BEYOND THE EQUINOX
these dark mobile clouds
racing through the autumn sky
as the soft light fades
Picture taken, 6.55 pm, 27 September, sunset in Gloucester, England.
Contemplative Inquiry
This blog is about contemplative inquiry
Month: September, 2025
September 20, 2025
LIMITATION
A familiar scene, in its equinoctial clothing. My experience of it is made different by a recent fall, in which I fractured my left humerus bone near the shoulder. I am left-handed, so it’s the ‘wrong’ side for a break. Happily my wrist and fingers remain flexible, and I don’t need surgery for the fracture. It could have been much worse.
Nonetheless Elaine, still depending on a rollator for walking, and I have to be resourceful and strategic in leaving and re-entering our apartment. Essentially I specialise in legs and she specialises in arms, though we each have some capacity in the other’s domain. We’re a team, after all. We work together. But we aren’t getting out much for the time being.
I look out a little wistfully and write a bit ouchilly. I feel limited and constrained. I also feel loved and supported. I’m a little foggy in my thinking, but I don’t see an episode like this as time off from my contemplative inquiry. All experiences are there to be acknowledged, moment by moment, day by day. Otherwise the practice becomes an alienated exercise, or performance, separated from the ups and downs of life. In reality, it sits ever-present within them.
I look within myself. I look across at Elaine. I also look out of window to connect with the world outside and its changes over the year. The grey sky is typical for this September, but blue sky is too. Variation is the overall story. It’s an inherently changeful and unsettled time. I’m intrigued by the way in which Robinswood Hill retains its green cover, when the town trees are in an advanced stage of turning. I’m alive.
September 12, 2025
‘AS OTHERS SEE US’
This is me in the role of alchemist. But who are the others who see me in that way? One is Elaine, my wife. One is the camera in Elaine’s phone. Another is the AI in Elaine’s phone, following Elaine’s instruction to frame me as an alchemist.
The AI is also improvising in ways that Elaine finds spookily appropriate. Me too. I look even older than I am, and conceivably a little wiser. More serene, if also more severe, than I normally think of myself. I embrace the image as reflecting an aspect of me.
From a modern animist perspective, what is going on here? I leave the question open, because I really haven’t a clue. A question worthy of contemplation for sure, and relevant to the world that we are moving into both materially and spiritually.
We also created an image of Elaine as wise woman of power, or witch. I took a profile photo with my camera and then WhatsApped it to her. She went on to process the image, for she is the AI whisperer. The result is below.
September 8, 2025
NUMINOUS IMAGES: SKY TO EARTH
Recent days have been rich in numinous images. Images that for me mark the divinity within our material reality. Above, the recent full moon: clear light at the centre and a blood moon halo suggesting a link with the earth, later to manifest in an eclipse. The sky is deep violet leaning into indigo. The shaded trees absorb the energy of the sky as well as of the earth. The whole image feels moving and inspiring – an image for contemplation which doesn’t need esoteric analysis. Its simple presence is enough.
The same is true for the images that follow. Immediately below is a day time sky image. The day was frequently stormy, with high winds and hard rain. Dark clouds testify to moments of lightning, loud thunder and tumultuous rain. But the image itself records a period of respite. In a gap between the clouds, blue sky can be seen and the light pours strongly in.
Rain on a window pane is central to the next image. The rain drops are the primary subject. What’s on the other side (a balcony garden) isn’t entirely clear in the picture and doesn’t need to be. I experience a great sense of cleansing and refreshment here – the water of life as it falls from the sky, each drop itself an ocean. I look out from my interior space, two stories above the ground floor, and connect with this bounty.
The two remaining images come from a recent walk on Alney Island – outdoors and on normally marshy ground. The first is a woodland space with its fresh entangled green. The ground still looks drier than it sometimes does, yet I sense health and recovery here. In the second image, I see a re-greened path with benignly rioting verges. Seeing what I see, I follow the green path.
September 4, 2025
WATER ON THE PATH
Walking on a familiar path, I found a trail of puddles in front of me. It felt exotic and refreshing. For this had been a parched and dry place for a many months. I dimly recall a past life of finding puddles a minor nuisance – almost an obstacle. Not today. They brought joy and fascination.
I found myself contemplating these small accumulations of fallen rain: noticing their shapes and patterns, seeing how the water creates mud so easily from dried soil, watching the slight movement fallen leaves in these tiny ponds. The circumstance of the long dry period and its ending made rainwater and its effects interesting and worthy of attention in ways that seemed new and almost strange. I opened myself up and became present to them, before moving on.
On my way home I was caught by a brief deluge. I made a brief video of rain on a puddle. I got wet too, yet it somehow completed my walk.
September 2, 2025
A NEW DAY
the pink clouds of this dawn
illuminate a waiting day:
welcome rain may fall.
Contemplative Inquiry 