Earth spirituality | Contemplative Inquiry

Celebrating a moment as sunlight floods the room. I am happy to point my phone camera more or less at the sun. It is not the done thing and the result may be odd. But it does reflect my experience of the moment itself.

My wife Elaine has just come home from a week in hospital. It was a necessary week, and she is the better for it. Nonetheless we both have a slight sadness that it coincided with the best and brightest weather of 2025 so far, while our attention was otherwise engaged.

This moment is one of celebration of her return to an apartment wearing its warmest and brightest face. It is a contemplative moment, extending in time until it morphs into gentle action. We go outside. Elaine basks in the sun, recuperating and healing.

I am energised and curious. I move closer to the blossoms I saw through the window and take a picture. I am grateful to be reunited with Elaine and freed from my own worst fears. I am grateful for a spring that is now offering both brightness and warmth. I am glad of this day.

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February 26, 2025

WINTER’S END

4.30 pm, 25 February 2025. Sunrays are caught in willow branches. The sun is a little stronger today than it was in full winter. The willows have begun a tentative greening. But there is much shadow in this picture. The day has begun its decline.

The world retains a winter feel for me. I aware of the change in my local park, but I do not altogether trust this spring. In the moment of taking this picture, I see a world in shadow, softly darkened. This is partly because of where I have chosen to stand. It is the image I seem to want.

In the brighter picture below, I show daffodils growing among dead leaves. Daffodils are iconic harbingers of spring, yet not my sole focus. Both pictures were taken intuitively and without any mentally registered intent. It seems as if something in me wanted to make a statement.

I know and accept that I am in the winter of my life. In the wheel of my own life, I can’t quite see how my winter will move into spring, certainly in any personal sense. Dissolving into interbeing is easier to imagine.

My customised Druid liturgy names winter as the season of dying and regeneration. It has associations with law and faith. I understand law in a karmic or ‘natural law’ sense. But it can also be an acknowledgement of the nature we see around us. Faith, in part, concerns the willingness to accept dying and regeneration without knowing what they are like. In my last post, I discussed (1) ‘being nobody’. My current reflections take this suggestion a step further. Evidently, I still have much to learn.

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2025/02/21/being-nobody

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February 12, 2025

SHADES OF GREY

I am standing in a favourite spot, enjoying the expanse of water in front of me. I am missing the sun. I have been missing it for awhile, as the bright days of early February disappear into memory. I am living among shades of grey.

Standing in this space, I feel both sadness and reassurance. The late winter has turned gloomy and I am somewhat depleted. Not much energy or bounce. At the same time I continue to feel held, powerfully, within this landscape and my life.

Looking now at my apparently monochromatic picture, I see subtle variations within the grey. I am drawn to the ripples and reflections in the water. I am aware of the shapes of buildings and trees against a background leaden sky in which a seagull is flying. There are life and movement here, and their promise that the wheel of the year will continue to turn.

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February 2, 2025

SOLAR GAIN

This morning, 2 February, sunlight streamed into our flat. Soon we realised that warmth was coming in along with the light. There was no need for artifical heating.

This may not yet be spring, by most people’s reckoning. But the day has had a spring- like quality. Elaine and I both felt lifted. For me, it was as if a weight had come off my shoulders: a weight to which I had become acclimatised. I had stopped even noticing it until it was so gloriously removed.

We made two trips out during the day. In the later morning we stayed near home. Elaine walked using her rollater and spent welcome time sitting in the sun. The same sun also shone on our adopted birches. Though it’s not shown in the picture below, the catkins are greener now.

In the afternoon, using the wheelchair, we visited Gloucester docks and sat there until not long before 4 pm. The heat was beginning to drain away by the time we left, and shadows were lengthening. Yet the two pictures below show, respectively, the dazzle of sunlight on water, and a canal barge lifting its solar panels to the sun.

A great day for a festival of lights, and a welcome opportunity for exuberance.

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January 29, 2025

BRIGHID AT IMBOLC: A SONG BY DAMH THE BARD

Imbolc/Candlemas is celebrated on either 1 or 2 February as part of the Celtic wheel of the year. It signals the loosening of winter’s grip. Brighid, Goddess of poets, smith-work and healing is its patron. Damh the Bard is a prominent member of OBOD (1), best known for his music. A singer song writer revisioning ancient Bardic tradition for modern times, he has been an inspirational and much loved force in modern Druidry and Paganism. His lyrics for this song are below as presented on YouTube.

There’s a tree by the well in the wood,

That’s covered in garlands,

Clooties and ribbons that drift,

In the cool morning air.

That’s where I met an old woman,

Who came from a far land.

Holding a flame o’er the well,

And chanting a prayer.

(Chorus) Goddess of fire, Goddess of healing,

Goddess of Spring, welcome again.

The told me she’d been a prisoner,

Trapped in a mountain,

Taken by the Queen of Winter,

At Summer’s end,

But in her prison, she heard the spell,

The people were chanting,

Three days of Summer,

And snowdrops are flowering again.

She spoke of the Cell of the Oak,

Where a fire is still burning,

Nineteen priestesses tend the Eternal Flame

Oh but of you, my Lady,

We are still learning,

Brighid, Brigantia,

The Goddess of many names.

Then I saw her reflection in the mirrored well,

And I looked deep in her face,

The old woman gone, a maiden now knelt in her place,

And from my pocket I pulled a ribbon,

And in honour of her maidenhood,

I tied it there to the tree by the well in the wood.

(1) Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids

OBOD | Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids | Druidry

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January 27, 2025

MOMENTS OF CALM

We have had a lot of wind and rain in recent days. Saturday was an exception. The sky was clear, vividly blue. The air seemed cleansed and fresh. I stood at the back of St. Mary de Crypt, above, and understood the sensibility that reaches up, aspirationally, to heaven. I could empathise with the yearning that goes with that, looking for something clear and bright and pure. It’s as if such a sky might hold a promise of peace, a peace that was alive and able to nurture beauty.

I am also glad that, by the standards of medieval churches (including others within walking distance) this St. Mary’s is modest and balanced in its upwards aspiration. It aspires, but does not run away from the earth. The picture below shows it as solidly grounded, and not altogether dwarfing the buildings that have been its neighbours for many years. The church is still consecrated and holds services from time to time. But now it functions largely as a busy community centre with a strong continuing role in Gloucester’s life. A solid presence in the heart of the city.

Looking in on the city park, I welcomed the same clear blue sky. But my eye was mostly drawn to the trees that it framed. Although this is still a winter scene, the colour of the willow suggests a strong presence of male catkins and the cycle of growth and change that is under way.

Leaving the park I made my way to the still living garden of the ruined Llanthony Secunda Priory, once the monks’ physic garden. It still feels like a place of healing and the present version is well maintained.

I was both surprised and delighted to see a rose in bloom. Roses have for a long time been a heart symbol for me, but I have generally associated them with summer and especially midsummer. I became aware of winter roses quite late last year and they were shop bought. I loved them but had some misgivings about their production. So I felt blessed to see one growing in the physic garden last Saturday. There’s no traditional link between Imbolc and roses that I know of. But seeing this rose in the ground, sunlight glinting on both petals and thorns, I had an Imbolc kind of feeling, as we approach the first festival of the rising year.

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January 18, 2025

LATE WINTER: REGENERATION

In the picture above, birch catkins are gaining strength. It is a bleak and cold early afternoon. The tree trunks sit in quiet latency. But new life is stirring all the same.

In the wheel of the year, winter is the season both of dying and regeneration. Late winter my be the coldest time of year, but the turn has been made and the days are already lengthening. Imbolc, which once marked the first lambing season of the year for our ancestors, is on its way.

Four years ago (1) I wrote a post in which I described the place of Birch (Beith) in the Irish Ogham alphabet, and its link with new beginnings and the need for careful preparation in any new endeavour. In Northern runic tradition Birch (Beorc, Berkana) is identified with the young Goddess, sexuality and birth, as well as beauty and creativity in general. At the time of writing I was working with a mandala of 16 trees in which Birch was my tree from 1-22 February. It continues to be an important tree in my life.

Now, my emphasis is different. I started by reflecting on a group of birch trees planted just outside our building. I can see them now out of a balcony widow. There are five in this space, somewhat sheltered between two buildings. They are the nearest thing to a grove in this urban setting. They are still young and have only recently reached the second floor level where we live. They seem vulnerable, shallow-rooted. When we have high winds, I expect them to blow down. They bend a long way. But they haven’t broken or fallen yet.

They are our neighbours. Elaine and I walk among them often. They are a good place for her when she re-learns walking after her accident and its complications. She first noticed the catkins and pointed them out to me weeks ago, when they were tiny. The picture above, which I took today, shows how much they have managed to grow in these apparently unpromising winter weeks.

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2021/02/01/birch-new-beginning/

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January 12, 2025

SIGNS OF LIFE IN A WINTER KINGDOM

I am in a place and time of cold beauty. Beside the Gloucester-Sharpness canal, the water margin looks like a scene of suspended animation.

It isn’t true. There are fish in the water, underneath the ice. Trees are preparing for spring, protected by their bark. In the picture below evidence of the sun is seen on a tree trunk and on the thawing waters of the canal.

In woodlands beside the canal, I find an iced up inlet where the surrounding ivy lives up to its evergreen name. This small enclosed spot feels strongly alive, the frozen waters an adornment rather than a contrast.

Returning to the Docks, I notice that the seagulls aren’t acting as the confident, aggressively resourceful selves that I expect. The are neither at work, busily scavenging, or at play, gleefully flying or enjoying the water. They seem a bit bewildered by the thin ice that they are standing on.

On this walk I’m connecting rather than communing. I’m outwardly rather than inwardly focused, oriented to narrative and incident. There are different ways of observing and today I want to connect with the world and feel that I am part of it. I am endlessly fascinated with this small territory and the way it changes as the Wheel turns, and seasons come and go.

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January 9, 2025

BLUE SKY, RETURNING SUN

When I walked out this morning, my fingers felt cold inside their gloves. Visually I enjoyed the interplay of strong light and strong shade. The sky overhead was blue. Without seeing it directly I felt the presence of the sun. When I did find it and stepped into its path I found it dazzling and warm. I hadn’t expected the warmth. When I checked the temperature I noticed that it was rising, though not by much.

This, for me, was the sign that the sun was back after the long Midwinter moment that marks the turn of the year where I live. It helped that we were free of fog, rain and snow. Whatever comes next, Ì can tell myself that I have lived to greet another rising year together with my wife Elaine. A moment to cherish and celebrate.

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January 4, 2025

THE BALANCED CROSS

Twelve years ago (1) I wrote about the paidirean (pahj-urinn) prayer beads of the Ceile De or Culdee movement (2). In its current iteration this is a modern monastic order based in Scotland with a lay following in other parts of the world. It looks back to the early Celtic church once influential in Ireland, Scotland and north-east England. The post referenced above (1) describes my relationship with the beads at the time.

Now, coming back to this beautiful artifact, I am principally focused on the cross – an equal armed and circled silver cross that hangs from the beads – at heart level when worn as a necklace. This form of cross is an ancient symbol, sacred to many people in many cultures, often understood as a sun wheel, and not specific to Celtic Christianity. It is sometimes called the balanced, or peaceful, cross.

For me, this cross is a more fundamental image than the awen symbol, which I can also wear as a pendant, appropriately sitting at the level of my throat. The silver cross maps a whole imaginal world: four directions or winds – east, south, west, north; four powers – light, life, love, law; four elements- air, fire, water, earth; four guardians – hawk, stag, salmon, bear; four qualities – vision, purpose, wisdom, faith; four times of day – sunrise, midday, sunset, midnight; four seasons – spring and early growth, summer and ripening, autumn and bearing fruit, winter, dying and regeneration. Having a liturgy to this effect, casting a circle and calling for peace as a regular practice, marinate me in a certain way of spiritual life. Wearing this cross confirms and declares it.

In my light energy work, the disc becomes a radiant sphere that holds me. For there is a vertical dimension. Horizontally I hold my hands out palms raised and the energy flows out from heart through outstretched arms and to my hands. Vertically it flows in both directions from my heart to my feet and the earth and also to my brow and above my head. But the source of this radiance is the energy behind the heart and the still emptiness behind the energy. This flow is an open system. Energy also comes back. My energy sphere is porous to the world. I like the illustration on the bag below because it shows an empty circle at the centre. This does not feature on the pendant itself, but to me empathises the divine power at the centre from which I am not separate. It is good to reconnect with an carrier of healing and insight which I appeared to have left behind. I am grateful that it was still here for me when I was ready to reconnect.

(1) See: https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2012/12/30/

(2) See: https://www.ceilede.co.uk

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Contemplative Inquiry

Tag: Earth spirituality

March 9, 2025

BLOSSOMING

February 26, 2025

WINTER’S END

February 12, 2025

SHADES OF GREY

February 2, 2025

SOLAR GAIN

January 29, 2025

BRIGHID AT IMBOLC: A SONG BY DAMH THE BARD

January 27, 2025

MOMENTS OF CALM

January 18, 2025

LATE WINTER: REGENERATION

January 12, 2025

SIGNS OF LIFE IN A WINTER KINGDOM

January 9, 2025

BLUE SKY, RETURNING SUN

January 4, 2025

THE BALANCED CROSS