewart states his belief that, “the replacing of one culture’s god or image by that of another is well  known, and works all the better if they are simply aspects of one proto-typical divine power. As Bel fought and conquered Tiamat, so did St. George fight and conquer the Dragon. As Beli slew his brother Bran, in the cultural and seasonal myth, so does St George in mummer’s plays slay the Turkish knight. This transfers the cultural battle from one era to another, but does not alter the metaphysical symbolism, the root appeal that keeps the myth alive”.

I like the way in which Stewart opens our imaginations and explores possibilities.  But people’s imaginations differ. I believe I notice a playfulness in Miranda Grey’s cover  illustration in Where Is St George? absent in the text, and a certain favouring of the Dragon. Shades of Ursula LeGuin!

My personal sense of the archetypal George is different again, for to me he is neither saint nor hero.  English folk tradition uses ‘Green George’ as a variant name for the Green Man. The poem of the title in William Anderson’s The Green Man places him as the immanent divine manifesting in this land as the seasons unfold – in the three verses below, from spring to summer.

“In and out of the yellowing wands of the willow

The pollen-bright bees are plundering  the catkins

‘I am honey of love’, says the Green Man.

‘I am honey of love’, says he.

“The hedges of quick are thick with may-blossom

As the dancers advance on the leaf- covered King.

‘It’s off with my head’, says the Green

Man.’

‘It’s off with my head’, says he.

“Green Man becomes grown Man in flames of the oak

As its crown forms his mask and it’s leafage his features.

‘I speak through the oak’, says the Green Man.

‘I speak through the oak’, says he.” (2)

For me (St) George is whoever we need him to be. Taken as another name for the Green Man, (Green) George is a powerful archetypal image that has sustained me for many years.

(1) Bob Stewart Pagan Imagery in English Folksong London: Blandford Press, 1988 Cover illustration by Miranda Grey

(2) William Anderson Green Man: The Archetype of  Our Oneness with the Earth London & San Francisco: HarperCollins,1990 Photographs by Clive Hicks

See also https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2017/05/11

Bob Stewart’s Where is Saint George? has a wider context than England’s patron saint. Although he is discussed, the subtitle Pagan Imagery in English Folksong better describes the book as a whole. I will write a post about St. George at a later date. Here I talk about the overall theme of the book, which is to explore the the author’s thesis that there is an after echo of pre-Christian beliefs and practices in traditional English folk songs. I’ve chosen one song – Bruton Town – followed by a presentation of Bob Stewart’s commentary. I notice that when reading the song, my first impression was a strong sense of a disciplinary message about class and gender norms – also an old tradition.

In Bruton town there lived a farmer

he had three sons and a daughter dear,

by day and night they were contriving

to fill their parents’ hearts with fear.

One told his secret to none other

but to his brother this he said,

‘I think our servant courts our sister,

I think that they have a mind to wed.’

‘If he our servant courts our sister

that maid from such a shame I’ll save

I’ll put an end to all his courtship

and send him silent to his grave.’

A day of hunting was prepared

In thorny brakes where the briars grew,

and there’s they did this young man murder

and into the brake his fair body threw.

‘Oh welcome home my darling brothers

our servant dear is he behind?’

‘We’ve left him where we’ve been out hunting,

we’ve left him where no man can find.’

She went to bed crying and lamenting,

lamenting for her own true love,

She slept and dreamed that she saw him by her

all covered o’er in a gore of blood.

‘Do you wake up early tomorrow morning

and under the garden brake d’you go

and there you’ll find my body lying

t’was your own three brothers that laid me low.’

She woke up early the very next morning

and to the garden brake she did go.

‘Twas there she found her own dear jewel

In the same place where the briars do grow.

‘Now since my brothers have been so cruel

as to take your tender sweet life away,

one grave shall hold us both together

and along with you in death I’ll stay’.

Stewart comments: “This song – collected in Somerset by Cecil Sharpe – is one of the rare examples of folklore and literary tradition exchanging material, and finally returning to an oral currency.  … the variants collected in the United States as well as the English West Country are preserved through the medium of  the broadsheet.”

He also references a well established literary tradition drawing on this theme, including John Keats’ Isabella Or, The Pot of Basil and its model, Boccaccio’s Decameron. It is here the he makes a link to traditions of ritual murder. “A group of young men collectively murder a victim for the sake of a woman. She then digs up his body, and severs the head. This is kept and planted with the herb basil, the discovery of the murder having been initiated by the ghost of the dead victim in a dream. The images here seem to be sacrificial, with a group of men bearing collective responsibility for the murder, a concept well known from classical sources and from surviving European folk plays and dance-dramas”.

(1) Bob Stewart  Pagan Imagery in English Folksong London: Blandford Press,1988. Cover illustration by Miranda Green

NB In his other works, the author is named as R. J. Stewart 

A number of birches have been planted on our estate. Today, for the first time this year, I noticed one in full leaf. I’m writing at 2 pm, four days before the introduction of summer time.

The day so far has been mostly bright, though cool and windy. Threats of rain have not so far materialised. The bright birch leaves are a gift from a moment in this year that points to a greener, leafier season to come.

This is an important annual marker for me, and this year it coincides with Lady Day. In the Christian Year, Lady Day commemorates the Annunciation, when Archangel Gabriel told Mary she would conceive Jesus Christ.

In England an Wales, from 1155-1752, it also marked the start of the legal and fiscal new year. It is now referred to as Old New Year’s Day. It was one of the four quarter days – together with Midsummer, Michaelmas and Christmas, when rents were due, debts were paid and employment contracts signed at the hiring fairs that took place at or near to these dates.

More organically, the coming into leaf of the birch marked the beginning of the agricultural year – farmers watched for the leafing of the birch as a gauge for when to sow their wheat.

In the tree lore developed around the Irish ogham alphabet (1) birch – beith – is connected with the driving out of evil or toxic influences, and with favourable new beginnings.

In the Scandinavian runic tradition, birch – beorc, berkana) also indicates new beginnings and laying aside old, toxic or redundant patterns. It adds a specific reference to the young Goddess, sexuality and birth, and a willingness to welcome new, more energising and nourishing ways of being.

But beyond any of these traditional links and associations, I felt blessed and heartened by today’s encounter with a birch tree close to home. My immediate response was spontaneous, yet I feel a kind of confirmation in the bringing together of the day with the tree.

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2021/02/01/

apple blossom is bursting

In red and pink and white

on this Sunday afternoon

In my early teens I read George Orwell’s novel 1984 (1) for the first time. Written in 1948, it depicted a totalitarian regime based on the Fascist and Stalinist models of the day. It ruled through mass surveillance, lethal repression and unending war. In the hope of crushing dissent completely, the state was developing a new language – newspeak – to be rolled out to the population over time. It would be simplified in such a way that, in the end, people would no longer be able even to think independent thoughts or dream non-approved dreams. The words, once merely forbidden, would eventually be forgotten.

We live now in a hyper-capitalist world which, in a different way, is adopting some of the same characteristics and could well go further down this road. Runaway wealth is no longer adequately restrained either by market competition or by public regulation. We have revived the ancient Greek term ‘oligarchy’ to describe what is happening. People who used to be called tech bros have morphed into tech lords. Over time, they have developed an ‘attention economy’ in which our attention creates their wealth.

Our thoughts and feelings have become commodities, just as the earth, its life and its resources have been commodified over the centuries. Much of our communication has been transformed into a new form of raw material. As such, it has to be trained, manipulated and modified.

Ash Sarkar (2) explains: “attention, as well as being a commodity that can be monetised through digital platforms, is a psychological wage. … To be recognised is to be told that you matter, that your life has worth and that you have a place in the world. There’s nothing unhealthy about that. But our media and politics leverage the psychological wages of attention in a way that is utterly corrosive and warping. Though there is no shortage of content that flatters ‘ordinary Brits’ and ‘hard-working Americans’, this isn’t to let us know that we are loved. It’s more about telling us who’s hated. The message of who is good, moral and decent is conveyed through repeated propaganda about who is deviant, dangerous and illegitimate.”

Sarkar goes on to explain how this influences discourse in the wider media landscape: “to feed the ravenous appetites of the content economy, somebody tweeting something – regardless of how many followers they have, or how representative their post of is of a broader social phenomenon – is a decent enough pretext to publish a news story claiming that there’s a ‘Twitterstorm’ afoot.

“The job of a producer isn’t to think about how you might put together a panels of speakers and a line of questioning that can elucidate various facets of a particular topic: it’s to theatrically stage an argument that’s already taking place online, which itself has been fuelled by media coverage, which has been driven by social media engagement, in a feedback loop of content and outrage.

“The result of all this is that the threshold for what constitutes news has dramatically lowered, and reaction to that ‘news’ – the arousal of angry, impassioned attention at a speed that bypasses audience awareness – plays an outsized role in shaping the news cycle instead.”

I see this process as an alternative to the planned newspeak dictionary of 1984. It creates a narrowing of human attention, and therefore of human possibility. Complexity, dissent and nuanced perspectives are ruthlessly elbowed aside. Our own thinking and feeling are coarsened by  immersion in this process.

How is this relevant to my contemplative inquiry? From some perspectives it wouldn’t matter at all. I could simply retreat from a mundane world which, from these perspectives, essentially doesn’t exist. An apparent dark turn is simply a move in the dance of the Cosmos. Acceptance is all.

But this is not my understanding or experience of the Cosmos. Eco-spirituality finds the divine within a loved material world: present in you, me and every fallen leaf. Hence an assault on the material world is an assault on the divine.

An assault on the complexity and wealth of human language is likewise an assault on the divine, as it manifests through human speech and culture. For me, drawing attention to these developments, and working to oppose them, is fundamentally a spiritual practice. William Blake, at the end of the eighteenth century, thought of it as ‘witnessing against the beast’.

(1) 1984 in George Orwell: the Complete Books Penguin Books (Kindle edition)

(2) Ash Sarkar Minority Rule: Adventures In The Culture War London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025

NB the ‘attention’ or ‘content’ economy is only one thread in this highly recommended book.

aware of recent changes

and noticing leaves

I celebrate new growth

Within this changeable season, Wednesday 4 March was a notably bright day. Being present outside felt more vivid and state-altering than a similar experience on 25 February (1). Now, under a brighter, stronger sun I embody the new season more confidently. For me, the pictures above and below record a new and subtly different moment in the year.

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2026/02/25/