Contemplative Inquiry

For me, the beginning of winter is marked by a local cultural event, rather than any natural one. This is the annual Gloucester Lantern Parade. This year it was on Saturday 15 November.

The parade began at 4.30 pm, after a carol service at Gloucester Cathedral. In the Anglican (Episcopalian) tradition, this is two weeks before the beginning of Advent. In the secular (shopping) year it marks the switching of the Christmas lights. In the Pagan year it is roughly two weeks after Samhain and five weeks before the Winter Solstice. I was happy to think of the three calendars at the same time. All point to the arrival of winter.

The parade theme this year was ‘Community in Nature’, and the lanterns were created by a coalition of local primary schools and community groups supported by professional artists. This year’s organisers invited us to “think about how coming together as a community is our superpower”.

The parade illuminated, however briefly, the city centre and the principal streets of the old town. As it moved through a dense crowd of onlookers, I could not even see the small bearer of the bird lantern in the picture above. This bird had become a lttle detached from its specific community though not from the community of the parade as a whole. It happily kept on going.

In a world that in many ways undermines community, it was good to see it affirmed, both through the event itself and in the chosen theme.