I’m on my first canal walk in a while. The picture above shows a small inlet into the bankside woods. It is Sunday 30 March, the first day of British Summer Time. I am encountering a long sunlit evening and feeling energised by the experience. I am drawing power from the clarity and strength of the light.
Sunset will be around 7.30 pm. The pictures above and below were taken a little before 6. I am glad to see blackthorn, a wood said to be used for wizard’s staffs, proclaiming the magic of spring.
A little later, I focus my attention on a vivid yet tranquil blue sky, presiding over the canal scene below. I have the same powerful sense of of clarity and strength in the light, and of drawing energy from it.
Later on, at about 6.45 pm, I find a softer, gentler quality of light as I walk homewards through the woods. Looking down, I see it on my path.
Looking up, I see soft light on slender branches and the foliage below them. It feels like celebration.
My final image is of sunlight reflected in Gloucester Docks, both on a warehouse window and on the water. The sun is low now and beginning to set. Rather than pointing at it, as it descends, I point away from it to honour and record its power in another way. This marks the completion of a rejuvenating and regenerative spring forward walk.
I am walking in woodland beside my local canal. These walks are infrequent now and all the more treasured. I notice how strong mid-afternoon light can be when the sky is clear, even on 22 October. Stepping energetically into its presence, I enter into a kind of communion. The light feels alive and I feel differently alive too – lifted, and touching into joy.
In the picture above, I feel as well as see the effects of the light on trees and water. In the picture below, I both feel and see the living light on leaves which themselves seem to greet me from their horizontal branch. I feel energised by this connection.
Looking up I see blue sky. I do not see the sun, but I can see its effects on the upper branches of trees. both subtle and magical. Looking down, I see a dance of light and shade, with the light present on a fence and on a pathway. A sense of the sacred pervades everything, and I feel blessed.
I first registered Contemplative Inquiry on 28 August 2012 and WordPress have sent me 12th anniversary greetings. That’s a long-term project by my historic standards. True, the first two years were tentative and I took an 8 month break in 2018/9. But my contemplative inquiry, both as blog and as practice, now feels like a settled part of my life. I continue to ground it in a form of modern Druidry with, Janus-like, both pagan and universalist faces.
Through my inquiry, I came over the years to understand myself as, at heart, ‘living presence in a field of living presence in a more than human world’. This may sound like something of a formula, but it is at least my own formula, providing a compressed account of my experience and understanding, It is not connected to any particular belief system, and arose through a simple recognition of what seems to be given to us, in joy and sorrow alike.
When I open and deepen to living presence, a gestalt of self-and-world, not just self, reveals itself in a sometimes transfiguring way. It is not complicated to practice or experience. In consequence I have found myself nudged, however haltingly, towards a spirit of openness, an acceptance that nothing stays the same, an ethic of interdependence and a life of abundant simplicity.
I no longer think of the inquiry as a path or journey. It is more like a deepening, or maturation, in place. Looking back at early blog posts I find seeds of my current view right at the beginning of my inquiry. As early as 2 September 2012 I wrote about Satish Kumar’s experience (1,2) of outdoor walking meditation. It made a strong impression on me. The difference today is that I have internalised it and given it my own unique flavour. This year I celebrate a clearer understanding and a more confident voice. I am grateful both to influences like Satish Kumar and to the version of me who launched this inquiry twelve years ago..
8 am, 14 July. Local woods. A little after the year’s zenith, I am in strong morning sunshine and enjoying its patterns of light and shade. A green portal lures me forward. What will I find on the next part of my journey?
I am am often moved by the effects of light, and drawn to write about them. Each experience is unique. Today, sunlight on tree bark feels warm and playful.
Below, I find a clearly defined shadow shape on the ground, the effect of the sun passing through a fence. This feels playful too, high summer’s friendly face in this place at this time. Contemplation as simple delight.
Sunday, 11 October, 6.40 am. My plan is to walk towards the dawn of a new day, but I take time to stop and photograph this liminal moment. It is still, on this normally busy road. It makes me almost nostalgic for the early days of lockdown in the spring.
In this moment, there are no cars and no other people. I am fine with the artificial light. I like the contrast of the street lights (bright and focused) with the softer light in the sky, dim yet with a promise of expansiveness. I enjoy the shadows and the presence, too, of outright darkness at this stage of my walk.
It takes me twenty minutes of enchanted meander to reach my next point, pictured above. The scene is inherently more spacious. Water and sky are prominent. It takes notable artefacts to make their presence felt. The main theme of the picture, as I look in a generally eastern direction, is the coming of the light. Clouds do not obscure it. The buildings have become more than silhouettes. There are the beginnings of colour and the detail it brings. I judge it OK to walk on the canal path itself, just visible on my right.
Another twenty minutes and the light seems to predominate, though I am not yet in full daylight. I am on the canal path. Even though the surroundings of the towpath are lushly green, the world I stand in is a little dusky, or dawny if there were such a word. Crepuscular. Looking up, I see pinkness in the sky, white clouds, hints of blue. I feel heartened and strangely moved by the effects of light on the autumn trees. They give me a warm sense of walking towards the sunrise, and encourage me to move on.
The picture immediately above is not part of my plan. It stems from delighted surprise followed by purposeful calm. Knowing about the heron in advance, I would likely have botched my picture in an anxious, clumsy effort to put the bird on record. I always have before. I think that herons fly away from me out of disdain rather than fear. This time I am a quiet human in a quiet world. I stand still for awhile and am almost elegant in my use of the phone. I wait for an intuited ‘right time’ before pressing the button. There is no drama at all. I do not know if the heron even notices me. The whole incident feels like a blessing of the still early morning.
Now, further on in my walk, the sun is on its ascent through the sky and I can picture it indirectly. The contrast between the sun kissed light areas and the shady ones is strong and vivid. I notice that, as the fading trees accept that their season is over, the ‘parasitic’ mistletoe – even the Druid Plant Oracle (1) calls it that – is gleefully green.
Now I am on my way back home. What draws my attention, after a little exploration, is the white owl. To me it looks very present and collected, situated just where it wants to be. It seems also to be acting as gatekeeper for its own arch.
I make stream of consciousness connections. I began my walk on the Bath Road. Bath is less than 30 miles away. There, the Romans turned a Celtic shrine into a city and called it Aquae Sulis (see http://www.romanbaths.co.uk/), acknowledging Sulis the Celtic goddess of the shrine. She was concerned with its waters and their healing potential whilst doubling up as a solar deity as well. The Romans called her Sulis Minerva, and that links her with owl wisdom. The white owl has a rich hinterland of associations for me. It makes the encounter significant. I note that two resonant avian images have met me on this walk into the sunrise, offering avenues for further contemplation.
(1) Philip & Stephanie Carr-Gomm The Druid Plant Oracle: Working with the Magical Flora of the Druid Tradition London: Connections, 2007. Illustrated by Will Worthington.
As the autumn deepens, I find that my canal walking has slowed down and detached itself from notions of exercise. It has become spontaneously and informally meditative. I am simply noticing what is available, rather than striving to get to some other place in myself or in the world. Followers of the Headless Way (1) describe such attention as ‘being capacity for the world’, since the world knows itself through this awareness. One of the Headless Way’s poets, Colin Oliver, has the lines (2) “In the oneness of things/ I am nowhere in sight”. I am like that with my phone/camera. I rarely have it in the selfie mode, so it is a good device for the purpose.
My combined walking and photography have become a contemplative opportunity, an informal opening to the magic of what is given, here and now, which I sometimes refer to as ‘at-homeness in the flowing moment’. They have taken their place, unplanned, at the heart of my contemplative Druidry. They enable immersion in the apparent world, and provide a setting for what I like to call valley experiences, to distinguish them from the peak experiences more often discussed. I notice also an aversion to calling this activity a ‘spiritual practice’, a feeling that comes with the image of a caged bird. Not right for the context. Not right for that in me which does this.
Through this contemplative lens I can be appreciatively open even to appearances of dereliction and decay. They are simply part of what is. When I see an old and roofless building without this accepting contemplative gaze, I can become irritated and grumpy. Why isn’t it being renovated or pulled down, one or the other? Who is responsible? But in my picture taking mode, through the lens of contemplation, I am entirely at ease. The building has its place, just the way it is.
My meditative walk can highlight processes as well as still images. A decaying rose becomes a rose hip. The dying flower makes way for fruit, which will die back in its turn after seeding the next generation. ‘Decay’ is relative.
The lens of contemplation makes space for things that would be easy to miss otherwise. A waning moon, for example at 8 a.m. …
… or the delicacy, close-up, of old man’s beard …
… or a naturally sculpted head of an unknown bird or reptile, which also offers space for a cobweb …
These walks have taught me a lot. There must have been a gestation period between the time I gave them up – what with Covid-19 and my concerns about narrow paths and passing – and the time I resumed them. Along the way I’ve gained a different perspective on their role in my contemplative life. I used to see them as ancillary. Now they seem central.
In my part of the world, we have begun the greening of the year. But I can’t go out to meet it, or if so, only a little. I can’t go out, so I have to go in. In the greening of my contemplative life, a sense of ‘living presence’ has been the key.
My bespoke liturgy speaks to me and at times asks for change. A section of my morning practice, an affirmation of ‘at-homeness in the present moment’, wants to expand into a ‘celebration of living presence’. At-homeness stood for a place of safety and regeneration. ‘Living presence’ includes that and points to more. In the celebration, I affirm myself as ‘living presence in a field of living presence: here, now and home’. I’ve added a period of walking meditation (20 minutes or so), mindful to breath and footfall and also including liv-ing pres-ence as a mantra over two full breaths.
The Phrase ‘living presence’ came up spontaneously but realising that I didn’t actually make it up, I checked up on where I first came across it. It comes from the Sufi teacher Kabir Edmund Helminski (1). “Presence signifies the quality of consciously being here … the way in which we occupy space. Presence shapes our self-image and emotional tone. Presence determines the degree of our alertness, openness and warmth. Presence decides whether we leak and scatter our energy or embody and direct it”.
For Helminski, presence is also our link to the divine. since in the bigger picture it is “the presence of Absolute Being reflected through the human being. We can learn to activate this presence at will. Once activated, we can find this presence both within and without. Because we find it extending beyond the boundaries of what we thought was ourselves, we are freed from separation, from duality. We can then speak of being in this presence”.
My picture of leaves in light against a darker background is, for me, an image of living presence. It wasn’t intended to look like this, but I’m glad that it does. It said ‘living presence’ to me as soon as I saw it. Each leaf grows out of the tree and is extended by the light of the sun. All are enabled and nourished by ‘interbeing’, the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh’s (2) reframe of ‘dependent origination’. But the elements of darkness and shade, whilst delineating the tree trunk, also suggest the mystery of a primordial nature, no-thing in itself yet making everything possible. The picture seems to be saying that the potential for greening is everywhere, outside and within.
(1) Kabir Edmund Helminski Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self New York, NY: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1992
(2) Thich Nhat Hanh The Other Shore: A New translation of the Heart Sutra with Commentaries Berkeley, CA: Palm Leaves Press, 2017
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