Contemplative Inquiry

I am grateful to the Druid community for its varied ways of working with the 8-fold wheel of the year – especially when the festivals are placed in the context of the gradually turning wheel. Within that patterning of both nature and experience, I find the equinoctial periods and my response to them the least predictable of times.

The picture above shows a pre-equinoctial evening in Weymouth harbour, Dorset, England, round about 6 pm. I found this moment gentle and relaxing. The soft sunlight on the houses, boats and water seemed like a welcome home. I was born only 30 miles from Weymouth and it is part of my childhood landscape, my motherland. I took the picture on 18 September, the first day of my first visit for decades. I felt as if I was in a final afterglow of summer, content on familiar ground.

My wife Elaine and I spent only four days in Weymouth. Even over this brief period, we both had a strong sense of the advancing dark, in the mornings and the evenings alike, a shifting alternation of night and day that increasingly favoured night. One of our days was also dominated by high winds and driving rain, followed by a night in which we felt damp and chilled to the bone, unused as we now are to old buildings.

That night I had a rare experience of broken sleep and uncanny dreams. Eventually I woke up fully to a startling level of condensation on old window panes, obscuring an otherwise stunning view. For me this equinoctial period has, at least psychically, emphasised a shift towards the dark rather than a moment of poise and balance. Not a full dark, perhaps, but drained of colour, direction unknown.

The turning of the wheel never stops. On 23 September, the morning of the equinox, I felt the pleasure that can come from enjoying home after a break. I also noticed that the world beyond our many balcony doors was very clearly proclaiming a victory for the darker half of the year. This will be the setting for my journey for some time to come.

Whereas in the world I feel currently secure, I am conscious of uncertainties within. I do not quite see my critical-creative direction. In my 75th year, I wonder about ‘creative ageing’ (an old catch-phrase for me) and ‘critical wisdom’ (a new one). Hot air? Or genuine signposts? The Weymouth visit has stirred me up, but to what specific purpose I don’t yet know.