A Call To Life

 

I long for the language of the trees

To receive messages on the air

Or through the ground

No longer plugged into a grid of violence and vice

But a different network

One of mutual exchange

One that nourishes the other

This timeless conversation

A coded invitation to boundless interdependence

 

Lost memories surface and call me home

I am resisting their urgency

A latent promise of wholeness feels like a risk

I don’t set off

Without a map I deliberate

Again I strain and listen for whispers

I am at war with myself

Complacency weaponised

Inside out in thought

Action too full an order

Expectation renders my creative groundwater dust dry

I am parched for the truly natural

That illusive myth

The insistent truth

 

It is true that I have forgotten the permanent throne in my heart

There grows a wild fusion of persistence and generosity

Now neglected that vital essence stirs

In all of us a profusion of depth and lightness silently gives and gives

I long for that earthy love in the cosmos of each spoon of soil

To burst forth in me

May I babble with many languages and be stilled by ancient messages

Interpret the slower clock of time and get out of the way of life eternal

 

Earthy love come sit on the wild throne of my heart

 

Let us all make room and listen intently

Let us laugh long and cry too

Usher in our unblemished spirits

Accept our damaged parts

So we can hold the gaze of life

Take the invitation of connection

And invest in communal flourishing

A Universe Within

 

This is a novella length story I wrote over lockdown, see the blurb below and maybe have a read.

After struggling through episodes of profound mental ill health Mack is living life as though in a coma. Mack's life is punctuated when he witnesses an accident. Now his life is entwined with an actual coma patient which initiates all kinds of encounters and events, beginning a life affirming process for all involved. The journey weaves together environmental issues, mental health experiences and spirituality in a search for meaning and vitality. The vital issues tackled in its pages around mental health stigma, recovery, existential dread and trying to be human in a confusing world are themes that many will relate to.

The story is a meditation and celebration of the natural world and friendship.

Available on Kindle

In Darkness Light. In Stillness Dancing

We meander up the track in the way only toddlers know how to. Lola is leading me on an adventure, gifting me her eyes and setting the pace. There is no overriding aim yet a thousand possibilities, no urgency except for the present. From sour blackberry to sweet blackberry we scour the bushes and delight in the butterflies, the flowers, the stones on the ground. I reflect on the past few months, how steady waves of love have accelerated the continued healing of my heart, replacing marrow deep dread and groundwater fear with the abundant love of the spirit. The journey of a soul crushed, a mind scattered and body abandoned is another story. Right now, as my daughter points to the moss infused woods the antenna of my heart is more responsive than it has been for years, porous and pulsing I experience a unity which chases despair from the unknown corners of my being and replaces it with joy. Such gratitude to arrive in this place of now, which swells as my mind further stills. This foretaste is a blessing that transfigures all the straining, the countless pills and tears.  Experiences like these render new meaning to the pain and the showing up to therapy and the stumbling through the grey dust of life. I consider the friends and family who have loved me forwards on the journey and the way nature provided sanctuary when no human structures could. How every word was holy, whether it was repeating the Jesus prayer, a mantra or cry for help, even in profound felt absences God was fuller than my idea of what I needed.

We arrive at a pool of water cupped by generous oaks, beech and pine. Each tree a vertical pillar of flowing water transmitting their unique energy fields over the surface of the pool. Each one cooling the air and directing its flow. We sit next to one another on the jetty, my feet immersed in the fresh water, hers dangling above it. How much love was released when we first met is a wonderful mystery, my thawing in parallel with her growth, a trajectory of subtle change. Time has slowed down. Dragonflies with ancient sight watch us in slow motion. They sketch geometric lines across the water like they did for the dinosaurs. Their joyous levitations blur colour with sound and their acrobatic collisions with each other score the constant dance of life. The same spirit that brooded over primordial oceans now spirals within and between us and around us, we are encircled, we are held.

With a directive tone and twinkle in her eye Lola says ‘daddy, water’. Pulling at my t-shirt and pointing, she wants me to get in. The invitation is lovely. Taking off my clothes I slide into the water up to my neck with my hands on the jetty, conscious of Lola sliding in after me. I feel calm, she is sat cross legged seemingly in a state of bliss. She is delighting in me being in the water. With a degree of authority, urgency even, Lola instructs me to put my head under the water. She can’t say the exact words but it doesn’t take long to clarify that she wants me to fully immerse myself. I plunge in, as I resurface I notice the ripples catching the light, waves of sunlight in even spacing travel up her little body and across her face. ‘Again’ she says, each time I rise Lola chants ‘again’ with a beaming face. Every submission casts a fresh layer from a tired self aside. The creases of my mind unfold into peace. Psychic fractures fused together and knitted new. Again I go under, again I emerge and the water runs from my face and with it the need to be right, a gentleness of spirit is available. Again I am under water, I rise up out of self-loathing and small horizons and into a pervading goodness. I kiss Lola’s feet as her laughter calls forth mine. In wonder, I hear the call to let the spirit change me and bear their fruit. A pre-occupation with myself could be replaced with kindness, instead of a dissatisfaction with reality, patience is possible and that desire for control can be shed for faithfulness. With clarity I felt empowered to step into self-control and away from the mindless habits of our culture of comfort. Are we not all beings of light? The one and the same light? May this not remain hidden, or unrealised, may it brighten as we surrender. It is my experience that we cannot manufacture the faith or the love or the hope, they are all in the waiting wrote TS Eliot. His counsel was to wait without thought, I don’t know if that is sound advice or not, though it speaks to my journey so far. His poem 'wait without hope' found me at the right time, this pieces title is a nod to that fact.    

We headed back, sunlight warm on our skin. Child curled in my arms, having held the space for me she now rests. I have been on a slow walk back to the centre of my being, though there have been strides too, moments arriving quickly in unexpected fullness, like today. The ordinary sacred moments like noticing the shadows on the flank of a tree trunk, an honest conversation, sharing food, of someone praying with me, or in re-connection or in solitude. The encounters were always gifts, making it possible to embrace the shared gift we have in life. In the centre of the soul waits God, for we are all one. I built a wall around that central point in my soul and told myself I was separate or that I had no soul at all. God was constantly lapping on that wall like a gentle wave waiting for me to stop and in expectant silence invite them to emanate from my centre out. Truly I am a beginner, if worldviews were languages then I could say a phrase or two in many and would relish their tones, I am drawn to perennial truth. Yet this weekend marks a return to my mother tongue.

Writing for flow

I had the pleasure of putting together this course for Word Forest - Please take a look- it is a course to accompany you if you want to do more creative writing. Also if you already write and fancy some encouragement, provocation and food for thought it will help too. It isn't a technical course instead designed to take you gently on a journey towards self expression and trust. 

Link - 

Below an article I wrote for the course, by way of introduction:

Five days alone on the side of a mountain in the Picos De Europa, was the first time I took an invitation to express myself in writing seriously. I was in my early twenties. My brief was to produce something that represented my personal response to the mountain environment. I made rudimentary sculptures and wrote poems to accompany them. Ever since it has been what I do when I don’t have to do anything else. In the pauses and in between times, on the back of bus tickets, bleary eyed on my phone when I have woken at night, chalk words on the pavement, fridge thoughts or of course the pensive notebook at a cafe. It all stems back to that extended solitude on a mountain, being exposed to awe and wonder, having a little less comfort and distraction. Sometimes you need an invitation to get into writing. Creative writing can seem an odd proposition, from a distance its utility is opaque. In the doing of it though the need for reason falls away. Instead it is flow and it is consciousness revealed, a process of intimacy with yourself that is inherently valuable. We all have stories about ourselves and our ability to write. Fashioned by faltering voyages through education systems we grow into adults that quietly tell ourselves we are not the type of person that writes for pleasure or discovery, that it is the preserve of a particular kind of person. Yet there are so many reasons to take the plunge and write. For the purposes of this article I will explore my current top three. All three have to do with flow, hence the title. By flow I borrow the ideas of Mihaly Csikszentmihaly who has explored the state we get into when time evaporates and we are fully attuned with ourselves. He meant it when referring to optimal experiences and excellence in the execution of skills, though I see it in the creative act of writing too. 

A mirror to the self – Writing allows your brain to process your thoughts in an alternative way. Write to find out what is true, as an excavation of the mind. This form of honesty is confronting, as the thoughts flow we encounter ourselves. It is a slower pace too so we are able to wrestle and negotiate and ultimately make peace with all our parts, the murky and decrepit as well as the shiny and leaping. So creative writing can encourage self-knowledge and empathy. Two character traits we all need and our society is hungry for. 

 For catharsis – This is closely linked to the first, but warranted deeper focus. I don’t want to sell creative writing as a silver bullet to all mental health issues, but I do believe it can be a useful part in a larger picture of support. In my writing lies a longing for connection, at times it has been a dance with loneliness. Often, I have uncurled myself from the foetal positon to write uncensored the sharp end of my pain. In the writing, I scour the darkness for meaning and possibility. Become an architect trying to seek out the light to reflect life in some new way. A practice of trust. Acknowledging that in this act at least, in the moment of writing, I am taking a stand against futility. Though first its honesty. It’s the invitation to be brave and write your truth into the world, pulling it from your mind into the present where it can be seen and accepted, where motives, secrets and idiosyncrasies can be offered compassion. Where hopefully an active healing can begin. I believe that this potential for writing to be balm in the chaos, grief and urgency of our internal and external worlds is of particular relevance to us now. Rapid climate breakdown and catastrophic biodiversity loss infuses our collective consciousness and needs to breakthrough into our conversations and writing each day. The thorny work of realising how we are locked into a deathly embrace with fossil fuels is heavy. Facing our destructive relationship with nature is heavy, the loss we are faced with and the prognosis for our futures can be unbearable. If these things weigh on you writing is a good place to start, writing is often a gateway to other action, indeed that is part of the origin story of The Word Forest Organisation, words turned into trees. 

Fertile ground for imagination to grow – Characters, plot twists, wondrous settings, strange combinations of words, in the shaping of a whole world, what an opportunity for imagination to be celebrated and swell. The rendering of the everyday into story however you do it, whether it's fantastical or ordinary, is an act of perception and imagination. This imaginative space allows growth that starts on the page but can permeate the rest of life, allowing us to see and live creatively. From my experience the freedom to play, the agency to go with my intuition and instinct is good fun. The possibility of becoming absorbed in the magic of lacing reality and myth is a joy, one I heartily commend to you. With reference to the climate crisis, imagination will be vital to finding a way to live in a new reality and generate needed solutions to problems as they come thick and fast. These solutions will be structural and technological but also vitally, they will be cultural. Culture, where story, words, and myth create change. It is why I love Word Forest, it is the product of imagining a viable future, and it is active in the ushering of this future into reality. After all we have to try, we have to imagine and we have to enter the flow.

Mad in the UK

Thrilled that the excellent organisaiton 'Mad in the UK' have published one of my poems.They are doing vital work.  

It is curretly only available to read on their site - follow this link to check it out  

https://www.madintheuk.com/2023/04/when-wood-pigeons-insist-that-you-are-breaking-something-a-poem-by-tom-burgess/

Collect #1

Ground of my being, essence and core 

You are the way back to myself 

 Find me for I am lost 

 I desire your home 

 Sweet union

Thank you for rain

thank you for rain thank you for rain on the dry soil of my heart