Spirit of place | Contemplative Inquiry

July 23, 2025

WALKING IN ARNOS VALE CEMETERY

Above, through the trees, we can see one of the chapels belonging to the Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol, England. It was built as a garden cemetery extending over 45 acres in 1839, as the city’s old parish graveyards were becoming overcrowded and a health hazard. The new venture was designed to be spacious, with sunlight, fresh air, trees and shrubs.

It worked well for nearly 150 years. But in 1987 the owners announced their intention to clear a large section for ‘development’. An Association for the Preservation of Arnos Vale Cemetery swiftly sprang up. It fought successfully for a safe future for the site, gaining the support of the Bristol City Council, Bristol citizens and many people worldwide.

Now, as the Friends of Arnos vale, they continue to manage what they describe as “a hillside Victorian cemetery and conservation park, with heritage and wild life tours, plus a café”. It takes a lot of effort and activity to keep this precious space going, yet on my occasional visits I still find it tranquil and unspoilt.

For me it is a magical place, largely because the graves are being allowed to sink back into the land. There is something primal about the cross above, rough hewn, almost equal armed, and decorated with foliage. Still a cemetery, Arnos Vale has become something wilder than a garden. At this time of year, the paths become green tunnels, deftly concealing their destinations.

Yesterday I walked in Arnos Vale with a friend, and our direction of travel required a descent towards the main buildings. The steps we went down were not as overgrown as the ones below, but l found them challenging enough. The imagery and effortful activity of descent give me the feeling of a deep earth and underworld journey, and the sense of enchantment that goes with it.

Towards the bottom of the slope, my recognition of a re-enchanted space in a largely disenchanted world is further strengthened. A cross again. Evergreen ivy growing up it. Vivid summer blooms behind and in front. Tall wild grass. Trees in the background. Green abundance enhancing the gravestone rather than diminishing it. Life and death companioning each other without drama or fuss. Contemplating this natural harmony, I feel heartened and refreshed.

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.

June 24, 2022

MIDSUMMER CELEBRATION 2022

The place is called Lower Parting, though it is actually a joining. The parting is 3km (just under two miles) up river. There, the River Severn divides into two channels, east and west, to flow around Alney Island. When taking the picture above, I was standing near the point where the channels meet again. It was around 9 a.m. on 22 June. I had not been there before.

Although every time and place is ultimately sacred, some times and places are easier for me to honour. In my experience this is partly a property of the times and places, partly down to culture and tradition, and partly to do with my own inner and outer availability.

On this occasion, I was within a midsummer period which for me lasts from a day or so before the solstice until around 25 June. I like to acknowledge the stasis (standstill) element within the solstice experience. It is not just about a point of time. Like its midwinter opposite and twin, my midsummer allows an extended pause before the wheel of the year turns. My walk on 22 June was an intentional celebration of the midsummer stasis, something between an outdoor walking meditation and a miniature festival pilgrimage. It was built around my first encounter with an intuited special place, now that I am fit enough once more to walk the required distance.

I can easily understand why people in many parts of the world have seen water, especially flowing water, as sacred. I am on a quiet part of a quiet island in the middle of Gloucester city. The wetland here is blissfully unfit for development, and now a nature reserve. I was able to stand here and look out at the joining of the waters, under a blue sky, and surrender to a benign spirit of place. I didn’t have to attend to my attention. In this extended, flowing, moment, nature was doing that for me. I found, here, a generous horizon, and a living peace that invites participation. I am glad and grateful to have discovered this place on this day.

In my tradition, at every seasonal festival, we are asked to think not only of the time we are celebrating, but also of its opposite. Walking back from Lower Parting, I see features in the landscape that help me. My pictures below do not evoke winter, but they do show light and shade within a single image. On planet Earth, the time of my summer is the time of someone else’s winter. These are both ways in which opposites complement each other in an interconnected world.

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January 10, 2022

READYING FOR RELOCATION

I will be moving house very soon. This will no longer be the view from my bedroom window. My gaze today is tinged with premature nostalgia.

This gaze shows continuity and slow, gradual change in the world outside. This world wears its winter look, with bare branches and extensive views. At other times of the year, both are covered by foliage. But the solstice darkness has already withdrawn from the mid-afternoon. Today is blessed with strong sunlight and blue sky. The year is turning again, now towards the light.

The house move feels more abrupt. I have lived here for longer than anywhere else in my adult life. Chiefly it has been the hallowed setting for my life with Elaine (1). Whilst living here, I completed my OBOD training, later beginning a self-directed exploration of contemplative Druidry, including a 4 year project within the Druid community (2). For a while, contemplative inquiry – within and beyond Druidry – became the guiding principle of my spirituality. Now it is more like an influential thread within my Druid practice.

I wonder what changes life in another location will make, as Elaine and I continue our journey together. There will be only a limited break from the past. We will be in the same county, though not the same town. But there will be differences too. The psychogeography will be different. The spirits of place will be different. The world beyond our windows will be new.

(1) http://www.elaineknight.wordpress.com

(2) James Nichol , Contemplative Druidry: People, Practice and Potential, Amazon/Kindle, 2014. https://www.amazon.co.uk/contemplative-druidry-people-practice-potential/dp/1500807206/

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September 27, 2021

AFTER THE EQUINOX

After the equinox comes a deepening of autumn. Light, colour, texture – my sense of the world is different. Images of this moment in the year shape my sense of time as well as of place. I savour the turning of the wheel. All time is transitional, yet every time has its own uniqueness.

Contemplating images like this is for me a way of sustaining what modern Druids sometimes call a re-enchantment with and of the world. Simple attention to the living world is a renewing experience, and protects the heart from what can seem like the half-life of a Wasteland culture. Opening to a living cosmos, I plead guilty, with pride, to the charge of Romanticism.

It is after 9 a.m. on Sunday 26 September, Locally I enjoy orange as a colour of ripening, rich and shiny with life, as the season of bearing fruit moves on.

There are trees whose leaves have already turned, but will stay on their branches for awhile, giving these woods a more mixed, autumnal appearance.

But there is still a preponderance of green, some of it surprisingly fresh. Here it provides a canopy of green light and shade.

The season is also asserting a downward pull, towards the earth and dissolution – a process, however, still in its early stages. The broken fence seems almost to be sharing this, beginning a return to the land.

Then there is the undergrowth, with its mix of living and dead wood, living and dead leaves, and the soil that holds them. The evergreen leaves are defiantly vivid. Taking pictures, I celebrate the time of year.

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August 1, 2021

INTIMATIONS OF RENEWAL

I took this picture on the North Somerset coast (UK) last September. It is an autumnal and sunset picture, which paradoxically offers me a vision of renewal. The location is Weston-super-Mare, at the Brean Down end and facing the Island of Steep Holm. It is a place that draws me, and I wrote about it at the time (1).

Elaine and I will be spending time there in September this year, investigating a possible move. We both have reasons for wanting this, and it has been in our minds for awhile. But the uncertainties of Covid-19, its wayward management in England, and our own separate health problems have slowed us down.

I have become unused to moving. On my return to the UK in 2003, I lived in Bristol before coming to Stroud at the end of 2008. By that time I was already familiar with this old Cotswold mill town, more recently the birthplace of Extinction Rebellion.. For many years I was essentially living a Stroud/Bristol life. It hardly felt like moving.

In the new plan, Bristol will still be our city. But I’m a different person now, and the move feels like a major operation. Almost daunting. I feel stable and secure in my current home, and a part of me is tempted to cleave to the apparent stability and security of a familiar property and community.

Another part is concerned with the energetic costs of stagnation. Yesterday I drew the 4 of Cups card from The Duidcraft Tarot (2). I am using the pack as a simple psychic mirror, rather than for classical divination. I draw a card when I feel a need to check-in with the oracle. In this instance, I found myself faced with a jaded youth. I am neither jaded nor a youth, But I do feel as if I have been in Stroud for long enough. I catch myself at times in moods of lassitude and an undefined discontent. I am looking for a different experience, and knowing this helps me to raise my energy levels and recover a willingness to take risks. Writing about it is an energiser.

The risks themselves are modest. Weston is familiar to us and the distance not great. There are shared pragmatic reasons for the choice. Beyond these, we both look forward to open ourselves to the local energy of earth, sea and sky in the liminal space where they meet. I also like the notion of living in the English west country, where I was born, and having the opportunity to re-connect with the psychogeography of the region and in particular its coasts, more deeply.

I vividly remember seeing this solitary crow on last year’s visit. It was busy, head down, making a living on the muddy, still estuarial beach. It was a peaceful moment, framed between sunlight and shade. I stepped into peace myself, better to capture the moment and to avoid disturbing the bird. I felt alive and receptive to the setting, which even then felt like a potential home.

Only time will tell.

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2020/09/23/

(2) Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm The DruidCraft Tarot: Use the Magic of Wicca and Druidry to Guide Your Life London: Connections, 2004. Illustrated by Will Worthington.

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April 5, 2021

EARLY APRIL ENERGY 2021

April has been called the cruellest month. But I am experiencing a much hoped-for kindness right now. I am expansive and energised. Finally, it feels like spring in my neighbourhood. Spring as it is meant to be.

The natural world is changing, and a tentatively recovering human population is beginning to reclaim the outdoors. Now is a moment for celebrating the life force – nwyfre, viriditas, whatever we may want to call it. I find my own feelings reflected back in the vitality and vigour of the world I see around me.

The greening of the trees, and hence much of my local landscape, has started. I hope for a fuller transformation by Beltane – now less than four weeks away.

There is an abundance of colour in the woods, with the emphasis changing from the delicate blossoms we have already seen to more robust and stronger coloured flowers.

Even entering a built environment, floral energy arches across the paths.

In the animal kingdom, life is stirring too. On the canal, rivers and ponds around me, swans are now pairing and nesting. I hope they have another good year.

It almost hurts to know that life – so fleeting and variable – can be so good.

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December 3, 2020

SIMPLE BLESSINGS

The entry into December is not all about dying and withdrawal. Nature is more nuanced than that. For me, the scene above is full of an early winter vitality. It is just after 8 am on 1 December, and the temperature three degrees (37.4 F) – cool and bracing. The stream is in rippling movement, full of vitality. The plant realm may be in a relatively austere phase, but there is green in the picture too. This is my first extended walk for some weeks and I find it an instant mood changer. I can immerse myself gladly in the spirit of this place at this time.

When I reach the canal path, I notice the difference in the water. It is slower and quieter, a place of slightly opaque reflections and relative stillness. I like seeing it in the context of a larger picture, that includes buildings, tree tops and sky. There are people too, though not many. In this picture a lone jogger is moving away from me and will soon be out of my sight. I continue to celebrate the day.

Skeletal trees seem like sculptures, artfully presenting themselves against a background of blue sky. “See the web of life in us”, they seem to say.

Meanwhile a willow, at other times the epitome of elegance, allows itself to relax in the off season. Even now, it has not entirely lost its green.

Further up the canal I see a family of swans. There are five in all, four of them visible above. They are moving swiftly and I feel blessed to get an image. The cygnets are more or less grown up, with their turn to a white adult plumage almost complete. I am pleased to see them doing so well and surprised that the family is still together. I imagine that will change soon enough.

I enjoy the way that leafless trees are only partially screening the houses, allowing both trees and houses to be in the picture. The houses are there, part of the current canal ecology. I don’t need them to be hidden. I continue to enjoy the nature/culture balance of this neighbourhood, and I am glad to be out in it. Some aspects of life can seem hard, but others are easy. Today is easy, a day for easy delight.

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March 25, 2020

IMAGES OF LOCK-DOWN

I am still going for walks, though not every day, and not for so long. The pictures I am sharing are from Tuesday 24 March, with a new social reality now firmly in place. The road above is the A46, running through Rodborough Parish into Stroud Town. The time is late morning. Normally, it takes a far greater volume of traffic, including much heavier traffic, than it was built for. It is frequently gridlocked. There are too few crossings, and it is a real obstacle for pedestrians. A mile or so away, close to a large Tesco supermarket, we find a roundabout where much the same could usually be said. Not any more.

Walking right across the middle of the roundabout with ease, I went on to Stratford Park, one of the town’s great amenities. The Museum in the Park in particular is a major cultural hub.

When I got here, I experienced a change of mood. I’d been enjoying the state of the roads. It felt like a holiday. I wish I lived in a world of much lighter traffic. But the museum notice was sobering. I had a real sense of loss.

The park itself felt surreal. It wasn’t quite deserted. There were a few people like me, now careful in keeping a distance from each other, in some cases wryly smiling or gesturing a friendly sense of shared plight in our manoeuvres of avoidance. Major features in the park, like the orangery, and the trees behind it, had an aura of lonely magnificence. The human element was dwarfed.

Entering the orangery, I felt sad that the flower beds laid out there won’t be seen by many people this year. In this bright, sunny day, they were stunning.

This walk was the first on which I felt less relaxed about being out – a little on guard and wary. I was somewhat reassured by the built and cultivated environment I was in. It hadn’t changed and in some ways was easier to enjoy, with fewer people, greatly reduced traffic and little obvious busyness. The people I encountered were clearly doing their best. But I was also conscious that this is an early stage in a process that has a long way to go. There was surface tranquillity on a beautiful spring day. But I was uneasily aware of a great deal going on that I didn’t see, in the many houses I passed by, and which my camera hasn’t captured.

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November 13, 2019

SACRED SOUNDSCAPES

“Concepts of animism can take many forms. … The idea of the land being capable of speaking to humans was probably widespread in ancient sensibility. Sacred soundscapes were simply a natural corollary.

“The basic notion of the land having speech, or being read like a text, was lodged deeply in some schools of Japanese Buddhism – in early medieval Shingon Esoteric Buddhism, founded by Kukei, for instance. He likened the natural landscape around the Chuzenji temple and the lake at the foot of Mount Nantai, near Nikko, to descriptions in the Buddhist scriptures of the Pure Land, the habitation of the buddhas. Kukei considered that the landscape not only symbolised but was of the same essence as the mind of the Buddha. Like the Buddha mind, the landscape spoke in a natural language, offering supernatural discourse: ‘Thus, waves, pebble, winds, and birds were the elementary and unconscious performers of the cosmic speech of buddhas and bodhisattvas,’ explains Allan Grapard (1994).

” …. ….

“Throat singers in Tuvan, an autonomous republic within the Russian Federation, developed their vocal art originally as a means of communicating with their natural environment, not for entertainment. Throat singing involves the production of resonant sounds, overtones and whistles within the throat, nasal cavities, mouth and lips, and was used to provoke echoes or imitate natural sounds like waterfalls or wind. The master throat singers can select precise locations inside caves where the resonances are exactly right to maximise the reverberations of their songs. They even wait until atmospheric conditions are perfect for the greatest effect. It is in essence a technology of echoes. At one locale, where a singer called Kaigal-ool performed in front of a cliff face, ethnomusicologist Theodore Levin reported that ‘the cliff and surrounding features sing back to the musician in what Kaigal-ool calls a kind of meditation, a conversation I have with nature‘ (Levin & Suzukei, 2006).

“It is only in our modern culture that we have stopped listening to the land within a spiritual context. If we could fashion a modern, suitably culturally-ingrained animistic model, we would treat the environment with much more respect.”

Paul Devereux, in his Foreword to Greening the Paranormal: Exploring the Ecology of Extraordinary Experience August Night Press, 2019. Edited by Jack Hunter. See: http://www.augustnightpress.com

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Tag: Spirit of place