A Proper Winter
These are stories and drawings from my four month long silent winter meditation retreat.
This series of drawings is called 'A Proper Winter' because it feels like its the only real winter I have ever had.
I think winters should be the time for silence, solitude, reflection, contemplation and walks in the wild wind and rain. With space to go deeply inwards and restore our subtle ways of knowing that get blown away in the busyness of our summer focused culture.
The first month that I arrived I cried everyday, I had no idea how much of a relief it would feel to know that for four whole months, no one would ask me to do anything or go anywhere or be anything. A blessed relief.
By the time i left in spring, my soul felt like it had rested so deeply, I was so ready to go out and meet the world.
This series of drawings is called 'A Proper Winter' because it feels like its the only real winter I have ever had.
I think winters should be the time for silence, solitude, reflection, contemplation and walks in the wild wind and rain. With space to go deeply inwards and restore our subtle ways of knowing that get blown away in the busyness of our summer focused culture.
The first month that I arrived I cried everyday, I had no idea how much of a relief it would feel to know that for four whole months, no one would ask me to do anything or go anywhere or be anything. A blessed relief.
By the time i left in spring, my soul felt like it had rested so deeply, I was so ready to go out and meet the world.
The Tunnel-Cave
One day I was out walking when my left knee started hurting, I kept walking for a while and then stopped, I looked to my left and behind a scrubby thorny hedge row, was a forested slope. For some reason I thought that going up the slope would help my knee, so I made my way through the blackthorn and brambles, and up I went. I was quite surprised to find as I walked, that the slope led down to an abandoned quarry, hidden and overgrown, I inspected the area and thought about a local priest who used to hide in quarries and pray. As I walked down and back up another steep slope, I saw something very peculiar. I went around, up and down, then back on myself through more brambles, and there under the hawthorn, was a big black dark hole, surrounded by earth and rubble. By this point I was quite scared, who knows what one will find in a tunnel-cave. I ran back to the silence of the nunnery and left my friend Nic an urgent note saying an important adventure was awaiting us.
We set off the next day, 8am, torches in hand. When we arrived just as the sun was rising, I think we were both pretty scared to go down that dark hole, but we knew we had to. We descended into the steep entrance of the dark, slippery, damp hole, slowly we went, cautiously descending step by step, down we went, further in, until eventually the tunnel-cave seemed to come to a dark ending. I now know that the tunnel-cave actually goes on forever, but we weren't quite ready to understand that. Each time I returned, I found it went further and further into the ground, I found a lot of things in the tunnel-cave, I found darkness, fear, an umbrella that belonged to my friend Paul, rocks, bats, spiders, flies, drop of water, gold, friends, information, graffiti from 1898, a hermit, and a couple of soulful troglodytes. My knee stopped hurting soon after I entered.
We set off the next day, 8am, torches in hand. When we arrived just as the sun was rising, I think we were both pretty scared to go down that dark hole, but we knew we had to. We descended into the steep entrance of the dark, slippery, damp hole, slowly we went, cautiously descending step by step, down we went, further in, until eventually the tunnel-cave seemed to come to a dark ending. I now know that the tunnel-cave actually goes on forever, but we weren't quite ready to understand that. Each time I returned, I found it went further and further into the ground, I found a lot of things in the tunnel-cave, I found darkness, fear, an umbrella that belonged to my friend Paul, rocks, bats, spiders, flies, drop of water, gold, friends, information, graffiti from 1898, a hermit, and a couple of soulful troglodytes. My knee stopped hurting soon after I entered.
Peahens
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My First New Year With a Nun
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One day I was walking and I met a very small dog. I knelt down to stroke it and it licked my hand. I decided to sit with it, just for a moment. We were busy exchanging strokes and licks when we started to hear a squabbling noise from behind a wall. It soon became clear where the squabbling was coming from as nine very strange looking birds appeared. The birds were black with white spots (just like my trousers) and they had wrinkly grey bits on their heads. The very small dog and I were sat very still so the birds decided to come and see who we were. I had an inkling that perhaps they were already friends with the very small dog. They came closer and closer, squabbling the whole time, until they got close and scared and ran off squabbling. I got up and said goodbye to the very small dog and carried on walking. A little way down the road the dog started barking at me, I looked back and I saw a big yellow sign that said “SLOW DOWN PLEASE”. So I did.
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This is my friend Venerable Candā, she is a nun. Today I found out that Candā means one who is illuminated like the moon.
Will and I had spent all day preparing the fire for new year. A few years before a big apple tree had fallen down, and we had some very large pieces of wood to burn, We also found a piece of wood from the old part of the house that was hundreds of years old. Whilst we were making the fire, everyone was inside the hall meditating, listening to the sweetest sounds. We were drinking hot chocolate and giggling about those walking meditations where you decide to become a kangaroo. It wasn’t long before everyone came to join us and we sat around the fire in silence watching the old wood burn. It was golden, and the pieces of paper burnt quickly inside. I slept by the fire that night, under the moon and the darkly barked Elm tree. The wind was so strong and the raindrops large and heavy. Two days later I walked by the fire pit and the old wood was still smoking. |
The Blue Scarf
One day, it was Christmas day, or maybe the day after, it is hard to tell when days don't make sense anymore. My friend Tom was ill and working too hard, so he decided to leave the monastery and de-robe for a while. He had arrived many years before, at the same time as the wind. On the day he left, the wind was stronger and wilder than ever before. He knitted a woolen river to go around my neck, i have been wearing it ever since, i'm wearing it now. I hope Tom comes back to the monastery one day.
My Friend Gideon
This is my friend Gideon, he is a philosopher and he has always been here. After meal times he takes a small cup of black coffee and sits in an armchair in the library by the window. When I walk by he always waves and nods his head. He told me that he often sits there meditating with his eyes wide open, and often at night when I walk past the window from outside, it's just him and the mouse sitting there. When he left I cried, first he went to Oxford, then France and so on, perhaps he will go on forever. When he left he gave me a rainbow coloured fish to look after, the fish could say only two words: "Sweet dreams"
Mouse Patrol
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I was on slug patrol duty at the nunnery and I decided to stay up all night in case any big ones walked by. I took the stripey chair from the poly tunnel and placed it by the backdoor. I had heard that lugs usually use the back door. I sat down in the chair and waited, I must have fallen asleep as I woke up just before sunrise and saw not a slug, but a mouse! The rainbow chard was looking sad and withered so I pulled it up and saw that the root had mostly vanished, only small teeth marks were left. I sat all day on the stripey chair now on mouse patrol and saw 4 sightings. By dusk the mice had gone to bed and the slugs were back.
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Prostrations
One day, Nic said to me after we had finished our 108th prostration in the chapel, "you know it quite unusual what we are doing right now, most people would think this was odd." To be honest I hadn"t really thought of it like that, but when i did i realised she was right. We met every morning at 6am, it was winter and I walked through the graveyard by the light of the moon when it was there, I often stumbled down the path hoping ghosts didn"t really exist. She was always there before me and I knew she was there because I could see the candle flickering through the glass window. I would push open the heavy wooden door and step into the cold damp air of the chapel. We knelt in front of the golden cross and did our prostrations, always 108, its tradition. We took it in turns to count. Praying and exercising is a great combination. Im not sure who we were praying to, but every time my head touched the floor it felt sacred. After we had finished we would kneel in silence, catching our breath, awaiting the glistening dawn and bird song. The robin was always the first to break into a joyful tune.