Contemplative Inquiry

Physically I am in a familiar place. Imaginally I am at a threshold. The early morning mist, where the water adjusts it’s course, gives me a sense of mystery and the unknown.

This sense is compounded by the presence of swans. A family of four are sitting near the entrance to a water margin woodland. It feels as though they are protecting a liminal space.

The pictures above were taken on Sunday 1 November, the morning after the ancient festival of Samhain, also known as Halloween (Hallows Eve). In the Christian calendar, 1 November is All Hallows Day, a remebrance of saints and martyrs. 2 November is All Souls Day, a wider remembrance of the dead. In both Pagan and Christian traditions, the veil between the worlds is thin.

The ancient Irish tale The Dream of Oenghus, tells of a beautiful British Celtic girl, Caer Ibormeith (Yewberry) changing into a swan every other year at the time of Samhain. To win her, Oengus, the god of love, becomes a swan too and they both fly to his house – Brugh na Boyne, now known as New Grange. According to The Druid Animal Oracle (1), the swan (Eala) “brings us the qualities of soul – of love and depth, grace and beauty. Being associated with the Druid festival of Samhain, the swan is also a bird of the threshold, and represents that part of us that can travel into the Underworld”.

Contemplating the images of misty winding waters and swans at the edge of the woods, I feel the call of the imaginal realm, the realm of what is traditionally called soul. For me, the Underworld/Otherworld (experienced primarily as depth not height) is a dimension of available experience rather than a separate place.

‘Love and depth, grace and beauty’ feel to me like enabling descriptions of this realm. Being open to wonder and ready to embrace enchantment are my ways in, grounded in an cultivated  willingness to recognise different realities in one space. This seems to be the main fruit of my personal contemplatve inquiy, now exactly 15 years old. In an apparent world that seems to be getting worse, I am held up and sustained.

(1) Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm The Druid Animal Oracle: Working with the Sacred Animals of the Druid Tradition Simon Schuster (Fireside Book), 1994. Illustrated by Bill Worthington

8.20am Sunday 25 October. After two dark, wet and windy days when a storm passed through, we were gifted a clear blue sky. I felt refreshed and invigorated when walking out into a bright and breezy morning.

Our official summer time ended  overnight. I like this transition, when it comes. I sleep a little longer. The sunrise is an hour earlier. When I venture out, the new 8.20 is the old 9.20. On a day like today, the return to the more natural time is welcome. Today specifically, I have experienced a kind of post deluge renewal.

It  won’t last. There will be other storms. The light will finally desert our evenings here. The greater seasonal story is one of warmth and light diminishing, the contemplation of death, and remembering those who have gone before us. Yet the bright morning of today holds its own blessing and I am grateful for it.

an old part of town

in a gently fading light:

colours of autumn

NOTE: Yesterday, in the late afternoon, I was able to venture out again after three housebound days. This is the world I encountered. The picture was taken at 5.17pm.

During the turn

Before the fall

Strong light

Deep shade

Shorter days

Sunny and cool

A time among trees

Close to my heart

The presence of peace

In a space I love

The Main Basin at Gloucester Docks is silting up. This is despite a large scale dredging programme earlier this year carried out by the Canal and River Trust, a charity (1) that manages the Docks and the Gloucester-Sharpness Canal (2). The old normal was a depth of 15 feet, with canal barges and small motor boats happily tied up here. The immediate crisis is driven by silt pumped from the River Severn by Bristol Water (3), a private company tasked with providing clean water to the people to Bristol. The context is this summer’s drought. These two agencies, neither of them part of UK national or local government, have contradictory interests. Criticism has been aimed at both of them.

This real cause is climate breakdown. Summer drought is here to stay. Some of the discussions I have seen acknowledge this in passing but still slide away from full recognition. It’s as if some problems are too big to contemplate. As the UK government finally learns to be strategic about climate breakdown, and to see it as existential and not just another ‘issue’, the UK will have to be more hands-on. Developing creative means of adaptation and implementing them can’t be left to charities and private companies with divergent incentives.

Meanwhile the dock’s avian population remains a little bemused, making the best of their changed situation.

(1) https://www.canalrivertrust.org.uk

(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2024/10/09/waterfront-change/

(3) https://www.bristolwater.co.uk

I stand in brightness. It is 4.15pm on 3 October 2026. I see and feel the power of holly – shiny red berries and deep evergreen leaves against a clear blue sky. I am filled with a pleasantly unseasonal vtality.

Looking in another direction, I contemplate Gloucester Cathedral, set against a greater expanse of blue sky. The old Cathedral stone is awash with sunlight, and yearns upwards to what its builders saw as a greater light. Like the holly, though in another manner, this building models an energetic exuberance.

In this blog, I follow the wheel of the year. I acknowledge festivals, though I am drawn more to  the day to day progress of the seasons as they unfold. Each year has always had its unique story. Now, in every part of the world, we are losing our familiar parameters. Here, this has been illustrated by our extended high summer heatwaves. I have no idea of what the rest of October is going to be like. So, bearing witness to whatever happens stands at the heart of my wheel of the year practice.

I see the evolution of life on Earth as a miracle, whatever else may be happening or has happened or may yet happen in the universe/multiverse as a whole. For us earthlings times are changing radically and I want to reverence and proclaim the miracle for as long as I live. I hope (without any sense of certainty) that this miracle continues to manifest itself long after I have gone.

Yesterday, 23 September, was the day of the Autumn Equinox where I live, when sunset was at 7.05 pm BST (British Summer Time). The picture above was taken about half an hour before sunset, at 6.24. The sky is still blue. The trees sit harmoniously together, the turning of the leaves evident in the one on the right. There is a balance of light and shade on the ground. A section of ancient wall is warmed by evening sunshine. I have a sense of harmony and tranquility.

The picture below, taken a little earlier, provides a hint of declining sun, creating a corridor of sunshine advancing towards me on the grass. I am reminded of the prehistoric structures created to receive the rays of light, usually at dawn rather than dusk, on solstices or equinoxes. Sunlight blesses and fructifies the land. Even in its decline, on the Llanthony Priory lawn, I feel blessed.

Below, there are two pictures of trees. In the first, the trees frame a salmon coloured sky as the unseen sun goes down, with a hint of the twilight that is now descending. The second picture shows a dark outline of trees with sunlight in the gaps – a balance of light and dark where the overall story is one of gentle darkening.

My final picture, below, was taken at 7.10 pm BST, the sunset moment on 21 September, in the Llanthony Priory grounds. It shows a waxing moon in a deeper twilight, a welcome contrast to the harsh, overlit spaces that I sometimes experienced at this time of day in the high summer. Autumn has always been my favourite season. It is good to have a modest record of the Equinox festival period (called Alban Elfed in modern Druidry) for this year.