Spiralling with the Sunrise
Entering the silence
Lately I returned to the place where the words came for naked in the wildflowers. It's a beautiful piece on belonging to love and to landscape, take a read if you haven't already.
Returning was, well, quite clearly a returning. When we come again to a place where we once encountered Mystery, there's a deep response in the soul and the bones. Like a cave into which you have spoken and now the echoes invite you ever onwards.
I feel it as a spark within which whispers, more awaits you here.
On our last day, when the first fingers of daylight crept between the curtains and called me awake, I rose up and went to greet the dawn. I followed the wild call out of the cabin and into the field to the place where a winding path is still mown, where the wildflowers had grown in the soft heat of summer.
Now the land is bare and sharpened by a clear frost and the thought comes,
when all the flowers are gone, the land itself shall stand up and speak.
*
I want to share my experience from that morning and I'm going to resist the temptation to write you a polished piece. My ego desperately wants to craft every word so that you love the language, so that you end this piece admiring my skill as a writer… it’s a bit humbling, actually. Perhaps perfectionism is a sneaky way we protect ourselves from shame.
Instead, I'm going to keep you as close to the actual experience as I can. I'm going to offer you the audio and the written transcript below – pick your preferred medium. It's a voice memo I recorded right after that sunrise walk. I sat down on the decking of the cabin, watching the sun climb higher in the sky and spoke the experience straight into my phone.
I hope it speaks to you, in whatever way it does.
(Side note: If you choose the audio, make sure you scroll to the end of the e-mail afterwards for details of a live meditation event I'm offering next week for the start of Lent. Another vulnerable thing; it’s the first time I’ll be speaking from a contemplative Christian perspective. It’s taken a lot of courage. I feel both terribly unqualified and deeply joyful about the whole thing. Join me if you can.)
THE WINDING OF THE PATH 05/02/25
Love speak to me and through me
I walk the labyrinth path that is no labyrinth, that is no spiral, but a meandering curve where once there were wildflowers and now there is land, beautiful land. Slow moving land; wisdom land. And the mist rolls across the path, a thin band across the field, and the sunrise beckons.
I am aware I am entering a gate. I begin to walk, calling presence to that Presence, the stillness within and within all things. Godself that wraps the world.
I move, feet upon the path, just a curving line through the grass towards a gate that is – I think at the beginning – my destination. I think of how badly I want to skip to the end; to be a fully healed, healthy body. And I find the walk slows me right down, one foot on the path. Every movement forward, a sacred welcoming home.
I begin to forget about the gate and watch the path beneath my feet. This booted foot, slippered against cold, placed down upon the frost-rimed grass. I find the solid beauty of it, this foot, then the next. Every moment becomes the path.
Still the mist coils and slow the sun rises and bit by bit the line of shaded trees grows nearer, but now the gate is no longer pressing on my being. I am here, after all, for this foot on the path.
Everywhere I see evidence of where the wild flowers were; tiny little stumps of stems blackened by the rain and the endless, rolling cold. I see tiny little types of wildflower not in flower but in frost.
I am the one who moves. The land is watching me. Holding its breath, holding me, holding each step.
When at last I reach towards the gate, I grow very slow indeed. I want to be each footstep and the land, oh this deep land! Of chalk and soil and rock and stone and porous water. Ancient bones.
I will not speak of moments at the gate.
And I return. When I turn back, the mist has cleared, the path that returns me is effortlessly outlined. Surrendered, I move, flowing more smoothly this time.
And the prayer comes, love speak to me and through me.
And so, I pray. Together as I move, together as I breathe, until that prayer has me stop and sit still upon the ground. Moving no more.
I do not want to lift my head and gaze out upon the field, where lower down the valley the mist is still falling away. I just want to be on this patch of ground looking at the intimate curves and coils, the straits of the grass, the tiny delicate pearls of frost. I want to feel myself here. This patch of ground, I feel it going on, miles deep.
I see an achingly intimate world. Something that has come to me many times through my illness, this lesson that we must learn; that life is not out there but right here, in here.
I think of all the times that I sat on Tresco in those early days, unable to move and to explore the place that I loved and see all of its beauty and wonder. And how I lay in the garden, looking at one flower. Reminding myself; all of life, mirrored back to me. This whole island, in this flower.
That's the magic that life can be.
Embrace it whole. Say a raucous yes!
Together we rise, like this ball of light now rising over shaded trees.
At the gate.
The Stillness Journey
To me, the season of Lent arrives with a deep call inward; spiralling to the place God waits for me in the silence. It's the transformation journey; following the call into quiet places and coming back changed.
This year I want to help open this space for others, to share the things I've learned from a hell of a lot of silence.
Live Event: Open the Stillness
Come and join me in meditation on Wednesday 5th March at 2.30pm UK time, here on the meditation app, Insight Timer. We’ll reflect on Lent as an invitation to spiritual transformation and experience a stillness practice from the contemplative Christian tradition.
It’ll be around 30 minutes and is free to all, you just need to download the app first. Although I’ll use primarily Christian language for the divine, please know this is an event for everyone. Contemplation is more about letting go of all our ideas of God and dwelling in the experience, than engaging with a specific belief system. No one can exclude us from relationship with the divine, when the doorway lies within our own heart.
If you have the Premium subscription to Insight Timer, watch out for my meditation course which will also be released on March 5th. This will be a deeper dive into the transformative stillness of Lent with a series of contemplative practices, plus space for journalling and reflection.
These are the practices that have transformed me, from the inside out. I’m offering them into the world nervously and joyfully, with all the love they birthed within me.
I truly hope they light another heart and lift us all onwards.
To the winding path,
Miranda x