29 July, 9.20 pm.
Gloucester, UK.
The dog days.
Humid.
In the reducing evening light,
I gaze at a twilit horizon
with its promise of a deepening dark.
Then I notice the house lights below
and their brick-bound interior life.
Like mine.
I prepare, standing in my balcony door,
for the improbable heat of the night.
“Half-way between the certainty of science on one hand, and the supernatural on the other, is mystery …. Mystery is central to enchanted experience because enchantment is not a rational process of recognition, categorization, knowledge, facts or rationalizations. It is, instead, a pure experience of sensing and being.” (1)
I saw the heron on 11 October 2020, in the first year of the pandemic and just a little after dawn. I had been walking for about forty minutes, beginning in near darkness and experiencing the gradual coming of the light. I described this walk at the time as an “enchanted meander” at a liminal point in that day (2).
My encounter with the heron was unexpected and I responded with “delighted surprise”. Four years later, reflecting on the memory, I note that I was able to experience delighted surprise from within stillness. In that moment I was a still human sharing space with a still heron on a still early morning. So the heron stayed in place, not needing to fly away. Beyond that there was no communing, but this was somehow blessing enough. Stillness of this kind, in contact with our more than human world, allows space for an enhanced bandwidth of experience. It is, perhaps, an opening to what Arran Stibbe calls “mystery”.
On that morning, my enhanced experience was partly displaced into the taking of a picture and also the wider purpose of my walk. That’s fine, a good enough choice. But I wonder what would have happened if I, like the heron, had stayed in place.
(1) Arran Stibbe Econarrative: Ethics, Ecology and the Search for New Narratives to Live By London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024
(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2020/10/14/walking-towards-sunrise/
8 am, 14 July. Local woods. A little after the year’s zenith, I am in strong morning sunshine and enjoying its patterns of light and shade. A green portal lures me forward. What will I find on the next part of my journey?
I am am often moved by the effects of light, and drawn to write about them. Each experience is unique. Today, sunlight on tree bark feels warm and playful.
Below, I find a clearly defined shadow shape on the ground, the effect of the sun passing through a fence. This feels playful too, high summer’s friendly face in this place at this time. Contemplation as simple delight.
My walking time is still restricted. Perhaps because of this, familiar outdoor spaces have become exotic and magical to my eyes. My limiting circumstances are paradoxically making me more focused and attentive, enhancing my felt quality of life. I am readier to find joy in simple, passing experiences.
On my contemplative walks, the shapes and colours of trees move me deeply. Grasses and sky have a similar impact. I am very aware of these July days. I am very aware of summer. I am very aware of my place in the world as the year turns in my immediate neighbourhood.
A little further away, I stand on a canal bridge (below) and look back towards the city, which seems distant and small. Water and sky give me space and perspective. I let the elements of water and air nourish me at a time when I am largely grounded.
Close up at the water margin, I find light shining on the water. There is energy and movement here. The power of the sun is present in both a shifting luminosity on the water and the flowering resilience on the bank.
I shift into a meditation on the four classical elements – earth, water, air and fire – and how they work together to make the fifth (life, spirit) possible. Consciously engaged with the four, I can stand as the fifth, resourcing my individual life within a world of impermanence and interbeing.
In the original edition of The Dreampower Tarot (1) The Sleeper is an androgyne figure in a field of corn and poppies. Their face is turned towards the flowers. Their right arm is outstretched, with palm and fingers turning a little towards the ground. Their forefinger hints that we should look to the earth and underworld for healing and inspiration. The whole image evokes deep evening slumber.
In this midsummer period, I’m in a regime of going to bed early, before the light has gone. It reminds me of delicious childhood moments and I feel comforted. During this period I have tended to dream of abstract images and unfathomable events, with background sounds so soft that I can barely hear them.
In these dreams, I have no language and can make no real sense of anything. I’m OK about this, because I’m aware of being aware and safe in awareness without the slightest ability to formulate a sentence like this one. The recognition is primal and wordless. At times, I experience a push towards understanding of a sort, but it is not (yet?) agitated or dominant in consciousness. I seem, in this dreaming (as perhaps once in pre-natal life), to be in realm of divinely simple potential.
When I wake up in the early morning. at this time of year, I find light again, and a different feeling of wonder. Using my resources of language and culture, I am able to make cognitive sense of my world once more. The gift of the dream is that my everyday experience feels, for a while, strange and new. It makes room for the luminosity and magic that I can easily forget in my ‘waking’ hours. The morning light outside my window confirms their presence here. They nourish me, and I am porous to the world.
(1) R. J. Stewart The Dreampower Tarot: The Three Realms of Transformation in the Underworld London: The Aquarian Press, 1993 Illustrated by Stewart Littlejohn
I spend time inside looking out. The sky changes a lot. Its shifts are rapid and dramatic. The trees change too, but over longer periods of time. The high levels of rain this year have encouraged an exceptional verdancy and abundance. Looking out, I can almost forget that I am in a block of newish flats in an old urban area. The person walking on the pavement below seems dwarfed by the splendour of the leaves. The road is very quiet for a late morning. The wheel of the year turns, approaching its summer zenith in this part of the world.
I am settling in to a higher number for my official age. In social gerontology, there are (or have been) three kinds of ‘old’: young-old (50-64), middle-old (65-74) and old-old (75+). I am now old-old and statistically immune from premature death. These classifications don’t quite fit my lived experience, but they are a sort of landmark all the same.
Elaine and I have been together for nine days following her repatriation and subsequent stay in a local hospital. We are learning how to live a new phase of our relationship where she has high needs and is housebound, and I am in a ‘caring’ role in the institutional sense of that term. We are learning as we go along and doing our best to be conscious about our experience as well as practical in an ‘activities of daily living’ sense. I think we are doing OK. We are establishing new patterns of day to day life and Elaine’s capacity is increasing.
Mostly I leave the flat only for shopping and other practical tasks and, because we are so well situated, these don’t take long. On Saturday Elaine and I both felt comfortable and confident with me going out on a one hour recreational walk. I continue with a regular practice and journaling. I still practice within a Druid circle (grove) and I find this healing and re-energising. At the same time my work has been referenced more to five personal commitments rather than to tribal membership, religious devotion or spiritual metaphysics. Recently I have been contemplating my commitments and checking out whether they still work for me. These are:
1. I will work from the stillness of the centre.
2. I will cultivate good will towards self, others, and the wider web of being.
3. I will cultivate positive health and well-being, within whatever constraints may apply.
4. I will cultivate discernment, creativity and wisdom, to the best of my understanding and capacity.
5. I will cultivate a life of abundance in simplicity, living lightly on the earth.
I do see a danger in lists like these: they can become a frozen and pious – an internal rhetorical performance. For me, contemplative inquiry keeps my commitments alive, suggesting revisions if necessary. This is my direction, going forward, in the unfolding chapter of my life.
On 12 May I wrote: “I hope soon to get some sense of how soon Elaine will come home, and what resources we will need for our lives going forward. It’s my 75th birthday on 25 May, and my best present would be to have Elaine home by then.” (1) Today is 25 May, and my wife Elaine is indeed coming home from the Gloucester Royal hospital. It has felt like a long absence for both of us and we are glad to move into a new chapter of our lives.
Yesterday evening I went Alney Island, a Gloucester wetland, for a brief contemplative walk. The footbridge near Gloucester docks has been repaired and after many months the island is easy to reach again. Back on the island, I loved its sense of growth and abundance in the summer evening light. I felt care-free. I had almost forgotten how much experiences like this nourish me.
This is a festive moment in my life: a significant birthday, Elaine’s return, celebrating a moment in the year that makes me glad to be alive. I feel refreshed, heartened and re-energised.
(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2024/05/12/unsought-journey/
Tumbledown gatehouse
Unbothered to impress:
You draw my eyes.
A single bloom
Among spiky grasses
Insists on beauty.
Six hundred years
In the life of this carving:
How much has changed?
Across the road,
Restrained elegance.
Here, a bursting life.
The lushness of spring:
Who can resist
Its fleeting appearance?
NOTE: At the beginning of April I discovered Hillfield Gardens – a little outside the centre of Gloucester, yet still in easy walking distance (or an easy bus ride) from where I live. Originally the gardens of a large house, Hillfield Gardens are about 1.6 hectares in extent. They are managed by a Friends Group on behalf of Gloucestershire County Council. For me the gardens are a tranquil space, different in feeling-tone from other local parks. Beyond that I don’t yet have a narrative about the gardens – more a set of discreet impressions. The pictures and words above are an attempt to share these impressions. The third picture is a detail from an 18th century gazebo using architectural details from a 14th century market house in Westgate Street demolished in 1780.
I am walking among trees, feeling refreshed and renewed after a long winter. This feeling is anchored by the return of leaves. I am present in, and to, the presence of new green. It comes every year, at slightly different times. I’m noticing the beginning of a beautiful verdant period. It’s re-appeared a little early this year and I experience this as a great blessing.
Where I live, the early spring has been wet and windy, often with dull skies. Nature has been alive and active throughout this period, but I have remained wintry in important respects. This weekend has changed me. I am aware of new green leaves and a strengthening sun. The latter may be visually dimmed by frequent of heavy cloud, but the leaves reassure me of its power in the rising year. Although we are still far from a full canopy in the woods, the life-force – in modern Druidry often called nwyfre – is strong. It’s a time for celebration.
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