Sky | Contemplative Inquiry

Tag: Sky

June 21, 2023

FIVE IMAGES: MIDSUMMER CELEBRATION 2023

The five images in this blog record a dedicated solstice walk, an evening walk beginning 8 pm on 20 June. For me, the solstice period lasts around a week ending on 25 June. I like to acknowledge the stasis (standstill) element. My festival practice is not about a moment in time so much as honouring an extended pause before the wheel turns, at first slowly, towards the dark.

I sought immersion in the unique and sacred flavour of this day at this time in this place. I do not believe my images ‘capture’ that flavour – now gone with the moment it belonged to. But the pictures do provide a suggestive record of that time. They help my memory. They remind me especially that my experience of this practice in 2023 differs from that of 2022, when I first undertook it as a solo, contemplative form of midsummer celebration. (See: https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2022/06/24/.)

The first image (above) is of Llanthony Priory gardens, dominated this evening by a dramatic sky. Sunlight shines through heavy clouds, dark and suggestive of a storm that we had largely missed in Gloucester. Three canalside images (below) also display the energy of clouds with the sun backlighting them. I find both beauty and power here, indeed a strong sense of powers greater than mine, and indeed of ours collectively. This year, my seasonal immersion has an edge. A modern Druid, I celebrate the seasons and reverence the elements. But I certainly don’t own them, or decide how they are meant to be.

During my walk I spent a lot of time with my eyes turned upwards and skywards, with hints of both awe and foreboding. I understand how sky god spiritualites work. But I also looked across and down and found new life. A pair of swans and their cygnets were finding space on the water on a busy small marina. It is now surrounded by housing on three sides, yet they seemed flourishing and confident. Storm clouds of many kinds threaten. Life goes defiantly on.

August 15, 2021

BLUE SKY, CLIMATE CRISIS AND DRUID PRAYER

I love the sky in most weathers. I especially love it when it is azure blue and feels like a high domed roof, well able to contain the movement of wispy, shapeshifting clouds. The sky is part of nature, just like the earth. It is not a detached, alienated realm, beyond the influence of what some traditions might call our little life.

Sometimes I wish it was beyond our influence, as the news about the climate crisis goes on getting worse. The moment of joy is infused with a heartache that has every right to be there. It reminds me of our interconnectedness, and the Druid prayer for knowledge and love of justice, and, through that, the love of all existences (1).

I will stay open to my simple joy at inhabiting a living world of beauty and abundance, even if sadness keeps it company. The healing pleasure of sky-gazing is a part a long, common inheritance, not to be repressed, numbed or lost. I will continue to invite it in and let it nourish me.

(1) One modest practical way to enact the love of justice and of all existences, beyond lifestyle adjustments, is to support https://www.stopecocide.earth/ – now gaining momentum.

January 11, 2021

SKY AND WEATHER

The fog has gone now, for the time being. But its memory still clings to me. I can acknowledge its beauty as seen through the window of a warm room. But I would rather not be out there, tasting the fog, breathing it, trying to find my way in a clammy kind of cold. To go out, I wait for another day, with clear light and the effects, however subtle, of the winter sun. What a difference a day makes.

Part of my Druidry is about cultivating dimensions of experience ignored or unvalued in mainstream culture. Practice keeps my connection to them open. Tibetan Buddhists are sky watchers and have the saying; ‘you are the sky; everything else is weather’. This recognition does not erase the fluctuations in our weather, without and within, or our response to them. It does point to a capacity to hold them within a hidden dimension of clarity and stillness.

In the opening days of 2021, I have been taking in the likelihood of another collectively hard year, perhaps harder than 2020 in a different way. Last year I was more hopeful about this year than I am now. I don’t find this easy and I don’t ask myself to. What I can do is find a home in this seemingly unboundaried and seemingly timeless dimension, here called ‘the sky’, without abandoning the day-to-day.

I am the sky, and I hold the weather – fog and sunlight alike.