Contemplative Inquiry

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.