EVENING IMAGES 14 JUNE
Flowers and a painted wall
Direct us to the park:
People, space, and clouds.
Contemplative Inquiry
This blog is about contemplative inquiry
Tag: Wheel of the Year
June 2, 2025
PLANT POWER IN A CATHEDRAL CLOSE
The garden in Gloucester Cathedral’s close is currently a magnificent riot. I was on a walk there with Elaine and we particularly noticed two powerful seeming plants that we couldn’t identify. We simply sat with them, unnamed, and bathed in their energy. It was a glorious 1 June, the first day of our official meteorological summer, and one to savour and enjoy. Only later did we do any research.
We are fairly sure that the plant above is yellow archangel and the plant below, looking like a giant thistle, is cardoon (canara cardunculus) aka prickly artichoke. Friendly feedback from readers on these identifications is welcome. If we are right both plants have long been recognised as sources of power and healing.
In our older traditions, yellow archangel was a symbol of harmony between flora and fauna. A custodian of wildlife, it fostered a bond that transcends mere survival. Herbalists still use this plant to relieve gout, sciatica and other pains of the joints and sinews. It has also been used to draw out splinters and thorns, clean and heal persistent sores, and to dissolve tumours. Yellow archangel can be used as food, in salads, soups and teas. In the wheel of our year, yellow archangel flowers fully after the bluebells die away.
Cardoon is also a plant of power. Traditionally associated with Mars, it has the virtues of strength, protection and abundance. It is has been credited with the power to ward off evil spirits. It is also connected to ideas of nourishment, the riches of nature and, latterly, sustainable gardening. The plant can grow to 2.5 metres in height. Its thick stalks are used as a vegetable. Its full flowering is in late summer and autumn, with thistle-like purple flowers.
These plants, in this garden, are a celebration of values as well as of nature and healing. I see our world through the lens of Modern Druidry and Paganism. The custodians of this space will have a Christian lens. I am happy to note that in this context they seem to be much the same. When in this space, I feel that I am in a beautiful and energising oasis in the city.
May 27, 2025
ENTERING SUMMER 2025
For me, mid May is the beginning of summer. All of the pictures in this post were taken between 16 and 24 May. It was a warm and sunny time that has now morphed into something else – cooler, wetter and windier.
It was a time of brightness and growth. The plant kingdom showed a tremendous will to live and flourish: above, on the canal path as it skirted adjacent apartment buildings; below, close to the Greyfriars ruins, looking out towards the old town.
The following three pictures are all from Llanthony Priory, in what was once once the ‘physic garden’ of the monks. What moves me about all of them is the vitality, variety and colour they display. Such an affirmation of abundance.
The same benign and dynamic period saw a big step forward in my wife Elaine’s mobility. She can now leave and return to our flat, sit in pleasant public spaces, walk around town, attend local events and shop on her own. This is new and different for both of us, emancipatory yet still slightly unfamiliar. A new way of life is emerging for both of us.
On 25 May, about the time the weather broke, I celebrated my 76th birthday and entered my 77th year. As I wrote to one of my grandsons, ‘sounds terrible, feels OK’. In truth, it feels more than OK. I feel good.
It was also the anniversary of Elaine’s homecoming after her hip fracture in Gran Canaria, her hospitalisation for a month there, her repatriation and another 12 days in the Gloucester Royal Hospital. The year has been a tough one, especially after the strain on Elaine’s already vulnerable heart became fully manifest. But Elaine herself has been an inspiration with her own will to live and thrive. This feels like a good moment in my life and our lives together. Much gratitude for that.
May 1, 2025
A MAY’S EVE GIFT
Such casual abundance
In each passing moment:
A May’s Eve gift.
April 27, 2025
TOWARDS BELTANE 2025: BLUE SKY HEALING
Thursday 24 April was a landmark afternoon for my wife Elaine and me. We were able to walk, sit and have coffee in Gloucester Docks. Such ordinary and taken for granted pleasures – until April last year, when Elaine broke her hip. Later, as her bones slowly recovered, her underlying heart problems were triggered at the turn of the year, setting back her overall recovery.
We are in a different place now. Elaine’s physical recovery, and her recovery of agency, are creating a new reality. The picture above is generally tranquil, yet includes the energy of a seagull in flight. The sun is getting warmer. We can relax a little, and celebrate, enjoying the promise of a new season, in the run-up to Beltane 2025.
Now, contemplating the image of a still boat against the background of Alney Island in its spring abundance, I feel grateful for the moment and grateful for our lives.
April 17, 2025
A NEW LENS
Yesterday I bought a new phone. I find this process stressful and have been putting it off for a long time. But now I have the phone, I can celebrate a new camera. These pictures were taken between 5.30 and 7 pm yesterday evening, when the sun didn’t set until after 8.
My celebration of the camera, here, was also a celebration of clear light and a more abundant greening. The spaces are familiar, but their specific manifestation and my specific experience were, as always, new. My feelings were those of simple gratitude, pleasure and appreciation.
Above, I enjoyed the varied colours and forms of leaves, and the effects of sunlight on them. Below, I noticed the abundance of leaves and catkins on a birch tree.
Towards the water margin, I saw tangled green fecundity on the ground, and the freshness of full rich spring, at the same time utterly magical and yet so familiar, so taken-for-granted that it is easily passed without noticing.
Still closer to the water, and looking out over it, is another familiar scene, this time with contrasts of light and shade and emphasising the energy of rippling water.
Finally, big sky and the power of blue. I was especially drawn to the apparent division of the water. It looks like a tidal effect in the canal, but I am not sure of the cause. Within my contemplation, I am happy with the mystery.
April 2, 2025
CONTEMPLATIVE DIARY?
Recently I have wondered whether to change the name of this blog from Contemplative Inquiry to Contemplative Diary. I won’t, because the inquiry focus has been very strong over the years. It is ancestral to the diary approach and a deep influence upon it. Some of the older inquiry posts continue to be read. The most popular is A Parable About a Parable first published in July 2018 – https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2018/07/31/.
But most of my current posts are not like that. They tend to be more informal, more embedded in daily life, more obviously situated in time, place and everyday personal experience. My most recent post, Spring Forward – https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2025/03/31/ – is a case in point.
This shift in emphasis developed in the years of the Covid pandemic and is characterised by living the Wheel of the Year day-by-day (rather than festival by festival) in a specific location. I use my own photographs much more than in the early days of the blog. For me, these changes fit with a name like Contemplative Diary.
Yet the diary approach is itself a fruit of inquiry. It has emerged as I become relatively less concerned with fundamental questions. They are now settled for me as far as they can be in this life. My current work comes out of an individual life practice grounded in modern Druidry, with a firm ethical basis and a light touch in formal ritual and meditation. All of these are illuminated by the sense of a divine presence from which the world, including me, is not separate.
Contemplation and inquiry are still at the heart of my work, in simpler and more relaxed forms than was right for the early years. The diary approach marks an emerging phase of my contemplative inquiry, rather than a break with it. Where it will take me going forward, I cannot yet say.
March 31, 2025
SPRING FORWARD
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.
March 20, 2025
SPRING EQUINOX 2025
Blessings of the season! The picture above was taken at 6.46 am, a little over half an hour after sunrise here in Gloucester. It is 20 March, the day of the Spring Equinox, which will be at 9.01 am this year. It is traditionally a time of celebration, a point of balance as we move into the light half of the year and the promise it brings. After a tough, and largely housebound year, I dare to hope that Elaine and I will be able to widen our horizons as her healing continues.
March 11, 2025
EARLY SPRING: AFFIRMING LIFE
I am connecting with spring and its urgent affirmation of life – its green shine and fecundity. It is the sunrise season, the season of early growth. For me, where I live, the immediate pre-equinox period often generates a strong feeling of dynamism and emergent potential. I am in sync with the awakening earth.
Elaine’s return from hospital and the enhanced clinical support she is receiving are helping me to live this season more fully. In our joint lives we are both feeling more agency in shaping a new phase in our life together.
In this moment I feel refreshed and optimistic within my Druid contemplative path. I have adjusted my formal practice so that I have two practice sessions in the day, both of them roughly twenty minutes long. The first, at the beginning of the day and standing, is affirmative and dynamic. It includes body and energy work and a theme of healing and rejuvenation. The second, at the end of the day and sitting, is contemplative. It includes breathwork, a mantra meditation using beads, and prayer. In the modern Druid manner it includes a commitment to the collectively imperilled qualities of love, peace and justice. This shift is having a renewing and reinvigorating effect on me, as befits the season: another way of gratefully affirming the gift of a human life.
Contemplative Inquiry 