Well this blog post, intended as a part two of “death clearing” has taken its own time, and seems to have been telling me something during the days I’ve been walking round thinking about writing it. Telling me that what I feel and think about life, death, eternity and all that won’t be rushed, can’t be defined and seems likely to be a continuing source of contemplation and fascination that will probably last me the rest of my days. By the end of which I still might not know much more about life, death and the meaning of it all than I do now, though not from the want of thinking and wondering about it.
Making what I’ve written here a “so far” kind of summing up of these past few years. A story of the spiritual searching I’m calling a pilgrimage to an imagined future. That’s happened after and largely because of the energy that clearing has always brought to Sarah and I.
So what follows is a part two of the last piece I wrote, kind of.
I’ve decided to imagine the structure of this post as if it could be a book, one where I’ve already written all the chapters. So that what you’re going to get here is an introduction. Then links to all the completed parts. Followed by a conclusion where I’ll imagine what might come next.
Introduction
To begin with.
In putting together the links to all the relevant chapters I’ve decided the story of my spiritual searching, a kind of pilgrimage as it’s turned out, has already been told in the list of blog posts below. Needing only this bringing together in one place to tell the story. From the day back in August 2021 when some words someone else wrote about withdrawing from his activist public life chimed with me in mime, and led me that September to taking a book on holiday called “Waiting for the Last Bus” by Richard Holloway. A book that’s not even mentioned in the blog called “The Place.” But I know it’s there in the bag for my holiday reading. When it became the book that got me thinking about late life and how the gathering years might be about to require me to change and simplify almost all of my previous priorities.
The book’s been with me ever since. In my mind, on my walks and getting mentioned in blog posts as the rest of the evolving story of stopping, clearing and shifting into a late life version of being has happened. Through all the untangling of my utopian university time, and the searching for something more meaningful that questioned and replaced it. Arriving eventually a month or so back at “The Great Migration”. A culmination of sorts, for now. Where with the help of a piece of sacred Paul Simon music I’ve arrived at a place where I’m happily living with doubt and unknowing as a way of life. Having no great beliefs or non-beliefs, though strongly suspecting that this life might be all there is. But curious and more than happy to continue speculating and conversing in the time remaining to me, with other curious souls. About what this life, our universe and eternity might all have been for.
Some of which speculation I’ll begin doing after what comes next, the gathered together story of my getting to now, this imagined future, through a whole pilgrimage of a spiritual searching.
The Story of A Pilgrimage
To an imagined future
Prologue
1. On Withdrawing, August 2021. Where a fellow activist I’ve respected for years announces the ending of his public life. And begins my questioning.
2. ThePlace, September 2021. Time in Bridlington and Flamborough with some life changing holiday reading.
Part One
3. Stopping, December 2021. “Or I might just Stop”. In answer to a friend’s question about what might be next.
4. Thinking and Deciding, December 2021. In which twenty five years of self-employment is brought to its grateful end.
5. I Think That’s It, January 2022. Where a simpler life turns up one quiet January afternoon on the allotment.
Part Two
6. A Quiet Time, March 2022. Soon after deciding to take some time off from university.
7. A Spiritual Searching, April 2022. Beginning the time of cathedrals, a long thought of stay in a monastery and opting for a short while for the Quakers.
8. Sacred Islands, July 2022. A summer of living at walking pace, with Hebridean inspirations, and wearing out my boots.
9. In Happiness And Letting Go, August 2022. And release. The letting go at last of doing the wrong thing.
Part Three
10. “Long May You Shine” February 2023. A blessing from a nurse following a setback.
11. The Sounds A Heart Makes, May 2023. In which rooms and phone calls get real, life feels fragile, and a book I’ll leave behind me gets written. For my loved ones to find.
12. How Do You Want To Live? May 2023. A question considered, all through the lockdowns. And a homecoming to our place for the future.
13. Another Time Of Quiet, May 2023. A time of retreat. “Not expecting, this time, that the searching will ever find a single or simple answer”.
14. The Great Migration, July 2023. Where seven new psalms bring the pilgrimage to a place of stillness. Where I’m happy to be living with doubt and unknowing, for now.1
15. I’m Ready Now, some found and final words from May 20202
In Conclusion
Considering what might come next, beyond this time of contented unknowing.
Since I wrote the introduction and set up the story links above I’ve been gardening for an hour or so here on the allotment. And the contentment of that has made me think about the shortest of those linked chapters. The one called “I think that’s it.“ Where doing stuff like caring for this little plot of earth seemed like it might be enough.
But, aware I’ve lined myself up for some kind of predictive finish here, I realise that it might come as a let down to have merely ended this with “Actually I’m happy doing a bit of gardening”.
So what else?
Well, I’ve made some notes on that mind map there. And rather than agonise over what else to say I’m just going to copy some of them out and save you the trouble, if you were that curious, of enlarging the picture to read them.
Here they are:
“I’m contemplating a life of living simply and quietly at home with Sarah and with my other loved ones nearby. At home we’ll have our few good quality possessions, clothes, and necessary technology. But no more than is needed. And have all the time we’d each like to pursue our own interests. Mine being writing, music, reading and walking. And with some days out, though never very far away from home. From the heaven of my own imagination, which would always seem much like living in Liverpool already does, to me.
In these the years we worked for. Years of peace and ease and time with each other. Having no idea how long they will last. These years of living as a spiritual and thoughtful practice. Of caring and simple pleasures, consciously enjoyed. With our mostly empty diaries, so there is always time. For all of our time, until there is no time.”
They were my thoughts from a week or so back. And they still feel right and looked forward to, in a quietly contented kind of way. Along with this one last thought that might well do as both a conclusion and a what’s next for the spiritual thinking.
This is a concept of the poet John Keats, that Richard Holloway mentions3called “negative capability”:
“…that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”.
I love that “without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”. And take it as being happy to live on in a state of doubt and even unbelief and yet with this negative capability. Of always being more than happy to engage and converse with believers of all faiths and none who are themselves contemplating all of these similar meaning of life, death and afterwards thoughts. All of us fellow pilgrims then, glad to listen and curious to learn without the need for any of us to be right, wrong or looking to find fault with the others. For ever.
Which is as close to wisdom as I’m going to get, for now. For this one blog post. But there’ll be more thoughts, there’ll always be more. Until there are no more.
“Seven Psalms” by Paul Simon, 2023. Also a passing reference here to “The Cloud of Unknowing” an anonymous work of Christian mysticism from the 14th century I took with me to the monastery.
Not a mistaken date. “I’m Ready Now” was written long before all the other chapters, but now feels like an obvious conclusion to the sequence of them. Thanks to reader and subscriber Ann Jones who rediscovered it, long after I’d forgotten even writing it.
John Keats in a letter of 1817, quoted in “Waiting for the Last Bus” by Richard Holloway, 2018.
Very pleased to have discovered that post. I’m a great believer in serendipity. I had been scrolling back through posts you had written before I was a regular reader when I found that post. I was blown away by the beauty in the flowers and the understanding that at when we need a little nudge, nature reminds us of simplicity, nurture, patience and all manner of things. When we need a moment of heaven I think we gravitate towards our gardens, our allotments and sometimes just what is right beneath our noses, things we have overlooked in the busy ruminations of our minds. This would make a great book and I like the way you put thought into its structure.