We are not only this. There is not only this. There is not only me.

If our adventing is about anything, then surely these statements might make a good beginning? They are statements of hope and longing, but also ones which can be partially supported by experience- not in that old sense of trying to ‘prove’ the divine, but rather by our own sense of what I have come to call ‘the depth of things’. This concept is hard to describe, unless we use poetry. I was striving in that direction when I wrote this;

The life singing in you is not just journey, 

Nor located at some distant destination.

It is here. It is now. It’s what happens

When wounds half-heal but bleed not

Blood, but good. It is not in the width of things

But their depth. It is the rediscovery of love.


from 'Brave', published in After the Apocalypse 2022.

What more can be said about this depth? Is it like old paint showing through, or the peeling back of onion layers, or the clearing of morning mists? No, all of these images have been overdone and also seem too concrete. The nature of what I am talking about always seems more ephemeral and more subjective than that.

I think we sense it first in its absence, as a deep longing for something better, more beautiful. At this level, we experience it as there must be more than this.

But there are always glimpses – fleeting though they always are – which give us hints. For me these come through things like this; poetry, through music, through wild places, and through acts of simple kindness. I sense them mostly deep in the dirty soft emotional part of me. As soon as I start to codify them in consciousness using my head, they dissolve.

Sometimes we can share these experiences with others. Perhaps religion can help us do this, but it can also hinder. There is another defining feature of these highly individual transcendent events however – they connect us. What they connect us to remains an open question, but the mystical traditions of all the major religions seem to agree on this. Some call it ‘oneness’ others ‘the ground of all being’ others simply describe it as ‘god’.

Again, in the absence of any other language, I turn to poetry;

Light of the world



The low winter sun takes power from 

Puddles of last nights rain and I turn away

Resonating to signals sent from distant stars.



Something glints in the tops of bare branches -

A flash of wing or a white tooth or the

Coming together of choirs of angels.



And in a wet manger of clogged earth, summer 

Sleeps, waiting for light to burst out

Brand-new hallelujahs.



For behold, the light is with us. The light is 

In us. The light shines in the darkest places -

It even shines in me.


printed in After the Apocalypse 2022