February | 2025 | Contemplative Inquiry

4.30 pm, 25 February 2025. Sunrays are caught in willow branches. The sun is a little stronger today than it was in full winter. The willows have begun a tentative greening. But there is much shadow in this picture. The day has begun its decline.

The world retains a winter feel for me. I aware of the change in my local park, but I do not altogether trust this spring. In the moment of taking this picture, I see a world in shadow, softly darkened. This is partly because of where I have chosen to stand. It is the image I seem to want.

In the brighter picture below, I show daffodils growing among dead leaves. Daffodils are iconic harbingers of spring, yet not my sole focus. Both pictures were taken intuitively and without any mentally registered intent. It seems as if something in me wanted to make a statement.

I know and accept that I am in the winter of my life. In the wheel of my own life, I can’t quite see how my winter will move into spring, certainly in any personal sense. Dissolving into interbeing is easier to imagine.

My customised Druid liturgy names winter as the season of dying and regeneration. It has associations with law and faith. I understand law in a karmic or ‘natural law’ sense. But it can also be an acknowledgement of the nature we see around us. Faith, in part, concerns the willingness to accept dying and regeneration without knowing what they are like. In my last post, I discussed (1) ‘being nobody’. My current reflections take this suggestion a step further. Evidently, I still have much to learn.

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2025/02/21/being-nobody

February 21, 2025

BEING NOBODY

“I’m nobody.

So are you.

What ecstasy!

Join me.” (1)

According to Andrew Harvey (1), the translator of this brief poem by Kabir, “Kabir is far more than a poet; he is a universal initiatory field, as expansive as Rumi and as embodied, radical and ferocious as Jesus”. I certainly experience a creative shock in Kabir’s celebration of being ‘nobody’ in a world where being ‘somebody’ is such a highly valued social accomplishment. But what if the accomplishment distracts from something else, something of greater value? Kabir invites us to share the ‘ecstasy’ of being nobody. In another of his verses, which were performed as songs, Kabir links this ecstasy with love:

“You can’t grow love in gardens

Or sell it in markets.

Whether you’re a king or peasant

If you want it

Give your head and take it”.

In my experience, Kabir’s work opens a door to forms of contemplation and creativity in which my personality and personal biography are not the primary focus. Especially in darkening times, bearing witness to the way of the heart, and drawing strength from it, is a form of sacred activism. The liturgy of modern Druidry speaks of a love of justice and a love of all existences, embedded in a living relationship with Spirit. This for me is a commitment to live from.

(1) Kabir Turn Me To Gold: 108 Poems of Kabir Unity Village, MO: Unity Books, 2018 Translations by Andrew Harvey. Photographs by Brett Hurd.

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February 12, 2025

SHADES OF GREY

I am standing in a favourite spot, enjoying the expanse of water in front of me. I am missing the sun. I have been missing it for awhile, as the bright days of early February disappear into memory. I am living among shades of grey.

Standing in this space, I feel both sadness and reassurance. The late winter has turned gloomy and I am somewhat depleted. Not much energy or bounce. At the same time I continue to feel held, powerfully, within this landscape and my life.

Looking now at my apparently monochromatic picture, I see subtle variations within the grey. I am drawn to the ripples and reflections in the water. I am aware of the shapes of buildings and trees against a background leaden sky in which a seagull is flying. There are life and movement here, and their promise that the wheel of the year will continue to turn.

February 4, 2025

THE MYSTICISM OF SUFI MUSIC

“Music, the word we use in our everyday language, is nothing less than the picture of the Beloved. It is because music is the picture of the Beloved that we love music. But the question is: What is our Beloved, or where is our Beloved? The Beloved is that which is our source and goal. What we see of our Beloved before our physical eyes is the beauty of that which is before us. That part of our Beloved that is not before our physical eyes is that inner form of Beauty of which our Beloved speaks to us.” (1,2)

In these words, Hazrat Inayat Khan, musician, philosopher and Sufi teacher, explains the role of music in Sufi culture. Sufis seek a personal relationship, or union, with the Divine, which throughout their history has lead to conflicts with religious formalists within Islam. And whereas many of us who seek that connection, or union, find it in stillness and silence, Sufis often seek and find it in music and movement – in states of expressive joy rather than quiet equanimity. Hazrat Inayat Khan continues:

“What makes … the musician sing beautiful songs? It is the inspiration that beauty gives. The Sufi has called this beauty Saqi, the divine Giver, who gives the wine of life to all. What is the wine of the Sufi? All beauty: in form, line and colour, in imagination, in sentiment, in manners – in all this he sees the one beauty. All these different forms are part of this Spirit of beauty, which is the life behind, always blessing … But among all the different arts, the art of music has been especially considered divine, because it is the exact miniature of the law working through the whole universe.

“Music inspires not only the soul of the great musician, but every infant, the instant it comes into the world, begins to move its little arms and legs with the rhythm of music. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that music is the language of beauty, the language of the One whom every living soul has loved. And we can understand that, if we realise the perfection of all this beauty as God, our Beloved, then it is natural that music, which we see in art and in the whole universe, should be called the Divine Art.”

The musical form above is called Qawwali. It arose in Hindustan, as a fusion of Persian, Arabic, Turkish and Indian traditions, for performance at Sufi shrines or dargahs. It is famous throughout Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. However the group featured above are from Birmingham, England. They have added to the fusion of Qawwali by introducing Western orchestral instruments and call their work ‘Orchestral Qawwali’. Man Kunto Maula is a well-known song in the modern Qawwali repertoire. The singer here is Abi Sampa and the production is by Rushil. This music does not directly reflect my personal practice, yet I feel moved and inspired by it when I listen.

(1) Hazrat Inayat Khan The Mysticism of Sound and Music: the Sufi Teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan Delhi/Mumbai: Grapevine India, 2024 (Shambhala Dragon Editions)

(2) See also: https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2025/01/21/the-way-of the heart/

February 2, 2025

SOLAR GAIN

This morning, 2 February, sunlight streamed into our flat. Soon we realised that warmth was coming in along with the light. There was no need for artifical heating.

This may not yet be spring, by most people’s reckoning. But the day has had a spring- like quality. Elaine and I both felt lifted. For me, it was as if a weight had come off my shoulders: a weight to which I had become acclimatised. I had stopped even noticing it until it was so gloriously removed.

We made two trips out during the day. In the later morning we stayed near home. Elaine walked using her rollater and spent welcome time sitting in the sun. The same sun also shone on our adopted birches. Though it’s not shown in the picture below, the catkins are greener now.

In the afternoon, using the wheelchair, we visited Gloucester docks and sat there until not long before 4 pm. The heat was beginning to drain away by the time we left, and shadows were lengthening. Yet the two pictures below show, respectively, the dazzle of sunlight on water, and a canal barge lifting its solar panels to the sun.

A great day for a festival of lights, and a welcome opportunity for exuberance.

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Contemplative Inquiry

Month: February, 2025

February 26, 2025

WINTER’S END