Post-Lent photo catch-up

Easter is over, my Lenten cycle of posts is complete. Time to share some of my better photos from last month. Below: sun low in the afternoon sky, Jakubowizna. Beyond the last row of trees in this plantation, a fence, and beyond that, an orchard.

Below: looking west along ulica Wspólna ('Common Street'), illuminated by a setting sun.
 

Below: the track from Machcin II towards Rososz. This stretch is either deep sand or deep mud, drivers tend to avoid this bit and detour down a passable, though also unasphalted, section of road further east.

Below: cranes in flight. The local crane colony didn't fly south for the winter, but remained here, despite the long weeks of snow cover. Photo taken 30 March over Chynów.

Below: moonrise over Jakubowizna. looking up the lane towards my dziaka.

Left: looking down the lane from the end of my drive towards Chynów. A beautiful sun descends towards the horizon. Taken at the long end of my 70-300mm Nikkor telephoto zoom, making the sun seem unnaturally large.

Below: an evening Koleje Mazowieckie service to Warsaw approaches Chynów from Krężel. Photo taken from the level crossing to the north of Chynów station a few seconds before the barriers came down. The clocks have just gone forward, the sun has just set (19:10).

Below: semi-fast Koleje Mazowieckie service heading to Radom, between Chynów and Warka – this train does not stop at Krężel, Michalczew or Gośniewice along the way. 

Below: crushed-velvet dusk; the corner of ul. Miodowa ('Honey Street') and ul. Główna ('Main Street'), Chynów.

Below: the road sweeps into Jakubowizna, on the north side of the railway line.

Tomorrow: plenty of cat news from Jakubowizna!

This time seven years ago:|

Działka update

This time eight years ago:
Łódź is a film set

This time nine years ago
Contemplative imagery, Ealing and Warsaw

This time 14 years ago:
Baffled: my first visit to Jeziorki's Lidl 

This time 15 years ago:
In vino veritas?

This time 16 two years ago:
Are we getting more intelligent?

This time 17 three years ago:
Lenten recipe: tuna, chickpea and pesto salad

This time 18 years ago:
Coal train sidings, Konstancin-Jeziorna

This time 19 years ago:
Jeziorki from the air

 

Easter Sunday – triumph of Life over Death

Waking up to witness the sun rising through the trees in the forest next door, I fed the cats, made myself a coffee, and sat down to start writing these words.

As a child, I used to wonder why the two main religious festivals of Christianity were spaced across the year as they are. Christmas falls just after the Winter Solstice, while Easter falls at or shortly after the Spring Equinox. But there is no major festival around either the Summer Solstice or the Autumn Equinox. Easter is around three months after Christmas, and  then it's eight or nine months until Christmas comes round again, with summer holidays in between.

Why the asymmetry? 

If one looks symbolically – metaphysically – and at Church history – it becomes clear.

Christmas is the celebration of the triumph of light over darkness. It is celebrated ten days after the year's earliest sunset. By 25 December, people across the Northern Hemisphere, even without sophisticated measuring instruments, could tell that the sun had stopped retreating and had started its return.

This year's earliest sunset will occur here in Chynów on 13 December at 15:24. By Christmas Day, it will set at 15:28. a full four minutes later. [However, due to the Earth's 'wobble', the latest sunrise won't happen until 31 December, at 07:43. Equinox – the crossing of the Sun back into the Northern Hemisphere is on 21 December, which also happens to be the year's shortest day, balanced as it is between the earliest sunset and the latest sunrise].

The Feast of Christmas, then, can be seen as the triumph of Light over Darkness. In the beginning was the Word (John 1:1)? No, in the beginning was Consciousness. From Consciousness emerged Thought, the Thought was communicated via the Word. Consciousness and Light. The spiritual, metaphysical nature of Light...

The ins and outs and what-have-yous of the date of Easter is way too complicated to even begin to explain (other than its historical relation to the Jewish feast of Passover). Suffice to say, it can fall as early as 22 March or as late as 25 April. This year's Easter is somewhere around the middle of that spread. And typically here in Poland, this means that Lent began with snow on the ground (left, 18 February) and ended with trees starting to come into leaf (right, 5 April) in the forest next door.

Life has returned. The sap is rising; birdsong fills the sky. The Earth is waking up, a powerful force, a natural resurrection. The dead, dry vegetation that lies on the ground is jostled aside by fresh green shoots pushing up towards the sun. In the year's cycle, this is a turning point. We can look ahead to warmth and plenty. Christmas marked the first, fixed, turning point. Darkness retreats, light advances. At the same time every year – it is astronomical. Easter, however, marks a moving turning point. Because of weather, spring can be early, or late. It is imprecise, biological. Hence a moveable feast, to remind us that nature's bounty is not to be taken for granted. 

We live in a Cosmos fine-tuned for life. The 31 physical constants are all just so, each to within orders of magnitude with many zeroes – indicating non-random or finely adjusted values. A small change in several of the physical constants would make the universe radically different. Matter might not even exist. The laws of science contain fundamental numbers, such as the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron, which seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.

Life is material. Life hosts consciousness, the immaterial. You might be able to find the neural correlates of thought, but not of consciousness. You can't calculate or weigh qualia.

********

I am entitled to nothing, but am grateful for everything good that comes my way. I don't have a need for a caring God, but I do need a purposeful God. A direction with which to align, a direction away from chaos and barbarism, and towards order and love.

To me, Easter is a strong argument against a random, purposeless Universe that just somehow exists. It serves as a reminder that it is unfolding towards something, and that we should strive to get close to that flow.

********

On this day last year, I had my heart attack, and was rushed to hospital by ambulance, wheeled into the operating theatre and given three stents. One year on, I feel fine. I give thanks.

Today is my father's birthday; he would have been 103. I still dream of him often, and feel convinced that his consciousness abides, perhaps in the body of a boy living in Ursynów.

In the bright Easter sunshine, I set off for a walk shortly before 7am today, a walk in gratitude and joy.

Easter Sunday 2025:
Jesus and me

Easter Sunday 2024:
Triumph

Easter Sunday 2023:
Easter and photo catch-up 

Easter Sunday 2019:
Easter in Ealing (my last as it happens)

Easter Sunday 2013:
Easter Sunday in the snow

Easter Sunday 2008:
Snowy Easter in England

Lent 2026: day 46 – approaching journey's end

Easter Saturday, the final day of Lent. Tomorrow, Easter Sunday. A day that celebrates the triumph of life over death (much as Christmas celebrates the triumph of light over darkness).  But that post is for tomorrow. Today, a short summing up of the past 46 days since Shrove Tuesday...

From the point of view of Giving Things Up, this year has been a total breeze. It gets easier with every passing year. Indeed, as ultimately happened last Easter, I won't end up staying awake to midnight just so that I can enjoy my first alcoholic drink in six and half weeks. Rather, I will wait until the Easter Sunday breakfast (brunch more like, timing-wise). The IPA's in the fridge. I continue to do as I have been doing these past few weeks – going to bed early (10pm – or 9pm winter-time according to my body clock) and waking up before sunrise.

Going without alcohol or meat for 46 days was no problem. The temptation to crack open a cold beer at the end of a long day spent lopping trees in the garden was there, but easy to overcome. Not eating meat? Not a challenge at all. The year round, I tend to keep meat-eating for special occasions. However, I doubt that I could go vegan; fish and dairy (cheese and natural yogurt) are dietary staples when it comes to protein intake. There have been no salt snacks, no fast food. And of course no confectionery, no cakes, biscuits, desserts (other than fruit and nuts in yogurt) nor fizzy sugary drinks, but these are absent from my diet the year round. Caffeine, like fish and diary, I have no intention of giving up for Lent; I merely limit myself to one strong cup of coffee a day before breakfast, again the year round (barring social occasions).

Exercise – I missed four days' worth after twanging some back muscles (I overdid it with the scything and raking in the garden one weekend), but have recovered and have stepped up the regime to get back to my average targets. Walking is nicely ahead of all previous years (over 13,000 paces a day every day since the New Year).

The will required to do something is greater than the will required not to do something. Getting down to write a Lenten blog post every day for 46 days was not easy, especially as I had decided not to simply use AI to consolidate, summarise and re-order old material. I wanted each day's post to be the result of my thoughts, insights and intuitions as they came to me. Let the Holy Spirit talk through me! And I managed, for the seventh year in a row (although last year's hospital stay meant I missed a total of ten posts from the 2025 series).

The essential question is what have I learnt? How far have I advanced in my spiritual quest? 

It is too early to say. The big new insights arrive later. They come unbidden; they help shape my thinking. Looking back over my past Lenten posts is helpful; each year's Lent is a spiritual milepost along my life. I can see how my thinking has sharpened, acquired definition and nuance, and how my faith has deepened. The role of experience-driven intuition is crucial in diluting doubt; the physicalist world view, where everything is matter and death is the end now fails to have any traction in my mind. 

The devil is doubt; doubt is materialism (it's all matter, including your awareness, all extinguished at death); materialism is indeed the devil; matter decays, washed away by entropy. Consciousness survives entropy (you may be frailer than you were a few decades ago, but your consciousness, your awareness of qualia, is just as clear and crisp as when you were small).

Lent stands in many ways as a material as well as spiritual practice. Giving things up makes you stronger in the material world. Lent is good for the body and good for the soul.

Lent 2025: day 46
Lent's end – but really?

Lent 2024: day 46 
Why do we exist? Why does anything exist?

Lent 2023: day 46
The summary, finale

Lent 2022: day 46
Easter Everywhere, but not Ukraine

Lent 2021: day 46
The summing up

Lent 2020: day 46
Nor followers, nor leaders; one's own way to God

Lent 2026: day 45 – suffering and death

Good Friday; whether you're a practicing Christian or not, this is a moment to contemplate Christ's suffering on the cross. A historical fact, one that even the atheist sceptical debunkers among historians cannot easily deny.  Whatever you believe happened after the Crucifixion, and whether or not you believe that Jesus Christ was God, it remains an undeniable fact that the historical figure of Christ had a transformational effect on Western civilisation. 

His teachings resulted in an entirely new ethos – getting on with your fellow human beings, whoever they are, wherever they're from. This contrasted with the previous Graeco-Roman ethos that the strong take what they can, while the weak suffer what they must. And God the Father of whom Christ spoke was a merciful and loving God, not at all like the Old Testament God, ever quick to anger and to smite sinners.

Christ's death on the cross was profoundly symbolic for all those who witnessed it or heard of it from first-hand witnesses. The immediate local impact was sufficiently powerful to spread a new spiritual movement across the Mediterranean basin, kick-starting a new global religion, broad in its appeal and inclusive it its reach. Christianity offered new hope and a new perspective to assuage earthly suffering. 

The quality of human life was vastly worse two millennia ago than it is today; disease and injustice making life hard to bear. Short, nasty and brutish. And so a universal message of salvation, of a kingdom 'not of this earth' would have been appealing. 

Life today is certainly easier than it was, but it is not without suffering, and that suffering is not evenly distributed among us eight billion humans. Watching your child die from malnutrition brought on by natural disaster or war must be the most intense emotional pain imaginable. How can your consciousness strive for some elevated experience when you are suffering?

Is God indifferent to human suffering? Here I'd pick up on the point I have made before; I do not believe in God is a person, nor on God as omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, and certainly not one that intervenes in individuals' lives. If you see God as a purpose, a direction, a journey – a work-in-progress – you can accept an imperfect Universe. One filled with suffering and death, but one that is constantly improving, one with a telos – an end-point, a goal.

Given the undeniable historicity of Christ, why do so many people turn their back on His message? Lack of curiosity, I think. You don't need to buy into the whole doctrine. For me the important thing is to look at what all religions have in common with one other, rather than on what divides them. Humans have an innate urge to seek the Divine light.

Death is only the end if you see consciousness as something locked in the skull, a purely biological epiphenomenon, the emergent result of evolution. 

Easter is the triumph of life over death. Whether you see that as literal (Christ's Resurrection), metaphoric or metaphysical – that is entirely up to you.

Lent 2024: day 45
Asceticism and happiness

Lent 2023, day 45
The Summary, Pt I

Lent 2022: day 45
What is the point of it all?

Lent 2021: day 45
Mindfulness vs Materialism

Lent 2020: day 45
Unconsummated memories

Lent 2026: day 44 – the importance of nuance

Our brains are wired to seek certainty. Evolution takes no prisoners – that's either a sabre-tooth tiger waiting to pounce on you from that outcrop, or it isn't. Life has become vastly more complex ever since. As we struggle to understand reality, we need to ask: how do we do so? Assuming of course we have enough curiosity; some folk simply ask why bother?

An intellectual framework. Do we need one? Or just take asking those questions one at a time, as they come? Here's a start. Ontology – the 'what we know', and epistemology – the 'how we know it'.  Epistemology? Heuristics is many people's epistemology. Making macro-level deductions from observed patterns. "He's a bad 'un, and that one's also troublemaker. They're both immigrants, therefore by deduction, all immigrants are bad and immigration should therefore be stopped." Bayesian inference – your epistemic confidence rises with frequency of observation. "Trump has lied yet again – I can now confidently assert that he's a liar."

And then there's the question of lumpers or splitters. Are we trying to divide and subdivide aspects of reality into ever-smaller discreet units (splitters)? Or are we trying to manage complexity by grouping commonalities into larger categories for easier assimilation (lumpers)? Or both? Or neither?

But when it comes to spiritual questions, we find ourselves wrestling with inchoate intellectual structures, rather than material quantities. Our intellectual framework has no empirical evidence to go on. A divine presence ordering the Universe? Where's the scientific proof? Life after death? I know many people who have died, none have returned from the dead. 

Our certainty-seeking brains look for tidy answers. Solutions rather problems that further investigation. Close the door to that question, declare it solved and move on to the next one, rather than living in a world of ongoing uncertainty. Nuance is uncomfortable.  It often requires finding balance between the objective and subjective; holding two seemingly contradictory views at the same time. So it is important to be able to feel comfortable with uncertainty while engaged in the quest for answers. Leaving things to fate, submitting to the flow; like a gibbon flying through the air before grasping the next branch, trusting that the next insight, the next incontrovertible fact, will be solid enough to support you on your further quest. 

Your personal ontology is the result of the interface between intellect and intuition; a blend of what you have worked out vs. what has come to you; what you have read vs. what you have experienced.

On the face of it, there seems to be no room for nuance in binary questions such as "Is there a God?" or "is there life after death?" The first one suggests a yes-no answer, rather than a challenge to define 'God'. Similarly 'life after death'. Is this even the right question? 'Does consciousness survive the death of its erstwhile biological container?' is a more nuanced framing.

Ultimately, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and the like are futile questions; approaching theology and metaphysics through logic, using deduction and inference is a dead end. Answers that satisfy you, subjectively, that do not need external validation, they come from personal experience. From insights, but above all from intuition.

Feel comfortable in uncertainty.

Lent 2026: day 44
Kicks, thrills, fun, pleasure – and joy

Lent 2024: day 44
Spirituality and the Dream World

Lent 2023, day 44
The Purpose

Lent 2022: day 44
Habit, discipline or obsession

Lent 2021: Day 44
Life after life after life after life

Lent 2020: Day 44
A myriad paths to God

Lent 2026: day 43 – the interface between material wellbeing and soul

The goal of technology should be to give us time to pursue what really matters. Enough surplus resources – food, clothing, shelter, energy and information – to ensure that life's not a struggle, enough so everyone has enough to live life without suffering discomfort. And to have enough free time to enjoy life. 

But we humans are flawed, flawed in so many ways. Some people want more and more and more. More money, money to spend in ways that screws our planet with their wanton consumerism. Others want money without having to put in the work. Crime or welfare. Not contributing to society, subtracting rather than adding value to society. The feeling of being entitled to something – to anything – because it is owed to me. Why? By whom? For some historic slight or injustice? Because of accident of birth? Societies with the right mindset, which I define as 'getting on with it', show year-on-year, decade-on-decade progress. But again, societies should not believe they are simply entitled to progress. It can stall (Japan in the 1990s, the UK since Brexit) or go backwards (large chunks of the Middle East).

Optimising society means focusing on better health outcomes and better education that leads to less egregious behaviour, leading to fewer resources being spent on security. Optimising the way we use natural resources, from food to energy, to recycling. Science and technology helps us do that, but it is like squeezing a ball of plasticine in your hand; as it compresses, some of it squishes through between your fingers. Unintended consequences creating new problems to resolve. The motor-car? Pollution, congestion, road deaths. Nuclear physics? Nuclear proliferation. The internet? Doom-scrolling. 

The notion of teleology should be more widely applied to our human lives, not only in the context of metaphysics. The notion of end-cause, purpose, that which we are aiming for, is not really discussed in the media. What is the purpose of eight billion human lives? Nothing more than survival and procreation? And having fun along the way? Nothing more than biology? 

Surely our purpose is creativity. We are born with the urge to create, beautiful things and ideas – and art and music. Once we have eliminated discomfort on our lives, we can focus on aesthetics. Guided not by external validation, but by what truly resonates with our own personal sense of taste. [In my case, this is informed by a preference for mid-century modern Americana; familiar and comforting.] We are also born curious; we seek to understand the world around us down to the very quintessence of matter, and up to the heavens, infinite and eternal. This, I believe, is why we live; to discover, to create, to invent. Ironing out discomfort from our lives while we are at it. Improving, generation by generation, the quality of human life.

Once upon a time (until 2016), I believed that humanity's arc was generally upward; that today is better than yesterday, and that tomorrow will be even better than today. The future will be rosier still. Generally upward, but with two steps forward and one step back. History was meant to have ended in 1991, with the collapse of communism and a stable world order based on democracy and free markets reigning forever more. But this optimism overlooked the existence of psychopathic ideologies and psychopathic individuals, as well as the reality that societies include sizeable numbers of liars, simpletons and egregiously avaricious persons whose actions screw it up for everyone.

We are flawed as individuals. We have our good sides and our bad sides; our immediate purpose as a society should to be continue squeezing out the bad, from our politics and from our streets. But defining 'bad' comes with its own set of problems. Religions evolved to maintain social control, but if those controlling religions are themselves flawed, this fails. Religion in the service of the state, telling Plato's 'noble lie' to keep people aligned with their state's best interests, is not the answer. Rather, it is an acceptance, an understanding, in the minds of the bulk of the population, that it's in everyone's best interest to behave in win-win mode, rather than being adversarial or transactional in your everyday dealings with fellow citizens, businesses and the state. Cooperation within a competitive market has brought bountiful benefits to mankind that individual endeavour never could have managed. 

Whilst I am not decrying the personal ethics of atheists (especially humanists), I do see that having a spiritual outlook on life does lead to self-improvement and higher state of consciousness.By living life in comfort rather than aiming to live in luxury, by dialling down material desires (new car, exotic holiday, shopping trips etc) we end up less worried about our financial state and more able to savour the simple joys that life has to offer.

Lent 2024: day 43
More questions than answers (Pt IV)

Lent 2023, day 43

Wayside shrines

Lent 2022: day 43

Spirit of Place and Metaphysics

Lent 2021: day 43

Doubt and Curiosity

Lent 2020: day 43

Quartodecimalism, or the fixing of the date of Easter

Lent 2026: day 42 – dreams, coincidences and destiny

In the annex part of the building, the big table awaits delegates for the sit-down dinner that formally ends the two-day linguistics conference. Outside, it's already dark. In the main ballroom, people are mixing in small groups, chatting, champagne flutes in hand, waiting for the signal to take their seats. Everyone's in business attire. I walk across from the ballroom, into the annex, which is still mostly empty. But I see one person already seated, his back to the table, head in hands. He's not wearing a suit, but a dark-grey woollen jumper. I recognise him. It's Rysiek. But Rysiek's dead. He died in December 2023. I walk over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. Telepathically, I express my sadness at his passing. He raises his head, looks at me and stands up. We hug. I wake up from my dream with a start. He has just imparted to me the name of the next boy from our West London Polish scout troop and Polish Saturday school who is soon to die...

Do I believe in prophetic dreams? Not really. I can be persuaded by empirical evidence – but I've not really had any that I can correlate to a future event about which I dreamt. But are prophetic dreams not more similar in nature and mechanism to contemplated synchronicities – those meaningful coincidences that lead you to think about some possible misfortune which is then prevented? 

Yes – this is more like it. Collapsing the wave function. With consciousness. The person whose name came to me in my dream this morning will not die anytime soon, because I have considered that possibility happening. By narrowing down a range of possibilities, I have precluded an event from occurring by the simple act of awareness that it may happen.

Preventing the inevitable by thought: is this at all possible? How about a more nuanced approach – not so much preventing but postponing the inevitable, mitigating its effects, reducing the impact of the inevitable? This, I believe, applies to completely unexpected, out-of-the-blue occurrences. We were all expecting the Iran war to kick off – the roots were too deep for it not to have happened. It was just a question of when. The same goes for Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But how about the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 that killed 227,000 people? Could it have been forestalled, postponed or its effects mitigated by consciousness? By merely considering its possibility?

But what about (divine) purpose? The continued presence of latent chaos on earth, inherent in nature, between nations, and the small-scale chaos that can randomly befall any of us in our day-to-day lives?

Ultimately, we are here to learn, to develop, to elevate our consciousness through facing challenges such as illness, bereavement or war. I prefer the word 'challenged' to the word 'suffering', 'trial' to 'ordeal'. That we may overcome, elevated. And, having learned, moved on, out of one biological container to another, our consciousness having evolved a notch or two.

Six weeks of Lent have elapsed. Tomorrow I shall begin summarising this year's Lenten journey.

Lent 2025: day 42
Accident of birth

Lent 2024: day 42
More questions than answers (Pt III)

Lent 2023, day 42
Where did religions come from?

Lent 2022: day 42
A Future Like This

Lent 2021: day 42
Actively seeking Understanding

Lent 2020: day 42
From Zero to One

Lent 2026: day 41 – in touch with the intangible

Early morning walks on an empty stomach (but after a strong black coffee, no sugar), are for me among those moments of repeatable joy, especially when the sun is shining through. There's a buzz in my head, a slight giddiness, not at all unpleasant, a mildly altered state. Walking through the forest, catching sight of a hare or deer, absence of traffic or indeed anybody, awareness of the seasons, a connection with nature. Gratitude; connectedness; a grounding in base reality, touching the sense of life.

Who or what is God? Certainly, God is not a person. God is by nature indefinable to our human minds. We are not to fully know God until the moment of ultimate unity.

As I walk this morning, I find myself considering a test for the ego: would you wish another incarnation as a human, or would you rather rush through to that ultimate union with Brahman, with The One, with God? 

To be honest, I feel I'd like another crack at life as a human (though next time with more wisdom, resulting from spiritual evolution). I'd like to carry on with and within the cycle of samsara (birth, death, and rebirth). For the sake of curiosity. Knowing that within one lifetime, there can never be closure.

No rush, just a slow, patient, continuous improvement based on series of learnings, reaching higher and higher levels of metaphysical insight. Life after life after life. In tangible, physical, biological form. Consciously guided wetware.

Does this suggest that my ego, far from being switched off or even dimmed, is still interested in manifesting itself in future bodies? Reluctantly, I have to answer 'yes'.

Do I need another adventure, or do I just want one? What do I wish for my next incarnation? This is where the narrative arc of the ego needs to align with the Purpose of the Cosmos for optimal results. The best answer is: "I wish to continue learning, to continue in spiritual growth, and to receive with simplicity whatever biology I am born into."

And here I return to a fundamental thought I've often harboured since youth: had my parents not met, my consciousness would still be here, on earth, in biological form – just not the biological form that I currently inhabit. Everything that I'd have in common with that hypothetical person, essentially awareness, metaphysical will, and those qualia memories – familiar flashes of exomnesia harking back to a previous existence – is rooted in consciousness. Everything that's different – DNA, upbringing, environment – is rooted in biology. 

The intangible, the ineffable, feels so far off, but I do believe that spiritual evolution brings us closer to at least having some vague idea of life is for, why something exists rather than nothing, the true nature of reality – and the true nature of God,

Lent 2024: day 41
More Questions than Answers (Pt II)

Lent 2023, day 41
The End of Times

Lent 2022: day 41
A Better Future

Lent 2021: day 41
The Holiest of Holies