What is here?

I am in the garden. I am lying back against the cushions of the outdoor sofa we built last month. It’s a little too cold, but the brightness of the light pulled me out here before I really knew what I was doing, like a seedling instinctively stretching itself out of shadow.

As I write, a sparrow is perched above my head on the telephone wire, shouting warnings at the striped cat that sits on the wall looking up at it. I can hear a dozen more birds at various distances, their contributions overlapping then pausing, different volumes and rhythms coming, going. Blackbird sings a line every few seconds. Sudden wren song, here then gone. Magpie percussion. Something important is being written and performed around me, no one thing trying to take the lead, and that performance stretches on and on and on.

I’ve let a long breath out. I knew it would be easier to write outside. I wanted to write today to tell you that bimblings is changing, because I am changing, but I didn’t know how to start. Bear with me as I tell you why.

I am still finding it hard to put into words this strange metamorphosis I seem to be traversing, partly because it is so very slow. Over months, or perhaps it has even been years now, I have been feeling myself disassemble. When I fight it, it is terrifying, but when I surrender, which is becoming easier and easier to do, I feel more at home and at peace than I ever have. It is both a profound and boring transformation, impossible to make entertaining or cohesive. Terrible content for a blog.

Who I thought I was and who I thought I should be feels more and more like a radio playing in another room. What’s clearer and cleaner is mostly silence and space, a bright kind of watchfulness, and — often now — a feeling of love so immense that it makes me feel invincible.

The problem is, I panic. Something happens, some stress or worry. I lose myself for a little while. I watch myself say entirely unnecessary, unskillful, muddled things and repeat patterns that have never helped. But, more quickly now the tide turns again. I find myself just breathing, breathing, a miracle made of breath.

This year, I have been better learning to ride the waves of all this. I have learnt how to let myself float onto dark shores where I doubt everything about myself, then drift back, back into the great ocean that holds the sparrows and the greenfly walking circles on my knee, where all this endless trying I do can be seen for what it is: a silly mistake. One to smile at, a hand on my chest. Oh, what it is to be a person.

The problem is, I don’t have much to show for it. I have never been less ‘productive’ in conventional terms, more needing of rest, patience, time. I keep thinking that the more I let myself dissolve, the more I might be given something back, that some grand plan or purpose might descend from on high, or that I might receive an inpouring of clarity, energy, passion and direction or even health(!) , but it’s not happening, or at least not yet. Writing this out here in the garden, I notice that nothing much around me is flowering yet either, that it’s mostly bud and leaf and root, and I feel more at peace in my own not-flowering. Out here, I know it’s all OK, somehow.

Most of my time and energy right now is spent listing things on Ebay to sell and with every parcel that leaves, I feel lighter. Each day, I draw a Tarot card and the message is always the same: let go, let go, let go. And so I do, even though it feels like a financial and professional free-fall, even knowing there might be hard ground coming.

Sometimes I wonder if the lesson I’m being led to learn is how to relax, truly — not in terms of comfort but in a much more radical way. For 44 years, I have been closing fists inside myself, one after another. Fists tight closed around things I believed, or thought I needed, or things I thought should be, or things I’ve feared, and one by one I’m learning how to open those fists until no tension is left. Each fist that opens returns me a little more to who, or what, I really am — not a held-together, important person at all really, something far bigger and wider and wilder than that. The unsettling thing is that this ‘me’ that is left feels very, very out of sync with the rest of the world. It is getting harder to find my place here.

Lying still the other day, wide open, a question floated up. I am learning, slowly, to distinguish between the thoughts that come from the maze of my own dysfunction and the thoughts that come from that wilder, deeper, relaxed place, and this question was of that quiet, true kind.

What is here?

I realised that this is the question that obsesses me more than anything. It is the thing I always circle in my writing and my wider work. Perhaps it’s even the thing you know me best for.

Not what do I think shouldn’t be here.

Not what do I wish was here instead.

But what is actually here?

What I love about this question is the challenge inside it to turn towards rather than away. To open up another fist. To really look.

Often, other beings are here. Sometimes it is an experience that is unfolding; like the bird song around me now but with layers of sensations, emotions, thoughts, stories, coming, going. Sometimes what is here is profoundly painful. Sometimes it is beautiful. Sometimes it is resolutely, deliciously mundane.

Whatever is here, I find two invitations nestled inside it.

The first is, what can this thing teach me?

And not just what can it teach me about myself, but what can it teach me about itself, about life in general?

The second invitation is, how might what is here be further expressed or acknowledged? What might it be a springboard to? What could my response be?

I thought for a while about the answers to that.

My response might simply be gratitude. My favourite prayer is thank you thank you thank you, I love you. I say that one a lot.

Or my response might be an honouring in some way, some act to show deeper respect and care.

I might decide on a creative response — to write like this, or paint, or make something — or I might be inspired to wider action, to change something, or to do something in service.

Or I might be called simply to stillness. To witness. To be with.

And there: I have just described my life. Perhaps I have just described my calling? One question — what is here? — two invitations, and all their possible responses.

This is what I’d like bimblings to reflect too.

Lately, I have not been sure what this space is for, just as I’ve not been sure what I am for.

I think my question is the answer. That’s why I’m going to rename this Substack What Is Here? and simply aim to keep answering this question as honestly as I can, as often as I can, for as long as I can. I have bimbled enough. It’s time to focus my heart a little more keenly. Deciding this has given me a strong sense of YES in the vast fog of my wider uncertainty. I think I need to follow this direction.

The main body of my writing shall remain free for all to read, but there is another truth I have to respond to. I am running out of income. My slowness has a consequence. I rely on Substack to help me pay our bills and so I think I’d like to offer a little something below a paywall too.

I have been so conscious of and thankful for your profound generosity, all of you — you have kept me afloat — but paid numbers are dwindling, inevitably. Mostly I think this is because I haven’t been able to offer anything different and because a thousand more cohesive Substacks are able to offer you more for your money!

Would you help me decide what to offer now? I want to make this space worth your time and investment. What might be helpful, or beautiful, or special for you?

Here are some ideas. Please vote for your favourite.

Thank you, my friends. It will take me a little while to design a new logo etc, but I’m looking forward to starting this new chapter soon.

Come with me? There is so much to see.

Buy me a coffee