Some Contemplations

Sept 2026

In a recent workshop exploring the elements, I spoke of how I had lost a tree friend in 2020, that I had been painting and sketching for two years. I would visit him in Greenwich Park once or twice per month, sitting on the grass gazing at the shapes of his bark and the changing colours of his leaves. I would take photos of him from many distances and angles. I wrote poems about him and to him. In time, he became my confidante; someone I could go to for support. From Morris I learned to trust in Intuition and Imagination, alongside my Intellect. From my contemplations of his changes, I could orientate myself to accepting that sometimes things and beings of the world, and thoughts must decay and die. In the recognition of these warming thoughts, I could allow myself to fall in love with people and life. Up until then, I had been carrying a conditioned and idealised version of love.

During one of my visits to spend time with my tree-friend in 2020, I arrived to discover that he had entirely disappeared. I experienced a loss so great that it felt like my beloved and best friend had died! A part of me did die, it had to. I was being invited to learn to turn inwards towards my Heart, and face all that it contained. Outer Nature has a place, but I needed to learn to love myself, even with the surrounding revelations of my shadows.

Now in 2026, as I look back, I see that Morris was not just a physical material tree at all, but a living breathing being made of the loving sacrifices of many cosmic beings through Time, who are part of the Earth; a part of our body; the elements and the ethers. They wait for human beings to hear them, to know what needs to change in our Thinking, Feelings, and Willpower to discover more capacities to Love each other, ideally without othering.

So, I am grateful to all whom I had met through my life story as I cannot see myself; I can only be reminded of my task and work here by the others I meet. We bring to each other what the other needs to come to gradually know that may be something important; perhaps forgotten long ago, that had to lay asleep for awhile.

In my case, I was overly identified with materialistic thinking that was only a one-sided view of Life. Many meanings of Death too ate a vital part of ongoing Life, and must weave rightly through my thoughts, feelings, movements, interactions, and speech.

Most of the arts-based explorations I facilitate for others who find their way to me, rests on my experiential understanding of the ever-evolving alignments with our yearly cycle, that enables us to breathe with the natural Rhythms of Life. Playfully and gradually we can learn to practice befriending endings where new potential and deeper breathing may be discovered, as part of our coming closer to each other.

Spring: Awakening & Renewal

Artistic Focus: soft pastels, sunrise, new seedlings, openness, flowing forms, seed motifs, watercolours, gentle movement

Summer: Radiance & Flourishing

Artistic Focus: bold warm colours, sun motifs, dynamic sculpture, singing, and dance

Autumn: Harvest & Transformation

Artistic Focus: earth tones, leaf and seed crafts, weaving, contemplative poetry

Winter: Rest & Inner Light

Artistic Focus: candlelight, beeswax crafts, quiet storytelling, music with deep resonance

Gentle experiences offer emotional wellbeing through creative expression, social connection, and personal growth. I invite participants from diverse backgrounds to engage in structured, supportive activities around the table, using mediums such as visual arts, music, movement, writing, and drama to explore identity, build resilience, and foster a sense of belonging.

In becoming more embodied in the wholeness of the yearly cycle which includes the months, weeks, day and night rhythms, I am appreciating the Six Soul Exercises given by Rudolf Steiner to support the balancing and harmonising of Thinking, Feeling, and Willpower, so that the heart is included - something the love and loss of Morris revealed to me, so beautifully yet painfully - revealing actual authentic love.

https://basic-exercises.com/en/

Sept 2026

I have walked past this tree many times this Summer, though I had never set eyes on it.

I recently found myself being inwardly stopped as I passed by.

Turning to see what has intuitively held my steps in place, I saw this tree.

His nakedness saddened me, and I understood him to be another picture of my research question for the week, on leprosy. I had been exploring this dis-ease from many views and had facilitated a contemplation towards this skin ailment.

Historically, lepers were othered and placed in isolated places so as not infect other people, considered to be cleaner; or rather, seen outwardly as being cleaner somehow.

There were many who were able to assist and heal the lepers too, such as St Francis of Assisi. When he was approached by someone stricken with the disease, he held in his heart the recognition that the disease has come into being out of the separation from the spiritual. He also saw the goodness in human nature, as divine spiritual forces of healing. St Francis developed his soul to be able to bring this truth to work on this stricken with skin diseases and other ailments.

Towards people's questions about diseases, Rudolf Steiner who could listen to Nature speak, offered that "medieval leprosy was a physical manifestation by the migration of the Huns whose decaying astral and etheric remnants were absorbed into the skin of European populations. The Huns were remnants of ancient Atlantean peoples undergoing a spiritual and bodily process of decay. The terror and fear caused by the Huns, eventually translated physically into leprosy". Rudolf Steiner separately connected the physical condition and quality of human skin in a current life, as being directly related to the amount of deep thinking or intellectual activity a person preferred in a previous incarnation". In Rudolf Steiner's indications of illness, the outer skin is a dis-ease of the soul.

I pondered on the many skin tones I had seen over the years and how the colours may have been different in other lives. This garment that one carries for the duration of the life story; it is the largest organ of the body, and one could say that it is the border of one, and the many others we share this world with. It breathes air into and out of its inner spaces, and this breath we share. I wondered then of what the breath carries that touches each other, perhaps even without physical touch. Having lived in London city, travel on the tube trains were tricky during the Summers, and touch and breath were one.

Whilst animals have a soul full of desires, that are a part of us human beings, Nature simply gives in her cyclical way. Then why had this tree shed his leaves so soon? Had something terrified him? Was he ill? lonely? dying?

I resolved to lay my hand on the dry bark of this tree, promptly feeling its response.

I wondered if the tree realised his nakedness.

I noticed a cluster of green leaves at the bottom by his trunk - Hope!

Through the decaying and dying, new life can arise

I resolved to check in on him in the Spring.

Ref: GA 155. The Spiritual Foundations of Morality

Sept 2026

Community V Unity / Individually V Loneliness / Freedom V Egotism

Sept 2026

Desire / Survival of the Fittest / Scarcity Consciousness

Contact Form

To be kept informed of upcoming experiences, courses,

study groups, and workshops :