Summer | contemplativeinquiry

I am in Alney Island again, on the River Severn as it passes through the ancient city of Gloucester. Above, I am looking at the weaker, eastern channel of the river as it flows around the island. After rain, the water level seems adequate if relatively low, and the willows still seem lush. At first glance, as I walk past, the plant life seems healthy in this watery habitat. Stopping to look more closely, the scars of a summer both hot and dry become evident. The horse chestnut leaves, below, are dramatically shrivelled and their conkers are appearing early. Summer is becoming autumn swiftly and abruptly this year.

Much of Alney island is rough water meadow, as below, and it is a joy to see green grass. Normal? No longer a useful word in this, as other, contexts. In a time of climate chaos fatefully intertwined with runaway wealth, ‘normal’ loses shape and definition. Half-reluctantly, I am adjusting to a new, more dislocating and unpredictable reality.

On this walk I discovered a woodland on the island, shown below. It is far from ancient, being planted in 1983 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of a charter given to the people of Gloucester by King Richard III. A rare monument to the monarch in question.

Richard’s Wood is pleasant enough, although subject to somewhat whimsical curation. A decision was first made to plant non-native trees – red oak, turkey oak and horse chestnut; then to add native trees as well; and later still to thin out the trees so as to create a “wood/pasture habitat to contrast with the wetland meadows on the rest of the reserve”. ‘Rare breed’ cattle were introduced, though I have yet to see any.

I may be doing an injustice, but I get a sense of conservation by human taste and fancy, the manufacture of ‘scenery’ on a handy piece of wasteland that isn’t safe to build on. I don’t get any organic sense of the island, its history or its potential. I don’t get any sense of a wondering about what trees might be brought together to create a viable and self-sustaining woodland community, ‘native’ or otherwise. The horse chestnut, imported from Turkey in the sixteenth century, is now a well-loved English tree. The turkey oak is better suited to the southern England of today than the native species. I suspect they are a good choice. But I’m sorry about the thinning out. There’s no shortage of pasture in England. Overall I believe this kind of management to be a relatively innocent manifestation of the very mindset that is killing us.

Perhaps the trees will have a chance to develop in their own way. My feeling on being among them is gentle but muted. If I compare them with the crowded and chaotic wood that has grown up beside the Stroud cycle path, I sense a relative lack of viriditas – Hildegard of Bingen’s word for the green life energy in nature. It is a relative lack, not absolute. But as I go home, I feel a certain sadness all the same.

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August 4, 2022

THE GATEWAY TO TWILIGHT

High summer becomes late summer, in my world, with a gentle movement into the evening of the year. In the picture above, taken a little after 8 pm, I at first feel, as much as see, a suggestion of muting light. On looking up, the blue of the sky seems influenced by a subtle greying effect that is independent of the clouds. Looking down, the buildings are shadowy and their reflections in the water are set within a gathering darkness.

The picture below was taken at 9 pm on the following day. The grey in the sky owes everything to clouds, whereas the orange and yellow are connected to sunset. The latter is reflected in the water, and electric lighting is now also present. The day is changing, but not yet into night. This is an in-between time, twilight. It is its own, extended moment, quietly shifting in the physical world, profoundly influential in my psychic world.

I feel joy with an edge of melancholy. It is a familiar feeling that stretches deeply into my early life, prior to language, older than memory itself. It seems to come from deep time, and to be pre-personal, not just about ‘me’. I am any finite being, moving from day towards night, from summer towards winter, from life towards death. Having shifted decisively away from the zenith, I find myself, for now, in a beautiful moment. The Gloucester docks provide me with a magical space for walking, standing still, experiencing and recording this time.

July 9, 2022

REFLECTIONS IN A PRIORY GARDEN

In my formative years, high summer presented me with a world of manicured green. Mown grass dominated both private and public spaces. Garden lawns, parks, tennis courts, cricket grounds, golf courses, bowling greens: all highly managed. Much water was lavished on their severely cropped verdure, given its enhanced tendency to dry up in hot weather.

This is still happening, but fashions have changed to a degree. The photos above and below show the grounds of the Llanthony Secunda priory in Gloucester. In line with new custom, space is now given to a limited urban rewilding. I am inspired by this small miracle of growth and abundance.

This is an odd summer for me. I am at ease in a congenial place. My wife Elaine and I have moved house successfully. I have stabilised after a period of illness. But this is a transitional period. We are not at our destination, and anticipate more upheaval in the second half of the year. I am divided between here-and-now enjoyment of my surroundings, and concern over possible futures, strategising next steps and feeling the tensions of uncertainty.

In the ABOUT section of this blog, I write of “an underlying peace and at-homeness in the present moment, which, when experienced clearly and spaciously, nourishes and illuminates my life”. That statement is a fruit of my inquiry – it wasn’t there at the beginning. That is the nature of contemplative inquiry: my understanding changes over time, in line with deepening experience.

I am finding that my peace and at-homeness have room for both my day-to-day contentment and my anxiety about possible futures, personal and collective. I don’t strip out my ‘future’-based concerns (themselves part of my present time experience) to tidy up my mental and emotional states. That seems like a superficial understanding of here-and-now acceptance. I find, rather, an invitation to embrace the turbulence too, as part of what is given. The peace arising from innermost being makes room for turbulence, for such peace is not just another passing state. In some hard-to-understand way, it has the capacity to be infinitely spacious, and present in the flux of time and events. All I have to do is trust this peace and let it in.

I do not think of myself as a person of faith. I am more of a ‘philosophical’ Druid rather than a religious one, though I don’t believe that we have to choose between the two. But trusting the peace of innermost being is certainly, in part, a matter of faith, where ‘faith’ involves harmonising with my deepest intuition rather than signing up to statements of belief.

OBOD liturgy includes the words: “deep within my innermost being may I find peace”. This resonates powerfully with me, but I have recently let go of the word ‘my’, because ‘innermost being’ no longer feels exactly personal – it seems, experientially, to be more like being resourced from a timeless, unboundaried dimension from which I am not separate. This realisation, if it is a realisation, is now at the core of my spirituality. I am reluctant to make metaphysical truth claims about it, but it is firmly implanted in my experience. The opportunity, now, is to give it the freedom to grow, within my inquiry and my life.

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May 21, 2022

PEONIES IN LATE MAY

As I look at these peonies, I delight in their lushness. But the word ‘poignant’ also comes to mind. Delight is mixed with sadness, and a sense of time slipping away. These are probably the last pictures of these peonies that I will take. They are in the back garden of our old home on the day it was emptied of our remaining possessions. Historically they have ushered in the first fullness of summer. They have confirmed a warm sense of home, year after year, as the wheel turns.

But now I am leaving a place Elaine and I called home for many years, at a time when the future remains uncertain on many levels. The stability of the wheel itself, or at least of its local manifestations, is palpably in question. You have to work perversely hard, now, to maintain an ignorance and denial of the climate crisis. Even here, in a cool temperate island.

I cannot dwell in sadness alone, potentially drawn down into a stuck and demobilised distress. The health and viriditas in my bodymind won’t allow it. I find myself staying open to a delight in what is given, here, in these seasonal images. The invitation to celebrate the bounty of nature in an everyday modest setting is very strong, and I respond. The nudge to make a record is likewise strong. Records and memory matter. They change any living moment to which they are invited. The opportunity to contemplate this image of peonies, knowing the context of the picture-taking, is a resource for future times.

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September 4, 2021

THE COMING OF AUTUMN

Walking in the woods yesterday I saw the coming of autumn, in the sky and in the trees. I felt it too, and not just in my physical sensation of coolness. I experienced a mood of loss and ending, not limited to the summer of 2021.

The natural wheel of the year, where I live, has classically been one of soft transitions. Our seasons have merged gently into each other, with September as a modified extension of summer. Leaves gently turn, but there is not much of a fall. For much of my life I enjoyed the sense of a predictable pattern in the the turning of the wheel. That sense has eroded in recent years and has now reached vanishing point. Hence the feeling of loss.

Summer 2021 seemed to die in August, after a short and faltering life. It may be succeeded by a once unseasonable hot spell, or it may not. Considering the effects of the climate crisis in other parts of the world, this is hardly dramatic. But this weird summer season, including a background awareness of developments elsewhere, has ended my already weakened feeling of security. The phrase ‘winds of change’ comes to mind. I think, what next? And when?

I feel challenged to be open to whatever happens, without obsolete expectations to confuse me. In the state of openness, I find that an inner peace and clarity are present. They act as my guides through a shifting, changing, world.

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August 29, 2021

WOODLAND CONTEMPLATION

Becoming the single eye, the eye of contemplation, I am a stressless, frameless window. Unboundaried and immersed, beyond the sense of window, joyful experiencing is vivid and intimate. I am a broken branch, stuck in mud. I am a sticky ooze. I am the shadowy reflection of a tree. I am ripples on water.

Walking, I am a body in movement. Then I become a space for memories. I recall the words: “a green thought in a green shade”. Relishing these words, I become a green thought in a green shade. Then I fall into the role of self-conscious observer, morphing from my original state into another one – lacking the immediacy of the first, yet still worthy of welcome.

The woods reach out to me. They and I are distinct now, though we are still held together in the dynamism of a living world. The whole of life is in these woods as summer starts to wane.

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August 12, 2021

CANAL BANK: LATE SUMMER

It is late summer now, where I live. I am conscious of earlier sunsets and darker evenings. I also notice the canal bank in floral abundance as the year begins to decline. This set of pictures was taken in a small area close to my home. The predominant colours are mauve/purple, white, and pink – all set within a rough carpet where green still predominates.

When I walk by this small stretch of land and water, I am astonished by a burst of colour and fecundity, an extraordinary profusion of life. It has the visual effect of a firework display, though silent and not perceptibly in motion to the human eye. The declining year technically makes this a decadent time, now giving the place itself an almost decadent feel. For me, the combination of mallow and purple loosestrife below illustrates this quality. I get a brief image of Morgause’s kitchen garden, seen through the eyes of a hostile Arthurian narrator, where the very lushness has a toxic and scary edge. Then the image disperses, and I am present, and myself, on the canal path once more.

Looking more deeply, I see life finding a way to flourish whenever and wherever it can. These plants, with their natural will to thrive, have found this land a good place to take root. This is good to know, providing a moment of simple happiness.

My last picture shows both sides of the canal at a narrow point. I particularly notice the grass on the far bank, waving with the breeze when it blows; otherwise still. On the near bank I see it largely as a background to more vivid and colourful plants. But on the far bank it is the foreground. I enjoy its taken-for-granted strength and tenacity for awhile, before continuing my walk.

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July 15, 2021

HIGH SUMMER 2021

It is some time since the solstice. Where I live, the time between sunrise and sunset has shortened by about 20 minutes. Though the change is still slow, it is noticeable now. But I do not yet feel a pull towards Lughnasadh/Lammas. I took these pictures on 11 July, and this is its own time, a time of abundance and ripening. They give me the sense of a summer that has kept its promise and is managing to mature despite a year of patchy weather.

At this stage, the willows below, early to leaf, remain majestic in their abundance – whilst hinting at a tiredness that will manifest in late summer, when energy starts to withdraw, and turn inwards.

But this isn’t the case with the treescape as a whole. In the woods I continue to find the fresh green of a vigorous life energy. It is the time when I get the strongest sense of a canopy, even in a relatively small and modestly wooded space. It hints at the glories of old forest, even though it isn’t one.

Whilst there is a sense of flora moving into new stages of their cycle, the process is gradual. There is time and leisure for slow change. There is no sense of having to be perfectly one thing and then, immediately, perfectly another.

Above all. I notice subtle differences in shape and colour within a setting of predominantly green growth. My gaze is drawn by intricacies of variation, contrast and patterning within this always astonishing display of life, and its natural will to be and become.

In mid-July, life rests in its moment, with harvesting some way off.

July 9, 2021

TREE MANDALA: GORSE

In my wheel of the year tree mandala (1), gorse covers the period from 9-31 July. It is the last tree of the summer quarter, handing over to apple at Lughnasadh/Lammas on 1 August. The illustration is from The Green Man Tree Oracle (2).

I know from my childhood that gorse can make a tame, gently sloping hill seem wild and edgy. Navigating through gorse requires an eye to self-care. Flowering gorse is not confined to summer, but for me it is anchored to summer in memory. Seen from afar, gorse was a vivid harbinger of the summer holidays with days of warmth (rising to heat) and freedom to roam. It carried a hint of adventure and disinhibition. Sometimes the promise was fulfilled. Sometimes there was a hot heavy dullness broken by only storms, and a degree of frustration. July days were unpredictable.

Gorse (ogham name Onn) was sacred to the Irish god Lugh, and thus to light, to all manner of skills, and to the fire in the head of ecstatic creativity. Lugh has a trickster aspect, and can be seen in certain lights as more a god of lightning than of the sun. He has a cousinship with the Brythonic Lleu Llaw Gyffes, the warrior magician of the fourth branch of the Mabinogi. He has also been linked to the Norse Loki, for tricksterism is an aspect of the smouldering fertile mind.

Gorse makes good fuel and so has an obvious role in fire festivals. In Brittany, 1 August was marked by the Festival of the Golden Gorse and gorse has has strong associations with the faery folk. It is a plant of power. We cannot make assumptions about how we stand with it. A wary respect might be wise.

NOTE: This post brings to an end a year in which I have featured the sixteen trees in this mandala. I began on 16 July 2020 with an out-of-sequence Rowan (3), because I had had a vivid encounter with a rowan tree in the woods. (Its time in the mandala is 9-31 October.). Then I moved on to apple (4) and blackberry (5). From the Autumn Equinox (1) the enterprise became more systematic. As a blogger, I won’t be repeating the cycle in the same way in the coming year. Once for the record feels enough.

(1) This mandala is based on my personal experience of trees in the neighbourhood as well as traditional lore. Moving around the summer quarter from Beltane, 1 May, the positions and dates of the four trees are: Hawthorn, south-east, 1-23 May; Beech & Bluebell, south-south-east, 24 May – 15 June; Oak, south, 16 June – 8 July; Gorse, south-south-west, 9 – 31 July. The autumn quarter then starts with Apple at Lughnasadh/Lammas. For a complete list of the sixteen trees, see https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2020/autumn-equinox-2020-hazel-salmon-awen/

(2) John Matthews & Will Worthington The Green Man Tree Oracle London: Connections, 2003

(3) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2020/rowan/

(4) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2020/three-trees/

(5) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2020/mr-bramble/

May 26, 2021

TREE MANDALA: BEECH AND BLUEBELL

In my wheel of the year tree mandala (1), beech and bluebell together cover the period from 24 May-15 June – taking over from hawthorn and handing on to oak. In this instance, I am drawn by the powerful visual effects of bluebells carpeting woodland in which beech is the dominant tree.

The picture above is an old one. The last year in which Elaine and I went into this space (2018 or 2019) the wood felt weird. Part of it – not quite the area in the picture – was a scene of desolation. A lot of the trees had been taken down, with a kind of ragged insensitivity. It felt like a bad moment in Lord of the Rings. I don’t know the story behind this. Perhaps there was disease, or some other genuine need for a thinning out of trees. It was certainly systematic, with notices about the work being done – the result of management, and not of vandalism, in the conventional usage of our language.

The beech is an elegant tree, and I experience it as having a soft energy. It has been traditionally feminised, and thought of as ‘Queen of the Woods’, sharing the place of honour with the kingly oak according to The Green Man Tree Oracle (2). The same source says that “slivers of beech wood and leaves were once carried as talismans to bring good luck and increase creative energy”. Local British traditions associate the beech (ogham name phagos) with serpents “probably because of its long serpentine root systems”, they add – and I wonder too about the archaic link between the Goddess and serpent power in many cultures.

My personal connection with the tree itself is limited. It concerns this time of year and the association with bluebells. Indeed the bluebell is my main focus, with the beech as complementary. If they are separated, I follow the bluebell, and the picture below is a recent one, of the Spanish variety, from our garden. For me, it represents a favourite moment in the year, to be appreciated while it lasts. It reminds me simultaneously of the poignancy of impermanence (including my own) and the beauty of the eternal present (within which I am held).

(2) John Matthews & Will Worthington The Green Man Oracle London: Connections, 2003.

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contemplativeinquiry

Tag: Summer

September 6, 2022

AFTER RAIN

August 4, 2022

THE GATEWAY TO TWILIGHT

July 9, 2022

REFLECTIONS IN A PRIORY GARDEN

May 21, 2022

PEONIES IN LATE MAY

September 4, 2021

THE COMING OF AUTUMN

August 29, 2021

WOODLAND CONTEMPLATION

August 12, 2021

CANAL BANK: LATE SUMMER

July 15, 2021

HIGH SUMMER 2021

July 9, 2021

TREE MANDALA: GORSE

May 26, 2021

TREE MANDALA: BEECH AND BLUEBELL