contemplative spirituality | Contemplative Inquiry

July 7, 2025

PHILIP CARR-GOMM AND FRANK MCEOWEN: A CONVERSATION

An Interview with Frank McEowen (1) is the latest offering in Philip Carr-Gomm’s This Magical Life podcast. The overall aim of This Magical Life is to explore the intersection of Druidry, Psychology and Wisdom. Philip is a clinical psychologist and led OBOD (the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids) for some 30 years. Frank is the author of, among other works, The Mist-Filled Path: Celtic Wisdom for Exiles, Wanderers and Seekers.

This wide-ranging interview covers three main topics: Celtic bards, Chinese hermit poets and politics in America today. All of these are tied into Frank’s journey and service. He was born in Mississippi, USA, of Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English ancestry. At an early age he experienced mystical encounters with the other world. These later prompted him to work with indigenous elders in North America, and later with teachers in Britain and Ireland, especially Ireland, opening himself also to the spirit(s) of place. He speaks of his journey as a whole as one of ‘soul retrieval’. His early books – The Mist-Filled Path, Meditations on the Irish Sprit Wheel, and The Spiral of Memory and Belonging, come out of this experience.

For reasons explained in the interview, Frank then made a decision to ‘disappear inward’, becoming a hermit and poet. As well as working in Celtic spirituality, Frank was also a student of Zen. He had a natural attraction to Chinese and Japanese wayfaring hermit poetry and modelled the life style as well as the art, adjusted to a different time and culture. This period led to three books of poetry published under the name of Frank LaRue Owen: The School of Soft Attention, The Temple of Warm Harmony and Stirrup of the Sun and Moon.

Like Philip, part of Frank’s service is in the field of psychological healing and personal development, principally as a student of Arnold Mindell. Mindell coined the term ‘Dream Body’ – a psycho-spiritual approach that is also Earth reverencing. It is within this framework that they talk about American politics today. First they identify distressed energies within the national psyche which the current President has uncorked and used in a darkly charismatic and disinhibited way. The discussion takes off from there, looking at issues of grief, loss (of democracy) and possible hope. Connecting this predicament to the bard/poet vocation, Frank quotes Ukrainian poet Ilya Kaminski: “the project of Empire is to dull the senses. The project of the poet is to wake up the senses”. Projects of Empire are not unique to the USA. There is something to reflect on for us all.

I recommend this podcast as a rich and varied conversation, covering a lot of ground in its 36 minutes.

(1) The YouTube post spells Frank’s surname as McEowen and the covers of his early books use MacEowen. I don’t know if he has altered the spelling over time.

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July 3, 2025

SUMMER SUN AND MOON

I took the picture above at 8.35 pm on 2 July, a little less than an hour before sunset. The dial still hasn’t moved much since the Solstice. The days are still long and warm. The sky this evening is blue and clear. Sunlight plays in the trees. It is good to be here, now, and alive to this moment.

The moon, below, has reached its first quarter. The Anglo-Saxons called the July moon the Hay Moon. Celts called it, variously, the Claiming Moon, Mead Moon or Herb Moon. North American traditions speak of the Buck Moon and the Thunder Moon.

For me, contemplating this moon at its first quarter, it seems like empty potential and not ready for a name. There’s a sense of mystery here. I stand with that mystery as my world moves towards a high summer sunset.

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June 23, 2025

BIRDS ON A BOARD

Birds together on a board

Sitting as silent companions

On their water margin retreat.

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June 19, 2025

BRIGHT MORNING

Early this morning I sat in contemplation of some geraniums in pots, for me a good Druid focus of attention. Purchased and tended by my wife Elaine, who is now mobile and active once more, they shone in the early morning light. This was about 6.45 am, some two hours after dawn, on 19 June. It is two days before the Solstice. Where did the time go?

I notice how my eye is drawn to plants and light effects. I find them nourishing and enabling. This has been a theme in my life for awhile. It is though sunlight and the plant world offer hope and reassurance in a bleak, shocking and disorienting historical moment. Life insists on flourishing. I can insist on flourishing too. I am not distracted from the wider world but resourced to engage with it.

On a convenient lamp post, the seagull seeks an opportunity. This midsummer world is alive.

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June 2, 2025

PLANT POWER IN A CATHEDRAL CLOSE

The garden in Gloucester Cathedral’s close is currently a magnificent riot. I was on a walk there with Elaine and we particularly noticed two powerful seeming plants that we couldn’t identify. We simply sat with them, unnamed, and bathed in their energy. It was a glorious 1 June, the first day of our official meteorological summer, and one to savour and enjoy. Only later did we do any research.

We are fairly sure that the plant above is yellow archangel and the plant below, looking like a giant thistle, is cardoon (canara cardunculus) aka prickly artichoke. Friendly feedback from readers on these identifications is welcome. If we are right both plants have long been recognised as sources of power and healing.

In our older traditions, yellow archangel was a symbol of harmony between flora and fauna. A custodian of wildlife, it fostered a bond that transcends mere survival. Herbalists still use this plant to relieve gout, sciatica and other pains of the joints and sinews. It has also been used to draw out splinters and thorns, clean and heal persistent sores, and to dissolve tumours. Yellow archangel can be used as food, in salads, soups and teas. In the wheel of our year, yellow archangel flowers fully after the bluebells die away.

Cardoon is also a plant of power. Traditionally associated with Mars, it has the virtues of strength, protection and abundance. It is has been credited with the power to ward off evil spirits. It is also connected to ideas of nourishment, the riches of nature and, latterly, sustainable gardening. The plant can grow to 2.5 metres in height. Its thick stalks are used as a vegetable. Its full flowering is in late summer and autumn, with thistle-like purple flowers.

These plants, in this garden, are a celebration of values as well as of nature and healing. I see our world through the lens of Modern Druidry and Paganism. The custodians of this space will have a Christian lens. I am happy to note that in this context they seem to be much the same. When in this space, I feel that I am in a beautiful and energising oasis in the city.

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May 27, 2025

ENTERING SUMMER 2025

For me, mid May is the beginning of summer. All of the pictures in this post were taken between 16 and 24 May. It was a warm and sunny time that has now morphed into something else – cooler, wetter and windier.

It was a time of brightness and growth. The plant kingdom showed a tremendous will to live and flourish: above, on the canal path as it skirted adjacent apartment buildings; below, close to the Greyfriars ruins, looking out towards the old town.

The following three pictures are all from Llanthony Priory, in what was once once the ‘physic garden’ of the monks. What moves me about all of them is the vitality, variety and colour they display. Such an affirmation of abundance.

The same benign and dynamic period saw a big step forward in my wife Elaine’s mobility. She can now leave and return to our flat, sit in pleasant public spaces, walk around town, attend local events and shop on her own. This is new and different for both of us, emancipatory yet still slightly unfamiliar. A new way of life is emerging for both of us.

On 25 May, about the time the weather broke, I celebrated my 76th birthday and entered my 77th year. As I wrote to one of my grandsons, ‘sounds terrible, feels OK’. In truth, it feels more than OK. I feel good.

It was also the anniversary of Elaine’s homecoming after her hip fracture in Gran Canaria, her hospitalisation for a month there, her repatriation and another 12 days in the Gloucester Royal Hospital. The year has been a tough one, especially after the strain on Elaine’s already vulnerable heart became fully manifest. But Elaine herself has been an inspiration with her own will to live and thrive. This feels like a good moment in my life and our lives together. Much gratitude for that.

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May 15, 2025

PEACE AS A VIRTUE

I have been thinking of peace, at the personal level, as something other than an energy or state. I am learning to understand it as a virtue to be cultivated, in the sense described by modern Pagan philosopher Brendan Myers. ‘Virtue ethics’, first articulated by the ancient Greeks, is the branch of philosophy that investigates character and identity (1).

To live a fulfilling and happy life, according to Myers, we need to install ways of understanding and being in the world that support our aim: these are the virtues. He specifically talks about the virtues of wonder, such as open-mindedness, curiosity, creativity; the virtues of humanity, such as care, courage, respect and generosity; and the virtues of integrity, like reason, acknowledged vulnerability, forgiveness and the will to let go.

I like Brendan Myers’ approach to virtue ethics. I find it inspiring. I particularly appreciate his account of both the work and rewards of practising virtue ethics: “through the process of identifying and working with virtues, we reach towards the person we want to be and the world we want to live in”. He points to “the possibility of a greater depth of life experience that can appear when I am willing to let go of my illusions, willing to risk harm and despair, in pursuit of a more honest relationship with reality”.

Myers’ approach has influenced my practice, to the extent of creating, working with and revising my own list of personal commitments (2). This is a working document, not a set of commandments or protocols from elsewhere. The commitments are not coterminous with virtues, but virtues are identified and included in them. The first to be named in my list is peace. I say: “I will live from the peace of the centre”. This statement has primacy over the others and is formulated differently. “I will live from …” is different from the “I will cultivate” that begins my other statements. It is linked to my regular use of a (slightly modified) Druid peace prayer: “Deep within my innermost being I find peace; silently, in the stillness of this space, I cultivate peace; heartfully, within the wider web of life, may I stand in peace”. The commitment “I will live from the peace of the centre”, draws on the whole prayer.

I notice that peace, rather than love, is currently the foundation of connection with my innermost being, or the divine within me. Spiritually, heartful peace best describes the reality of my lived experience of non-separation from the divine. This is what I feel moved to take into the world as a form of action (living from). I find this more challenging than finding peace in my innermost being in meditative spaces. Turning outwards, I find often find the world distressed, deluded and difficult to navigate. I am part of this world and therefore obviously vulnerable to my own distress and delusion, and also to a certain ignorance about falling into the mire myself.

Finding and modelling peace are consequently at the top of my list and it is this peace practice that I frame in terms of virtue. The ultimate peace that I experience within is something else, an inspiring gift for which I feel grateful: it is not a personal possession or attainment. Nonetheless, it supports in the work of bringing peace into my daily life.

(1) Brendan Myers Reclaiming Civilization: A Case for Optimism for the Future of Humanity Winchester, UK & Washington, USA: Moon Books, 2017

(2) Personal Commitments (Revised May 2024):

I will live from the peace of the centre.

I will cultivate skilful will and strong will, always within the context of good will, towards self and others.

I will cultivate positive health and well-being, within whatever constraints that may apply.

I will cultivate discernment, creativity and wisdom, to the best of my understanding and capacity.

I will cultivate a life of abundance in simplicity, living lightly on the earth.

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May 10, 2025

HAIKU: 7.50PM 9 MAY 2025

beyond the May blue sky,

a waxing gibbous moon:

below, evening shadows spread.

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May 7, 2025

‘A SLOW GREEN’

The church of St Mary de Lode, Gloucester, seems to sit among trees. The building salutes the sky without arrogantly trying to reach it. There is a bench towards the foreground of my picture. I am standing in a friendly urban space, a green space. It is one of many made possible by the Churches and Priories of the old city. This space is open to all.

In another such space, on a granite seat close to my home, I recently noticed the words “this is a slow green, stay for long enough”. I have been savouring these words ever since.

They draw me into an easy receptively, not least when the month is May and the day is warm. The riddle of ‘a slow green’ invites immersion and reverie rather than effortful attention or strategies for problem solving. ‘Stay for long enough’ is probably the wisest counsel. Let’s take the time we need gently to befriend such nurturing spaces when we are blessed to find them.