But that is the way of love. Sometimes it just appears. Takes you by surprise.

One day you are pottering along in life, doing all the normal things and the next you find yourself unable to stop thinking about that special other.

That is what has happened to me this last month. I wake up wondering how she is. I find thoughts going to her in the quiet moments of my day, when I am walking the dogs, when I’m driving the car….even when I should be doing something else. There she is, in my minds eye and heart. I want to know all there is to know about her, her past, her history, what are her desires and loves, what does she hate.

Pretty normal when you fall in love I guess.

Except….the object of my new found devotion is not another human.

She is a River.

Her name is Hafren or Severn as she is more commonly known. But I call her Hafren because there is nothing common about this bourgeoning relationship.

She has been in my life consistently for over thirty years. For the last ten years I have passed her almost every day, on my way back and forth to the farm. I have admired her from the famous iron bridge that gives our local town its name. I have been in awe of her power as she rages in winter and her banks disappear, her waters bringing flooding and destruction. I have admired her beauty on clear summer days when green willow trees and azure blue skies are reflected in her waters, as she meanders her way through farmlands. I have felt concern for her health when hearing about yet another sewage discharge or toxic waste spilling into her currents.

But that isn’t love. That is not what I am experiencing now.

To explain how it changed, I have to go back a almost a year. I had just joined the Barred Owl Cohort of the Seminary for the Wild Earth. One of the invitations we were given was to find our particular ‘other’ and to find a way of being in conversation with them. That didn’t feel hard to me. I already had relationships with my many non-human kin in the area I lived. I had been asking them “Who is my neighbour"?” for more than a year and had enjoyed noticing the individuals rather than the general. That particular robin who greeted me each day, the blackbird with white feathers in his tail, that particular Alder tree by a lake at the farm. At the beginning of the seminary, I changed my question. Deepened it. I asked “Who can I be of service to? Who would like me to use my voice on their behalf?”. Doesn’t sound big does it? But for me it was. I walk daily with chronic health issues that deplete my energy and mobility. My Audhd nervous system finds going to public gatherings a challenge. So when I put that question out there, I said I had to focus one one relationship if it was going to be meaningful and realistic.

And then I waited.

And waited.

Nothing.

Silence

.

Until last month. The week before our cohort at the seminary was graduating in fact. I got up one morning and heard the name Hafren whispered in my heart. No big thunder claps. No great drum roll. No huge experience. Just a quiet knowing that she was calling and asking for help. But more than that, she was calling for relationship.

So here we are. I find myself asking, what does it mean to love a river? How do I know what she wants? What can I do to help?

Over the coming weeks and months I will share where this journey takes me. I have already joined a group who are working towards setting up a Charter of rights for her, similar to the one granted to the River Ouse recently. I have become a River watcher which entails testing her waters and uploading data so that pollution levels can be tracked. But more than that, I have begun to see her as the amazing living being that she is. I have sat on her bank and let my mind and imagination be taken by her current. I have let my fingers trail in her waters and wept at the knowledge of the harm being done to her. I have said I am sorry and offered my presence as a witness.

Perhaps you would like to join me. Maybe there is a river nearby calling you. Your just have to listen.

Subscribe now

We are no different to the natural world around us. Why do we expect to be when we are made of the same fabric and weave. Sometimes we fool ourselves that somehow we are different to the forest or the scrubland. It helps us feel immune to the chaos and to believe that we are able to control the forces that bring collapse or change.

This week I have felt engulfed by a storm that has swept through a community that I deeply love. I felt overwhelmed by the power of the winds and grief stricken as I witnessed the ensuing breaking and damage to those I love.

At such times, I find words almost impossible to process. So I head out to the land and the woods. I seek the comfort of my non-human kin and try to hear the wisdom the Holy Wild has for me. It has always been the same. As a neurodivergent child I often found the world confusing and being alone amongst the trees soothed my bewildered nervous system.

Yesterday, after hearing some of the details of the harm wreaked by the storm, I went out to walk by the lake and found myself sitting in the woods, in a grove of trees where some friends and I recently spent the solstice.

Silence                                                                                                                                    After the clamour of the storm                                                                                                  I breathe in the silence                                                                                                               Allow myself to be held by the presence of trees.                                                                    Enter the silence                                                                                                                           A silence that is full                                                                                                                    The plaintive call of a wood-pigeon                                                                                          melodies of song thrush and wren                                                                                             the soft rustling of birch leaves                                                                                                                                                         as a wisp of a breeze                                                                                                                      threads its way through her branches.

Lottie the Labrador                                                                                                                soul friend and companion                                                                                                     snores gently at my feet                                                                                                   content to rest her old bones                                                                                                      after a long ramble through the woods,                                                                            where the snapping underfoot                                                                                                  of dried undergrowth and twigs                                                                                                 bears testimony to                                                                                                                         the recent scorching of the land,                                                                                     scorched by rampaging heat                                                                                                       more suited to a desert landscape                                                                                              than this soft                                                                                                                        English farmland.

Silence.

After the clamour of the storm                                                                                                   I lean into the silence                                                                                                            allow my body  to soften,                                                                                                            every cell listening.

As I sit,                                                                                                                                           my hand reaches out                                                                                                                   touches the baked earth beneath me

My whole being is  consumed with a longing                                                                           to know

what is She saying?

There are those who would laugh at the thought that the Earth could be speaking. They may question my doctrinal position; ask if I espouse animism or pantheism panentheism. I got called a ‘foolish woman’ once when I shared that I experienced gravity as the Mother’s embrace. I am told that my views are sentimental or overly emotional when I say we desperately need to find ways to help young people develop a relationship with the Holy Wild. Activism and youth work are acceptable. But a relationship with Earth herself?

I find myself remembering words from a book rooted in the tradition I belonged to for so long — a tradition I now walk alongside, from the edges.

I still love the one whom storyteller Martin Shaw calls the Galilean Druid. Yet I am also weary — deeply weary — of the way Empire-thinking permeates its walls and seeps into its structures.

‘Well, what do those words say?’ you may be asking.

“For we know that all Creation groans.”

Earth doesn’t just speak, she groans.

Are you listening?

Can you hear her?

But I realise that the word is problematic for me.

You see,

I was sold a story once, a long time ago.

Actually, it wasn’t just once.

It was over and over again.

That there was only one resurrection.

His.

You know the one I mean.

The one featured in garish childhood images of a hippy looking man and an empty tomb.

‘ I am the resurrection the truth and the life,’ he is purported to have said.

No-body really explained that to me.

They just said that I had to believe.

Believe that he died.

That he went down to hell and conquered Death and Satan

So that I may have life.

The ultimate hero’s journey.

That tale that has some poor guy leaving home,

Collecting allies around him and facing all sorts of trials together.

Until he has to go alone into the cave

Battle the Dragon

And return victorious with the spoils, bringing the treasure back to share.

The treasure was the gift of eternal life I was told.

Death has no sting.

I have no need to face the cave or the dark.

I can live in the light.

Always.

As a child I wondered about that. If he had conquered death, then why did that pigeon I found in my garden die?

Why did my Grandma die?

‘Oh that’s just their bodies!’ I was told.

We get a new body in the next life.

One that we get to keep forever.

But we can experience eternal life now

I believed them.

But then I got sick

and my mind encountered darkness.

Some new people came into my life, who said they were were allies of the hero, told me that it was because I hadn’t met the real hero.

Or if I had, I had forgotten to believe.

So I believed again.

And it was true

For a while there was light and joy.

But then I got sick

again

and I was in darkness

again.

They told me that the darkness was sin.

The darkness was because I didn’t have enough faith.

That the sickness was punishment for not holding onto the light.

They kept saying “It is finished!”

That the work was done.

That his resurrection was all I needed.

But then.

In the midst of the darkness

I met someone who filled my life with love.

Kindness

Compassion

Fun

Sexual passion

Fidelity.

Those allies (by now I was I beginning to wonder if they had really travelled very far with him) told me it was wrong.

That this had all the hallmarks of death.

That to entertain such love was dallying with damnation.

But I remembered some words from another old story

“Love is stronger than death.”

So, taking the hand of my beloved, I escaped from their so- called Kingdom and ran to a steep sided valley, where trees grew tall and offered shade.

Each year I watched as green spread across the valley and buds burst into vibrant leaves, full of life.

Grasses waved to the sun and flowers and blossom were extravagant in their colour and perfume.

Blossom gave way to ripe fruits, dripping with juice, succulent and sweet to the taste.

Then the days got shorter. The sun struggled to stay for long in the valley.

Green turned to glorious gold and copper.

But as the sun faded. So did the colour.

The trees stood stark against the hillside,

Skeleton like. Stripped of all their showy beauty

Sometimes I feel like that.

In fact, I do right now.

Stripped of all that brought such colour and ripeness to my life.

When I lost the last of my horses,

Something in me died with them.

When my body became so sick I could no longer work as a therapist,

The juicy fruit that I could offer to others dropped to the earth and rotted.

When pain stopped me being able to spend hours creating

I found myself in a cave.

In darkness.

Longing for resurrection.

“There is no resurrection without the feminine.”

The words dropped into my heart one day.

They wouldn’t leave me alone.

‘What do you mean?’

I didn’t know who I was asking. It didn’t seem important anymore.

Slowly stories came to my notice. Attis and Cybele, Osiris and Isis, Tammuz and Ishtar.

All died and were brought back to life because of the actions of a woman.

I thought of the other one.

Yes, him.

The one who those so-called allies said faced death alone.

According to them, he surrounded himself with men and as he approached his final showdown, was left alone.

Except he didn’t.

And he wasn’t.

There were women too.

And the women stayed.

They didn’t look away during the agonising hours of his dying. They were there as he took his last breath, and they helped lay him hastily in the tomb before their Sabbath began.

The first one to be there after the Sabbath was one of those woman.

‘There is no resurrection without the feminine’

The words are whispered again.

In my minds eye I see that garish childhood painting. What catches my attention is not the hippy in his long white dress but the stone.

The large boulder that has been rolled away from the mouth of a cave.

That’s where he went.

Into the cave.

Into the dark.

Into the Mother.

A tomb.

Another voice enters the story.

‘What if this darkness isn’t the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?’

The voice of Valarie Kaur, Sikh peace activist speaking on New Year’s eve at the end of 2016.

I think of all those times I was in darkness and was told I needed to get out of it.

Get out of the tomb of unbelief.

Get into the light.

But what if they weren’t tombs but wombs.

And all I did by fighting my way out or letting them drag me out was induce premature labours.

Cause still births.

Dreams that died.

Possibilities killed off.

And now?

I admit, there is a part of me, the part that has been indoctrinated to think like those allies,

who still hankers after a hero’s journey.

After all, we are told to be successful in life, you have to be big.

Be public.

Have lots of followers.

But my life isn’t like that.

It has become smaller.

Stripped back.

I keep looking for the big resurrection.

THE one that will fix it all.

But then I miss the small ones.

Like the one I experienced this morning.

I can’t walk as far or as fast as I used to.

So I sat down on the grass by a lake whilst my dogs played. As I sat, a wren in a small willow tree began to sing her morning prayers and I felt sheer joy as she flew down to a low branch,

cocked her tiny head on one side and invited me to join her.

Later, as I continued my amble, I noticed a sycamore tree had dropped her seeds. Despite the beauty of their golden shapes, my heart felt sad for her loss.

‘Do you grieve?’ I wondered as I stroked her bark.

Gathering the seeds, I went into a clearing in a copse of trees. A clearing where friends and I had spent the solstice, honouring the earth.

Gently, I lay the seeds in a circle on the ground, placing a piece of charred wood left over from somebody’s fire, some oak leaves and a leaf from the sycamore tree in the centre.

Waiting.

Watching.

I sat in the clearing.

A shaded space.

A womb like space.

And I thought of the ancient forest that had once covered that land,

A forest cut down to make the charcoal that had fuelled furnaces for the iron works.

I said the name of the forest.

‘Shirlett.’

Was it my imagination, or did the trees surrounding me lean closer, repeating the name.

‘Shirlett.’

Perhaps it was just the breeze in the leaves of the Birches.

It didn’t matter. In that moment, I remembered the Oaks of the forest.

I stood witness to Sycamore’s loss.

Walking out of the copse, I felt it.

The resurrection.

I felt more alive.

Last week in Europe we suffered devastating heat waves.

Some say our planet is dying.

At the weekend I subjected to trolling and abuse on a community page on facebook.

Cruelty seems to be on the rise.

Injustice is the norm.

It feels like civilisation is falling.

We humans continue to want big showy resurrections.

We want the hero’s story.

But what if the answer is to go small.

To be faithful.

To witness.

To trust Earth.

To wait in the darkness with the Mother?

To trust that new life can come out of all the loss.

That this present darkness,

Yours

Mine

all of it

Is not the darkness of the tomb

but the darkness of the womb?

Can we be like the women who didn’t look away but remained as the earth went dark, and who were there as dawn crept into the garden, met by a gardener who called them by name?

Don’t be fooled by those who would say that his was the only resurrection.

They made it all about him.

Told us it was all about the light.

But that’s not what he said.

He said that we should be like a grain of wheat and go into the earth if we want to live.

Not just once.

But over

and over again.

Can we let the earth teach us that there is the potential for new life in every death. Can we be willing to surrender to the dark.

Allow it to become a womb

because….

There is no resurrection without the feminine.

Trigger Warning: This reflection contains details about sex trafficking. If you have experienced sexual or domestic violence of any kind, please take care of yourself if you choose to read it.

“It was a bitter time. There were days when the sky turned black for me because of what I heard and knew was true. And as I went deeper in, I not only heard, I saw. Many missionaries told me it was pure imagination. But Walker Iyer wrote to trustworthy men who were in the secrets of India, and they confirmed what I heard. “Well the proof will be the children”, and I knew they meant we should never find any children. Very few were in sympathy. Sometimes it was if I saw the Lord Jesus Christ kneeling alone, as He knelt alone under the olive trees. The trees were tamarinds now, the tamarinds I see when I look up from this writing. And the only thing that one who cared could do, was to go softly and kneel down beside Him, so that He would not be alone in His sorrow over the little children.” Amy Carmichael.

It was a sunny day in late summer. I paused as I went in through the garden gate, my head aching and my heart bruised and sore. As I stood, my hand still on the gate, I noticed the roses and all the grief that had been locked in my chest broke out as I sobbed. What was it about the roses that triggered such a response you may be asking. Their scent or their beauty perhaps? Neither. It was the fact that they had blossomed and faded, their petals now gathering with brown tinged edges in heaps on the grass beneath them. I was sobbing because they had blossomed and I had not noticed.

Amy Carmichael wrote about the sky turning black for her because of what she heard and saw. An Irish missionary who first went to India in 1995, Amy spent her life rescuing children who were being given or sold to Temples where they were ‘married’ to the gods. When she first arrived Amy knew nothing of this practice of trafficking young children. However that all changed in March 1901 when she came across a little girl who had escaped the temple. She had gone back to her mother but had been returned her to the temple where her hands were branded with hot irons. She escaped again and was found wandering by a Christian woman who gave her shelter for the night. The next day Amy Carmichael took her in, despite a large crowd gathering around the house demanding the return of the child to the temple women.

I hadn’t noticed the roses bloom because that summer, my time had been taken up with trying to keep two children safe. I am not going to share the details of the story here as I want to protect their privacy. Enough to say that it led me into the terrifying world of organised abuse, where children are trafficked to satisfy the demand of the powerful and wealthy. This deviant world was hidden in plain sight by those who should have been protecting the innocent. Some did so knowingly. Others did it by their lack of action or their disbelief, the same attitude that Amy was met with in the missionaries she spoke to who said it was all imagination. When I went to a clergyman and told him that a four year old was describing having to watch her mother being raped by police officers he said I was getting over involved and that the troubled child probably had nightmares.

Years later I told a social worker that a young client had disclosed seeing other girls being put in black plastic bags in the back of a van, she asked if the child was being allowed to watch adult movies.

“Alice in Underland,” Amy called herself, for she saw much of India’s lowest, hidden life as she searched for clues. She went in search of children about to be sold, travelling at night, staining her skin coffee she went into temples to see for herself where the children were being held. She visited families, pleading with parents about to sell their daughters to the temple women.

Slowly people began to respond. Friends sent her newspaper clippings, she was told of Hindu reformers speaking out against the practice of dedicating young girls to Temples, On my own journey in the ‘Underland’, people appeared by my side, people like Ray Wyre the UK’s expert on paedophiles who worked for the same charity as my partner. Ray introduced me to Chief Inspector Clive Driscoll who had been given the task of investigating reports of organised abuse that had not been investigated. Both these men assured me that I was not going crazy and were at the end of a phone when bizarre things started to happen such as being driven off the road one night.

But what has this got to do with the scourging at the pillar you may be asking? Well, two things lead me here. One was the fact that the trial of Jesus was engineered by powerful authorities who wanted him silenced, something we will explore later. The other is what happened at a scourging. As a cradle Catholic I grew up with the images of Jesus being whipped. At school I was told the whip was like a cat -of -nine-tails, an instrument that had several rope tails with knots at the end and was often used in slavery or in the British army and navy. But the Roman flagrum was much more than that. The short whip was made of two or three leather thongs attached to a handle. The thongs were knotted and had bit of metal or bone attached to them, some of them with hooks in them and were designed to quickly remove the skin. The hooks exposed and cut into muscle and the victim would often lose a lot of blood and go into shock.

When I read the description of what happened, I found myself looking away from my computer screen and as I wrote the paragraph above, a voice in my head was telling me that I shouldn’t write it, it is too distressing. But it reminded me of what so many survivors have described. The feeling of being cut to pieces emotionally, of parts of themselves being separated by dissociation. I have seen them go into shock when they were questioned about the police, their body remembering the original trauma.

That voice in my head also tells me I shouldn’t write it, that people won’t want to read it.

Of course we don’t want to read it. Who would?

But we must.

Because most of society still don’t want to read about what happens to the children who are trafficked, especially when they are attractive teenagers. It is much easier to call them child prostitutes or under- age women, accuse them of choosing a lifestyle that then got them into trouble. You can read that sort of comment every day on social media when survivors of the Epstein scandal speak out. I heard it repeatedly from police officers and social workers when dealing with teenagers in care who repeatedly went missing. No-one wanted to look at why. What had led these young kids to be so vulnerable to the manipulation of gangs or those offering them rewards in modelling. Both were highly organised. In the UK there have been numerous investigations into what are called grooming gangs. There have also been investigations into the organised rings who procure children, often in local authority care, for wealthy powerful figures from the establishment. I remember when I took one survivor to see Clive Driscoll, he shared how it was interesting that women of different ages, from different part of the country were naming the same well-known figure, even though his name had not appeared anywhere in connection with abuse.

We need to face the truth. This is not about one political party. It is not about one religion. It is not about one race. Democrats can shout about the Republicans; Republicans can call out Democrats; in the UK we can point the finger at Tories or Labour. There are those who would say that the catholic church is at fault but ignore the cover ups and scandals in other denominations or religions. The same issue is at work be it in in the FLDS where hundreds continued to support their leader Warren Jeffs when he was given a life sentence for paedophile offenses or the Asian gangs recruiting young girls off British streets. It’s the same issue at the heart of the Epstein operation as it is at the heart of the rings that procure children for the wealthy figures in my own nation. It’s the same evil behind forcing an eleven year old rape victim to carry her rapist’s baby to term or the so called honour killings in fundamentalist Muslim or Sikh communities.

What is that issue? The need for power.

Those in positions of power want to stay there. Those on the ladder of power want more. Ordinary people don’t want to get on the wrong side of power so they keep silent. When Clive Driscoll was investigating a case of paedophile activity in a care home he was suddenly removed from the case. He had wanted to talk to a senior Minister in the government about his connection to the paedophile at the center of the investigation (who went on to be convicted of 34 counts of abuse). Disciplinary proceedings against Clive were later dropped. He went on to get a successful prosecution in the case of the murder of Surjit Kaur Athwal,a 27 year old mother of two young children. Surjit’s body has never been found. When talking about this case in an interview he said that the issue was not the religion or the culture, it was a need to hold onto power.

Many have said to me that the Epstein case and the grooming gangs were all about the misuse of women and hatred of the feminine. There is no doubt that this a part of it. But to narrow it down to just that means we miss the bigger picture. Misogyny is about power. The fact that women are still seen as inferior is about power. It has been chilling to see how the far right in the UK are using the grooming gangs scandal to stir up racial hatred. They have had marches and demonstrations purporting to want to protect women and girls and calling for immigrants to be removed. At one demonstration in Hull they welcomed a young survivor to tell her story. However, when she said that none of her abusers were immigrants, they were all white men ,she was verbally abused by the crowd and roughly pushed off the stage. So much for wanting to protect the victims.

Sexual abuse is the misuse of power and control. Many of the victims in children’s homes in the UK were boys. And yes, the majority of victims are girls. But, as I said, if we restrict it to just that it means that we don’t have to see what this Mystery might be saying to us. Many of us might well identify with the victim and if you do, please take care of yourself. But this Mystery also invites us to investigate what our own relationship to power is. How do we use it? Where do we crave it? Where do we go along with it, or close our eyes or look away when we see it being misused? There are so many areas that I could list but I’m not here to lay on guilt. We are all complicit in some way; it is almost impossible to avoid living in a capitalist society. However, there is one area that it is impossible to ignore. How civilisation has treated the earth bears remarkable similarities to how the young victims of Epstein and the gangs have been treated. Seen as being disposable, they are used for the enjoyment of wealthy men who want to display their power.

And what of Amy Carmichael? A single woman who worked tirelessly in the face of great opposition in some quarters and great apathy in others. She eventually rescued over a thousand children from temple prostitution and other forms of abuse and the children’s home she established, the Dohnavour Fellowship, still flourished today. Although a law was introduced in 1988 to outlaw the practice, it is still prevalent in many parts of India.

The images in this post are of three girls who were all victims of the grooming gangs in my home town. Lucy 16, was murdered by her abuser, along with her sister Sarah and her mother Elaine. Becky 13, was killed in a car crash described as a ‘prank’ and had been raped for two years prior to her death. Vicky died at 20 in a drugs incident after sex offenders got her hooked on Class A substances at the age of 12. My invitation to you is to look into their eyes as you pray this Mystery. Please don’t look away.

Another Holy week done.

Last Sunday’s services with palm crosses, talk of the ‘Triumphal Entry’ to Jerusalem and people singing Hosanna as if it’s a celebration song. There was the Maundy Thursday services where embarrassed clergy awkwardly splash some water over the feet of congregants…or if you are in a really progressive church perhaps there will be a token refugee or homeless person. There would have been the enacting of the last supper, where the words of the radical earth inhabiting Rabbi, who was talking about the Mystery of the incarnation and our interconnectedness, are turned into some ritual that only certain ordained people could perform. And then Friday’s focus on the horrendous torture and execution of that same wandering Wisdom Teacher, the stories of how he was betrayed, how everyone left him (no mention of the women who stayed) and the story being told that this was somehow God’s plan, that the suffering was redemptive. All of it reaching a climax this morning, with people all over the globe attending church, the words ‘He is risen on their lips’ .

I get it. I took part in all those activities for years and just this morning, I was up at 5am waiting for the sunrise. As the ink black sky began to shimmer and light seeped in, I took a photo on my phone and sent it to my sisters with the message, ‘He is Risen’. But as I pressed send, I felt the words, “Is He?’ rise up from some deep place within me. A place of utter desolation and grief.

“Is He?”

As I sat in the dawn light, blackbird, robin and wren were singing their greeting to the new day. Normally their song entices me into a place of joy and gratitude, but this morning, I couldn’t shake off the fact that as I had been making my way up the garden in the darkness, I had disturbed an owl. Approaching an old Willow tree on the bend in the path, branches had rustled and the owl took flight over my head, a disturbance of the air across my face the only evidence of her leaving. Owls always remind me of the ancestors, and I have often perceived them as ones who keep vigil. This morning, as I peered after the fading silhouette in the dim morning shadows, I found myself thinking of the women who had stood at the foot of the cross. There in the predawn light, a memory surfaced from 20 years ago. “Woman why are you weeping? Because they have taken away my Lord and I don’t know where they have laid Him” It was dawn on Easter Sunday and Mary Magdalene’s words were going through my head as I walked down a farm track. Instead of celebrating with others at a dawn service as I had for so many years, I was alone. The morning was coming alive with birdsong and a herd of horses looked up as I arrived at their gate, curious as to why I was there so early. Bouncer, my equine partner of three years nuzzled me gently, seeking out the treats he knew would be in my pocket. And weep I did, tears of grief and of rage. Despite the beauty of the morning, I felt desolate, bereft. My partner and I had recently left the church. She had been training for lay readership but had been denied licensing because she had been honest about our long-term relationship. The bishop had said that she could continue to serve, to lead services and do all that she had been faithfully doing but that she he would not licence her. The rejection was made worse by the fact that we knew of others who were not as honest who were being ordained. They just kept quiet and their congregations and Bishops played along. It was the final straw in a long struggle and so I found myself alone, being comforted by the warm muzzle and soft liquid eyes of my horse. My turbulent feelings ebbed away as I saddled and rode Bouncer through the meandering farm tracks. All around creation was singing of new beginnings, trees that had been barren and stark against the skyline where being graced with greenness. Allowing the steady swing of Bouncer’s movement to calm my breathing and mind, I began to feel myself to be part of all that was around me and the sense of isolation began to diminish. Bouncer’s powerful hind quarters propelled us up a slope in a steady canter, and I felt the tension leaving my body as I was one with his movement. Suddenly he came to a halt, and I had to grab at his mane to stop myself going over his shoulder. He stood, sides heaving, his eyes and ears fixated on something I could not see. I could hear and feel my heart pounding through my body as I strained to see what had caused his sudden and very uncharacteristic stop. I could see nothing and tried to urge him forward, but he remained planted, his nostrils flaring to take in a scent undetectable to me, his body on alert, every muscle quivering with anticipation. Then suddenly, just as I thought I would have to turn and go another way, there they were, tumbling out of the hedgerow ahead of us, three hares, dancing and spinning in a circle. Dancing on the spot with excitement, Bouncer turned so that he could follow them with his eyes. My heart leapt as the three hares continued in a circle beside us, boxing, leaping and playing before racing off through the meadow. I could not stop laughing as Bouncer and I continued our ride, the earlier desolation replaced by sheer delight and joy

.

The journey that followed took me into a spirituality than honoured the earth, a path that I have walked, alongside the Christ tradition. I no longer called myself a Christian but retained a deep love for the Mystic Rabbi, Yeshua. I found I couldn’t use the name Jesus because the person it conjured up seemed to have little to do with the person I had experienced. Most of the time, twenty years later, I can find common ground with my beloved friends who still remain in the church. But Easter is always a struggle and this year, the struggle is more intense than ever. Perhaps that is because there is so much pouring out of our various screens where the far right has taken over Evangelical Christianity and it reminds me of my early days in a Christian fellowship that had cult like leanings. But blaming that extreme would be easy. I have very few contacts in that world now. The struggles I was sitting with this morning are much closer to home. It has something to do with calling this week Holy week and making it all about the events that happened to one man. Its about singing songs about the cross and listening to sermons about the passion of Christ, as if what happened to him was somehow unusual, that he suffered in some special way.

Of course, what happened was horrendous. Cruel and barbaric beyond words. Yet it was hardly unusual. The Romans used crucifixion to terrorise and dominate a population. Yeshua was not the only innocent man to be murdered in such a way. The Romans would often use crucifixion as a group punishment, rounding up whole households, including women, children and slaves, because someone in the family had taken part in some act of sedition. As for Yeshua, you could argue that he knew what he was doing. His passion was not what happened on good Friday. His passion was what led him to speak out against Empire and preach a gospel that was counter cultural and a threat to the authorities. Writing about the inevitability of Jesus’s execution Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan wrote in their book, The Last Week, ‘Not because of Divine necessity, , but because of human inevitability -this is what domination systems did to people who publicly and vigorously challenged them.’

Sitting with the dawn light this morning, I wondered, what do we mean when we say He is Risen? All around I see Empire committing the same atrocities as Rome. The poor and vulnerable being terrorised. School children blown apart. 75000 dead in Gaza. People living in poverty. The disabled having their benefits cut. Never mind the way our greed as a species has driven us into an ecological crisis where thousands upon thousands of our other-than-human kin have died and where the earth herself is polluted and ravaged for profit. Even those who speak out against this destruction, talk about the earth in terms of resources to be stewarded for the benefit of man, not recognising the Holy present in her soil and oceans, four footed and feathered ones, mountains and forests.

I haven’t got any answers to my question. I know that it has something to do with recognising that every week is Holy week. That the resurrection isn’t about what did or didn’t happen 2000 years ago, it’s about what happens today, in my life and yours.

I think I will be asking myself that question every day.

Is He risen?

How will I know?

Some words of St Teresa of Avila come to mind.

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

Subscribe now

This time, I am still in the middle of night. The autoimmune condition that has been in my body for 50 years has accelerated. Decades of medical gaslighting meant that I got no treatment. Now I have a diagnosis, two actually, but there are widespread consequences for what was ignored. All the things that gave my life shape and joy such as art, walking , riding my pony, crafting; all have been stripped away as pain and energy depletion stalk my days. Like that seed in the dark, I feel like I am disintegrating.

I sit staring at the blank screen of the computer, wondering what on earth I can write that is any way authentic. My eyes wander to the view outside my studio door. It is a grey misty day; all the colours are muted and subdued. In the middle of the fishing lake, a heron is perched on a fallen tree. She has been sat there all morning. I keep coming back to the computer, writing something then erasing it. Each time I look up, heron is still there.

Watching.

Waiting.

I find myself wondering….is she praying….for me?

That thought sets off a barrage of mocking, critical voices in my head. “Oh you are nuts. That’s going too far. She is just fishing. For goodness sake, you can’t write that. People will think you are bonkers. “

Another hour passes. Pain has me immobilised. My legs are heavy and throbbing. Fire licks at my spine. The light hurts my eyes.

Still Heron sits.

Watching

Waiting.

I find myself wondering why Jesus went off on his own to pray, even though he had asked his friends to go with him. Was it because he knew they didn’t still didn’t really understand what was happening? He had been as clear as he could be, tried to warn them. Maybe it was just too much for them all. Perhaps as they slept just a stone’s throw away from where he was distressed and agitated, they were dreaming of some kingdom to come, holding on to the belief that he would be a victorious Messiah, overcoming the oppressive Roman regime and setting them all free. Or maybe I am doing them an injustice. After all, Luke wrote about them being exhausted by sorrow. Perhaps locked into their own fears, overwhelmed with the horrors of living under a brutal occupation and so depleted by it all, their grief at what Jesus had been warning them about, was just too much to bear, and so, they slept.

Still Heron sits

Watches.

Waits.

I think of how the scripture describes Jesus’s soul being overwhelmed to the point of death. What does that mean, I wonder to myself? To me, it says that his soul felt so overwhelmed it felt like it would kill him.

I recognise that feeling. That sensation of being so bereft and afraid that you end up on the ground, your face in the dirt, pleading for something to change.

I pause. Something is stirring in me. I look up.

Still Heron sits

Watches

Waits.

But she has changed position. She is looking straight at me. Pay attention she seems to say.

I read in Mark. “He fell with his face to the ground”

In Matthew, “He fell to the ground”

In Luke, “He knelt down”

Heron’s gaze does not waver.

When Jesus was overwhelmed with sorrow, he got close to the earth. He prayed to the Father but he let the Mother hold him.

A movement catches my eye, and I look up just as Heron lifts her huge wings and takes off. With seemingly effortless flight, she glides to the edge of the lake, lands, and folding her wings settles down to feed.

I find myself remembering a time back in the spring. I had been walking my dogs along the edges a field next to the lake ,when the exhaustion became too much and my legs felt weak. I put my hand out to a tree by the path to steady myself and felt an invitation. “Come and lean against me”. The tree was a huge old ash tree. Close to tears I slid down to her base and leant against her rough trunk, closing my eyes and breathing slowly until my heart rate steadied. When I opened my eyes, I just sat and gazed at the field that stretched out to the far tree line.

“I’m just so tired”. The words were not spoken to anyone in particular, just a truth that needed expression.

“ So are we.” I looked more closely at the field. Was this huge expanse of ploughed earth responding to me? This field was one that was in continuous use. Year after year it was ploughed, seeded, harvested. Never allowed to lie fallow. Sprayed with toxic chemicals, force fed fertiliser, floods caused by the changes in our climate washing away its topsoil. “I’m so sorry. What can I do?” I asked, wondering what people would think if I told them that I was having a conversation with a field. “Nothing, thankyou. Just be with us. We find comfort in your presence.”

Comfort in your presence.

Some would think it is mere anthropomorphism to think a field might find comfort in my presence. Over the centuries, humanity has done a good job of stripping the other- than- human world of its soul. I find myself remembering something John O’Donahue wrote in his book ‘Divine Beauty’. Getting up from my chair to find the book I notice that Heron is back on her tree.

Watching

Waiting.

O’Donahue writes, “Is it not possible that a place could have huge affection for those who dwell there? Perhaps your place loves having you there. It misses you when you are away and in its secret way rejoices when you return. Could it be possible that a landscape might have a deep friendship with you?”

Now there are tears, wet on my face. I don’t know why. Nothing has changed really. My body is still in pain. The shape of my life is still disintegrating.

And yet somehow, something has shifted.

I have been comforted by the presence of a friend who came and sat a stone’s throw away.

A friend who

Watched

Waited

And prayed.

And that friend was a Heron.

I had no idea when I wrote the above reflection for a group dedicated to the rosary, that just six days later, the structure that gave my life its shape would crumble completely. All my adult life I have been involved with horses and for the last twenty years or so felt like I was a member of a herd, invited into relationship with my four horses as we learned how to work together with troubled children attending my psychotherapy practice. Covid put an end to that work and we entered a new phase. We lost Bouncer the huge benevolent herd leader in 2022 and Wizard Star , the herd matriarch followed in 2023. Bonny Lass and FireFly and I had to learn a new way of being a herd and we did. They settled down together, enjoying racing around the field on a windy day.

Bonny made friends with Lottie my yellow lab who would sit outside her stable when she was in for her feed, sometimes creeping in when the door was open so that she could lie with her.

FireFly and I went for long rides around the hedgerows and fishing lakes. When I had to stop riding in May because of surgery and spine problems, he continued to go out with Harriet, the lass who has helped me care for them as if they were her own for the last nine years. Just a few weeks ago we laughed together at his rodeo antics with her.

But then a skin infection broke out turning his glossy black coat into a mass of weeping sores. In the past we have been able to manage these infections caused by a compromised immune system, but this time his whole body was becoming covered and he was in a constant state of extreme itching. His quality of life became so poor that we decided that the kindest thing to do was put him out of his misery. Bonny Lass who was 33 years old, virtually blind was very attached to FireFly. She had grieved terribly when we lost Bouncer and Wizard Star and as she was struggling to keep weight on, we decided to let her go at the same time.

It was a heartbreaking day. My partner Alix and I, along with Harriet, stayed by their side. The sun shone as we wept. Our vet joined us in our grief, weeping with us, assuring us that it had been the kindest thing for them, if agony for us. The horses had been more than just pets as some people might see them. They had been my friends, my teachers, my spiritual directors, my joy and my solace in difficult times. And now they are gone.

I have thought about what I wrote in the reflection last week and how a heron had come to watch and wait with me. I found myself wondering where that comfort was now in the face of the empty barn and field. It is only as I am writing these words that I have remembered the song I sang as each of them passed that last threshold. The song, written by Carolyn Hillyer, is one I sing over any being that makes that journey, but this was the first time I have sung it at the actual time of passing, rather than waiting until others have left. I wondered then what had prompted me to do so, as I can feel shy about letting others, who may not understand my spirituality, observe any ceremony or ritual.

‘Buzzard call you back to the wild lands, Heron fly you home. Journey to the soul of your own land Where the mothers wait for your return Heron fly you home Heron fly you home.’

Heron fly you home

Singing the words again, I realise that it was Heron who prompted me to sing, assuring me that she was accompanying our beloved Bonny Lass and FireFly on their last journey, flying them home.

We were not alone in our grief.

Heron had stayed.

It’s a strange thing. Something we talk about as if it is concrete entity that we can handle.

Time passing. Filling time.

Time lost. Time gained.

Time rushing. Time dragging.

Time running away with you.

Buying time. Spending time.

Wasting time.

We are told that time is money, that we can be ‘time poor.’

Social media feeds are full of adverts proclaiming this is your ‘last chance’ to do or buy something. We are encouraged to think that there is one path we should take that will lead to our success, that we should follow our bliss, as if this is just one thing, like a hoard of gold waiting at the end of a perilous journey. The intimation is that if we don’t take that journey (and of course the product being sold is THE way we get to find our map) then we have lost our chance, that the time has passed and we have lost ‘it’.

As a child I was often told off in school for daydreaming. I have always struggled to deal with linear time, I get dates and times muddled and find it hard to judge how long activities will take. These tendencies have caused people to judge me as lazy or forgetful or even worse, uncaring because of missing birthdays or anniversaries.

It was a relief when I received a diagnosis of ADHD and sensory processing issues, to find that this was a common trait in neurodivergent people. In this population there are two sorts of time :Now and Not Now. That relief was short lived when I faced the reality that my natural way of being was seen as a disorder. Civilisation dictates that there is one way of being and anything outside of this is a disorder, something to be cured or medicated so that we can be productive members of society and take part in the never ending push for growth and expansion.

There were many ways that my way of being put me out of sinc with what was expected of me and just recently, I have begun to understand why I often feel out of kilter. For decades I had no idea what caused it, this sense of unease, of disconnection from what was going on around me. I had no idea that the clues were held in my body and how my senses were responding to the natural world around me.

At school I was taught that there are twenty four hours in a day, 365 days in a year, that the sun is overhead at noon and that it rises in the east and sets in the west. We can look in our diaries and find the exact times of sunrise and sunset. All presented as fact. Except it isn’t. Not really. Not exactly.

Humans have wrestled with how to measure time for millenia and the calendar we now follow only came into existence in October 1582, introduced by Pope Gregory XIII. Indeed, there had been calls for the correction of the previous Julian calendar for decades and three centuries earlier, a man called Roger Bacon had railed against the way time was measured, going against the accepted wisdom of the day and the teachings of the church. In our modern world, ruled as we are by our smart phones and electronic calendars, it doesn’t really enter into our heads that the calculation of time had anything to do with religion of God. But one of the most prominent writers of the medieval church, a monk known as the Venerable Bede, wrote a book , ‘De temporum ratione’ (the Reckoning of time)in the year 725. Eleanor Parker wrote in her wonderful book, Winters in the world-A journey through the Anglo-Saxon year, “But for Bede, as for other medieval scholars, the study of time was not just a human science, but a sacred pursuit. In their eyes, the structure of the year reflected profound truths about the nature of the universe planned and created by God, which found expression in every detail of the calendar. Time was part of creation; to study it was to learn something about the mind of its Creator.”

Long before Bede, our ancestors built huge structures such as New Grange and Stonehenge, aligning them with the light of the Solstice sunrise or sunsets. It is thought that there would be community rituals held at such times.

But I knew nothing of this as a child attending school where I was taught that the sun would be overhead at noon and the sun would rise in the east or the west. I had no idea that because of the way the earth tilts in its axis and the way it orbits around the sun, that the only place the noon sun is directly overhead is the equator, that there are only two days per year the sun will rise due east or set due west. I didn’t know that the times for sunrise and sunset were based on Greenwich meantime and my local time would be different, although of course I realised this as I got older. You might ask why it I am making such an issue of this. We need calendars and watches, be they the old fashioned sort or the modern digital variety. That is true. That is why our ancestors worked so hard to develop them, to make things like trade and travel easier. But what we fail to notice or take account of is that we have another way of reckoning time, a way that is an ancient part of us

.

My friends and family have always teased me, saying that my body is a barometer. I sense changes in the weather because of the intensity or hue of the light, the feel of the air on my body. I experience the change of air pressure in my joints, head and gut. I have always noticed the movement of birds and insects without knowing what it was I was seeing. As I grew up and took on the ‘facts’ about the calendar and became more and more immersed in the western world-view, I disconnected from these senses and the wisdom they held. For a long time, they were pathologised. It led to a feeling of not quite fitting anywhere but not knowing why. Then . a couple of years ago I had a very vivid dream. I had been struggling to come to terms with the diagnosis of severe ADHD and realising that it wasn’t something I could just change by altering my habits. In the dream, an ancestor from the Cornovii tribe came to visit me (the Cornovii were the iron age tribe local to the area where I live.) This ancestor stood over me and said, “Had you lived in our time. Your way of being would have been the norm and your gifts an asset to the community. Our ancestors taught us to read the signs in the world around us and to listen to our bodies speaking. ” I woke from the dream quite shaken but put it down to woo woo wishful thinking and got on with my day, swallowing the stimulants prescribed to help me act more like a neurotypical person. Imagine my shock when a few weeks later, I came across an article talking about a whole area of study that said ADHD was a throwback to the genetics of our Palaeolithic ancestors. It is a controversial area of study, but it caused me to look afresh at what the medical world was calling a disorder and begin a journey of acceptance.

My experience as a psychotherapist has shown me that this is not something unique to neurodivergent people ,although we may experience it in a more extreme way . Many of the people who came through the doors of my therapy practice said that they found the period between Christmas and Epiphany difficult. They described it as an empty time, an in-between space where it was hard to get on with anything. A time when they felt quiet and were not sure what to do with themselves. I thought of them a few weeks ago, when I attended a three hour retreat with Katherine May, author of Wintering and Enchantment, and she introduced us to the practice of Omen days. These were 12 days from the Solstice to New Years Day when people would go out into nature and look signs that would then give them information for each of the following months. After our retreat, pressing Mr Google, I found lots of references to Omen days, all leading back to one blog post by Caitlin Matthews. In the post Matthews says that the tradition of Omen days took place between Christmas and Epiphany during medieval times and that “in Brittany and in Wales, the Twelve Days of Christmas, which mark the intercalary days of the year, are called ‘the Omen Days,’ and they have a special purpose. ‘Intercalary days’ are really the days left over from reckoning up the solar year and, in calendars throughout the world and at different times, they are special because they are considered to be ‘the days out of time.’ It is in this interval between the ordinary count of days that gods are born or conceived in many different mythologies, including the Irish one, where Oengus Og, Young Angus, is conceived, grown and born at Brúg na Boinne within this time, all in one day, by the magical workings of the Dagda.”

Whether the Omen days happen between between Solstice and New Year or Christmas and Epiphany doesn’t really matter to me. What caught my attention were the words, ‘days out of time’. Is this what my clients were sensing without understanding what it was?

I have horses and it is still dark when I go to feed them in the morning. For weeks, now the farmer’s wife has been saying, “Not long now until the lighter days” or “the 21st will soon be here,” referring to the winter Solstice. It seems that everyone can’t wait for the light to come back. No sooner is Christmas over, in fact before it is over, we are bombarded with adverts for January sales and promoting gyms and fitness programmes to help get us back in shape. We are asked what our new year resolutions are going to be, what are we going to focus on, what do we want to manifest. Yet the natural world is doing something different.

According to Wikipedia, the word solstice is derived from the Latin sol ("sun") and sistere ("to stand still"), because at the solstices, the Sun's declination appears to "stand still"; that is, the seasonal movement of the Sun's daily path (as seen from Earth) pauses at a northern or southern limit before reversing direction.

Although we get 15 more minutes light in the evening between the 21st of December and the new year, sunrise only moves by two minutes in that time. In fact it actually gets later for a few days between 26th December and January 1st and doesn’t start to get earlier until January 8th. Technically this is part of what is called the Equation of time, but that’s not what interests me. (Actually, that is not true as I am a total geek about time, calendars, watches and their connection to how we live our lives. For fellow geeks, I will share some of my favourite books at the end of this post.) What really catches my attention is the invitation the natural words seems to be giving us. In a time when the world around urges us to look to the future, take action and work on our goals, the cosmos says STAND STILL!

So, I have decided this year to embrace this practice of the Omen days by going out in nature and seeing what comes into my awareness or perhaps by drawing an oracle card. I’m not much of a one for divination as in telling the future but I do believe that the natural world and art has much to offer in helping access wisdom for navigating the year ahead. This year more than ever, I feel that we need to step off the treadmill, dim the lights and let the dark soothe our nervous systems. Although the ancient ones did indeed celebrate the return of the light, they did it to mark midwinter, knowing there were still dark months to come. My friends, don’t be in a hurry to get caught up in all that our capitalist society would have us believe is imperative for our success and survival. I’m beginning to believe that the truth lies in the opposite of this. Slowing down. Taking time to notice what is happening in the natural world and finding ways to listen to what these days out of time might have to offer us.

I’ll finish by sharing a funny story. I rarely know what the date is and always have to check my diary. I did this yesterday. However, because I’m not at work at the moment and so haven’t got my normal markers to tell me what the day is, I was under the impression that yesterday was Thursday, making today Friday. In my reckoning therefore, the Solstice would be tomorrow. This morning at sunrise, I felt a real nudge to go and stand outside. As I did, I noticed two flocks of birds, pigeons and rooks, flying around the valley. At one point the two flocks merged. With the sun catching the wings of the pigeons all I could see was a swirling together of black and white shapes. The word integration popped into my mind. As I went back indoors, I smiled to myself thinking it was good practice for the coming days. Of course, later in the day I learned that today is the solstice and that my experience with the birds had been no practice run but the Omen days announcing themselves with style!

May you know the blessing of standing still during this festive season.

References: The Reckoning of Time: Bede

Winters in the World- A Journey Through the Anglo-Saxon : Eleanor Parker

Caitlin Matthews:

https://caitlin-matthews.blogspot.com

Books about time and calendars: The Calendar: David Ewing Duncan

A Brief History of Timekeeping: Chad Orzel

Hands of time: Rebecca Struthers

I learnt a new term yesterday. ‘Anticyclonic gloom.’ According to the BBC weather site, ‘This is when high pressure traps an area of moisture close to the surface of the Earth. The moisture forms low cloud, mist and fog, which then cannot lift and clear as the winds are so light and the sunshine at this time of year is so weak.’

As I wandered the land these last few days, our weather has certainly fitted that description. The sky low and grey, the mist making everything seem to merge at the edges, the hedgerows sapped of their autumnal colours appearing brown and dark grey. A sepia landscape.

To be honest, I am grateful. As someone who has felt emotions intensely all my life and has been easily overwhelmed by what is going on in the collective, I have welcomed the softness of the colours, the silent stillness of the air as I have rambled around field edges and watched the moorhens doing what moorhens do in the reeds at the edge of the lake, or following the the heron’s path as her huge wings lifted her effortlessly, and what in what seemed to be slow motion, to find another vantage point from which to continue her watching and waiting.

So many have been talking about pushing on, rising up, continuing the fight and I get it, I really do. I certainly don’t believe in turning away, giving up. Others have written beautifully about grieving and I know that is true as well. But the feeling I had walking the landscape wasn’t quite that either.

It was the Alder tree that gave me clarity. The small tree that sits on the edge of a lake. The one who, in the midst of a storm in January invited me to lean against her trunk, whispering the words ,‘Hush, I’ve got you.’

Standing with her, my hand on her grey brown trunk, my eyes fell on the Heron who had taken off so gracefully on my approach to the tree. She had flown up to the high branches of an old oak tree where she had settled, looking like some ancient crone with a dark shawl around her shoulders.

I knew that I was being invited to watch and wait with her. To come away for a while, away from social media, from the news. Come away from the rage and the grief at what had been unleashed in the world on November 5th.

Something in me resisted; it seemed wrong, like I was abandoning my friends who were experiencing such fear. Trans friends, gay friends, black and brown friends, and the other than human friends.

Herons have always been an invitation to me, an invitation to enter that place between the worlds, that liminal space where ancestors whisper and the imaginal is given shape. Leaning against Alder, I joined the heron in her waiting.

“Your worry will not accomplish anything. Go and do what you love. Find joy.” The words hovered in the still air around me.

Again I resisted. The activist in me started to argue. What right did I have to do the things I loved when others were in such danger.

This time the voice held amusement. Not unkind, but the amusement of an elder listening to the passions of a youth. “ This is not something that can be fixed by more campaigning, more protesting. Try if you like, if it helps sooth your ego. But my advice is to do what you love. Find joy.” Heron lifted her huge wings and slowly launched herself in the air, flying away across the lake, the words trailing in the air behind her.

I stood watching her go, feeling like an admonished teenager even though I am seventy years old. I knew it was true. A friend, Sid, had said in a recent message, “Keep doing what you love.” Another friend, Perdita Finn, had written on facebook, “I never say no to grief...but what we need now is wild unfettered joy. THIS is the only thing that really stands up to fascism.” Then yesterday, someone wrote “Joy as resistance”. I can’t remember where I read it, but the words jumped off the page.

I am reminded of the time when I lost two of my horses a couple of years ago. Just before the second one died I had watched an episode of Call the Midwife. In one scene, a harassed young nun was asked how she coped with the difficult things she was having to deal with. Her response was, “Find the beauty.” In the midst of dealing with the loss of a much loved being, who had shared her life and wisdom with me for almost twenty years, those words danced their way through my days. They caused me to pay attention, to experience the events through the lens of beauty, so much so that I look back at that period and remember it as one of the most precious times I have ever experienced.

Maybe that is what Heron is inviting us into now. The prospects of what is coming are not good. All the usual ways of standing up to this wave of hatred have not worked. What if we are being invited into another way? A way that causes the creativity and beauty in our hearts to rise up. A way that makes us reach out to those close by in our own communities and share things, ordinary things that bring laughter. A way of connecting to the other than human kin around us and listening for their wisdom.

In January, Alder whispered, “Hush, I’ve got you.”

Yesterday, Heron added , “Find joy”.

Today…..I’m choosing to listen. I hope that you will join me. What do you love? What brings you joy? Go and do that.

Today, I bought roses and put them in an old green vase and set it on my kitchen table.

I bought them for all the mothers who are afraid today.

Afraid because they are pregnant and have a history of miscarriage. Afraid for their other children if it happens again.

Afraid because their trans child has just come out and is now sobbing in their room with terror.

Afraid because their daughter is living with her gay partner and has already been spat at.

Afraid because she saw a pick up truck drive past with men in the back waving AR-15s above their heads, shouting threats at a Latino family as they sped down the road as if they owned it.

Afraid because ........you fill in the blank.

If you are one of those mothers, I bought the roses for you. I wish I could give them to you in.person, make you some tea, give you a hug.

But I can't. But I can give them to another Mother. Follow in the ancient tradition of giving roses to The Mother, a tradition that predates Christianity but carried on when it arrived. People used to make her garlands of roses but to tell the truth, I am too tired for that. Exhausted by the grief of it all. But that's OK. This Mother knows what it is like to watch an Empire at work, see religion working hand in hand with despots who bleed the people dry and murder the sons who speak up for the marginalised, the vulnerable. She understands about swords piercing the hearts of mothers.

So I give her the roses. Ask her to mother the mothers and comfort the motherless. I start to remind her of a song she once sang, a song about bringing down the mighty but she hushes me with an impatient wave of her hand. 'Enough already....they are tired and need sleep, not more battle songs. Let me wrap them in my mantle.'

I watch her throw out her mantle, watch as it spreads out further and further, just like the inky blue of the night sky, covering all who need it's protection.

If you close your eyes, you might just be able to feel it. Soft on your shoulders. .Now..……you can sleep. For now.…..let the battle go. Lean in and rest. The Mother of all mothers will hold you.

Subscribe now

I went for a walk this afternoon, my mind and heart full of thoughts of what is happening in the USA. I was thinking of recent messages from friends who are scared of the outcome…gay friends, trans friends, mothers of girls, women who want babies but have a history of miscarriage, people who have chronic illness…….all of them frightened of what today might bring. As I walked, the words of a song by The Porter’s Gate. kept slipping in and out of my awareness until finally I stopped and let it settle.

“I chase my worries I flee my sorrows But what you give me is now So take my burdens and my tomorrows, I wanna be where my feet are.”

It was that last line that kept repeating itself. “ I wanna be where my feet are.” As I stopped walking, I looked down at my feet, taking in the beautiful colours of the leaves that covered my boots. Yellow, red, green, orange, and gold. I remembered the last line of the song, “The ground below me, is how You hold me.”

Resuming my walk, I kept repeating those words like a mantra. The ground below me, is how You hold me. The ground below me, is how You hold me. The ground below me is how You hold me. It was a soft misty November day. Everywhere I looked, the autumn colours were muted by mist, the edges of fields softened and blurred. Gradually, the intensity of the anxiety that had been jangling through my nervous system also began to soften.

I found myself thinking of something John O’Donohue wrote in his book Anam Cara. Writing about friendship he said, “That which is ancient between you will mind you, shelter you and hold you together.” That which is ancient….the land below me. The ancient earth that has survived so many disasters, extinctions, wars, uprisings and conflicts. I thought of the ancient rocks, the trees, the flowers, the animals and birds who had gone before. I thought of the Cornovii tribe who dwelt on the land I was walking on during the Iron Age and of all the other humans who who had been born, lived and died and were buried in the ground. ‘The ground below me , is how You hold me.’ Who is the You referred to in that line? For me, it is the Divine, the Sacred Source, the Great Mother.

I continued my walk. On the outside nothing had changed. It was still a misty November day. The situation my friends were facing in the US was still the same. But somehow the truth of what it meant to be held by the ground below me had taken on a deeper meaning. I knew that we were being held by all who had gone before us….and I was comforted.

Subscribe now

To be honest, I sighed. These last few months I have felt like I have been stood at the base of a mountain, looking up and feeling that I had no energy to face the climb. Months of navigating health issues, walking alongside loved ones in pain and feeling overwhelmed by what is happening in the world, I just wanted to burrow down into the earth and hibernate not embark on an arduous hike up steep paths over rocky terrain. It was then I remembered a phrase given to me a few years ago.

“Become the Mountain.” My body exhaled as I repeated the words, the memory of the experience flooding back. The invitation to find the strength to be inside of myself. I did not have to fight, to muster up strength I just didn’t have in order to undergo some grueling journey. I didn’t have to climb the mountain; I was being invited to become it.

This is the account of that experience, written about seven or eight years ago:

Where am I? I am standing at a threshold having just come down from a mountain. It was an unusual trip; you see, I am afraid of heights. I get dizzy and freeze when I am close to steep sided ravines, my hearts races when I feel exposed, when the birds of prey or the clouds are my companions. I normally hang out in the woods, or at least near trees.  One of my favourite places is in a corner of my large rambling English garden, a garden that is in fact six separate spaces, connected by overgrown passageways and wooden gates reminiscent of the one from that childhood favourite “The Secret Garden”. This particular corner of the garden has two old Yew trees that stand sentinel like at one end, reminding me that there is always a portal to the imaginal world, if I just take the time to notice. Cherry, Willow, Hazel and Elder gather around the labyrinth that is set into the turf, encircling it like a sacred circle of women, protective of the stones and the many prayers and dreams that have walked there. Beneath the Cherry and nestled between the Yew trees lies a small peace garden. It is here that I have kept vigil after bombings and attacks, burnt a candle all night as the votes were counted for Brexit. It was to here that I fled, overwhelmed and confused when the most powerful nation on earth voted in a man who seemed intent on hatred, letting the cold November night numb my feelings of fear and the rain be my tears of rage. It was here too that I began my Bardic journey, watching the night hours of the Solstice eve pass by, having the sudden realisation that I was on a turning earth as I gazed up at the moon and stars through the leaves of the sheltering Willow. My body alive with energy, I clung to the earth, half afraid and half exhilarated as I knew deep in my soul that gravity was the only thing keeping me from floating away into infinity. As dawn crept in and the morning light softened the deep shadows, I called to the four directions and recited the Druid’s prayer for peace, committing to the way of the Bard.

I feel safe in that corner of Shropshire., Hidden from view as I grapple with a world that at times I cannot understand and that fills me with grief. But I don’t stay there. I know I can’t stay there. My soul calls me out and I find that I am given courage by the company of horses. My time of deep connection? Riding my pony at dawn, with ravens and buzzards flying overhead, hares running startled as we canter up the hedgerows. The fishing lakes reflect the wooded hillside, catching the early morning light, as swans glide graciously by, adding their particular spell of mystery to the early morning scene. The pony, FireFly to his friends, is an energetic and feisty little being. Bred for the rugged mountain terrain of Wales, he is brave and adventurous and has taught me so much about leaning into curiosity and wonder.

I feel most alive when I share these hillsides and woods with other woman, when I see creativity blossom as if by magic on canvases set up by a lake. I feel most alive when I dance amongst the trees, my body hanging from their sensuous limbs, feeling their sap rising in my own veins.

And yet

Or maybe, because,  of this;

this week, I left the garden. I left the woods and the lakeside. I went to the mountains. Now some might disagree if they had seen me as I sat beneath the Yew tree, my fingers trailing in the dirt of the peace garden. It was a blistering hot day and with the sun high in the sky the Yews and the Cherry offered me shade. Any onlookers may insist that I remained there all afternoon, sleeping in the shelter of the trees. But they could not see that in my other hand was a rock, gathered on a long ago visit to the highlands of Scotland, place of my paternal ancestors. Laying back against the coolness of the earth, I allowed my hand to feel its rough shape, the ridges in the granite like pathways to follow. The sound of the insects buzzing and droning was hypnotic and I found myself walking along the pathways of stone. The garden around me faded and the air became clear and chill, the perfume of gorse filling every breath I took. Climbing higher up the path, I found myself looking down on vistas that took my breath away in their beauty and sheer expansiveness. Clouds swirled and the sun glinted off snow on the peaks below.

Vertigo came in like a rush causing my knees to buckle. As I sat on the rocky ground, my limbs trembling with adrenaline and my breath coming in short bursts, all appreciation of the expansive vistas fled and I longed for the shelter of my peace garden and my only thought was of how I could return there. A pain in my hand interrupted my panicking thoughts and realising that I had been gripping the granite rock so hard that it had cut my hand, I watched the line of blood trickle down my wrist and into the rocky earth. As I watched the earth absorb my blood, a quiet settled over me. Despite the wind, there was a stillness, a silence so loud that it thrummed in my head, vibrating my body.

“Stand up”

The words were carried on the breeze. Vehemently shaking my head I felt for the rock behind me, pressing my body into the ground.

. “Stand up” was the goading command .

“ I can’t…”.my wail echoed across the mountain, bouncing off the boulders, sounding like a child afraid of the unknown.

“Stand up” the whisper came back, even more determined.

“But what if I fall?” the whimper was carried away to the clouds streaming by.

“But what if you don’t?” the mountain replied.

So I stood.

With legs that trembled and breathe that struggled in and out of a body held rigid with fear. But I stood.

Slowly the adrenaline slowed its course through my veins and my muscles relaxed without the need to collapse.

“Look at who you are,” an eagle called, gliding effortlessly on the thermals, soaring above me and then spiraling down with a speed that enthralled me. As I followed his flight path, he drew my eyes to the mountain range, resplendent in purple and grey, they stood majestic, towering over the landscape below.

“Become the mountain. Remember our ancestors”

I looked at the rock in my hand. Our ancestors? My father’s image floated across my eyes, superimposed on the scree of the mountain side. Behind him were other figures, some in shadows, fishing in small boats, working in fields, being driven from Islands, babes in their arms as sheep took their place.

“Our ancestors?” I questioned, feeling the rock in my hand.

“The Mountain is in your cells. Become the mountain.”

And so I stood.

I felt the granite strengthening my bones, the curve of the foothills were my breasts and my belly. Waterfalls cascaded through my veins and the light in my eyes was the flash of sun on snow-capped peaks.

My father’s image began to fade along with the other figures, melting into the light that was taking on an evening hue. Only one remained. She stood, barefoot on a rocky crag, a shawl wrapped around her as the wind whipped her hair around her head. Her gaze was steady, burning with a fierce compassion that brought unexpected tears to my eyes and an ache to my throat.

“Become the mountain.

For all of us.

That our dreams will live”

As suddenly as she had come, she was gone, along with the high peaks and purple hillside, the eagle’s call and the chill mountain air.

Sitting on the earth with the sun blazing down, it was if nothing had happened. This sheltered space seemed a million miles away from the vast wildness of a mountain range.

Insects were still humming in the labyrinth, bees were going about their business on a hot summer’s day, a gentle breeze causing the willow tree’s leaves to rustle. Somewhere nearby a blackbird sang.

But looking down at the stone in my hand, the granite ridges reminiscent of pathways on a mountain pass, I knew something had changed. The ancient memories held by the stone in my hand had known that there was a mountain waiting to be birthed into the world, that dreams might live and the longings of ancestors be heard.

I lay the rock gently into the waiting earth of the peace garden, traces of my blood darkening its contours.

“But how?” I asked.

“Become the mountain.

It is in your cells” was the only response

.

I love the way a line of poetry or prose can spark a long forgotten memory. Reading 'Afloat' by Gary Snyder, I was transported back to a moment over twenty years ago. I had been staying at an outdoor centre on the Isle of Mull. The week had been intense with all the joys and challenges of living in community in a remote setting. Three of us were lucky to be given the task of taking firewood across the Sound to Iona for a bonfire, to be held later that day. 
The first line of the poem is from Gary Snyder's poem.


Sky and water stitched together.
A memory floats in on the words
A sea of  blue and turquoise 
Streaked with deep purple and 
Spattered with white
As waves break gaily
Under a wide of expanse of sky 
White clouds scurrying across the bay.
Voices and laughter 
Carried on the breeze
As we feel the freedom of our escape to the water.
Suddenly
We see you
A sleek dark head
Bobbing above the surface
Black nose taking in our scent
Whiskers quivering.
Our voices grow silent 
Engine switched off
We join you in your bobbing on the surface
Of the blue turquoise sea
Caught in that moment
Gazing
Eye to eye
Soul to soul
Glimpsing the Holy.

Image:Keith Luke

Subscribe now

I first came across the writing of LM Montgomery when I was eight years old. My sisters and I were the recipients of a large box of books containing many childhood classics. Little Women, Jo’s Boys, Heidi, Pollyanna, What Katy Did, the Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables and all its sequels. All were devoured and enjoyed but it was the books about Anne that found a place in my heart and have remained a part of my life in a way that is hard to explain. And not just mine. To this day, my sisters and I, all in our seventies, still send each other images of ‘Lakes of Shining Waters’ or ‘White ways of Delight’, testament to the enduring power of the imagery and accompanying metaphors in Maud’s writing.

When I first read about the little red-haired orphan, it was like looking into a mirror. An impulsive, easily distracted child who talked non-stop, was prone to daydreaming and what others considered wild flights of imagination, Anne found companionship in nature and beauty in things that others simply took for granted.  Later, when I discovered the rest of Maud’s  books, I found other fragments of myself reflected in her many characters. There was Emily who had a compulsion to write, got into trouble for seeing through the facade of politeness and speaking the truth of what was going on. She had experiences in nature where she felt a sense of unity with all of creation, glimpsed other realms that existed beyond the veil and had dreams filled with premonitions that proved to be correct.  Considered odd because she saw thoughts in colour, the Story Girl carried the stories of her ancestors in her cells and was able to keep an audience captivated by her words. And there was Ilse with her bizarre way of dressing, volatile temper and repertoire of insults that covered up grief and the trauma of abandonment.

But it was Anne who began it all. I know what she gave to me and I am curious what she gave to others. What was it about her that causes so many folk to tell me that they adored that book, that it saved them as a child, was she was their companion, an inner kindred spirit they still go back to.

If Anne was part of your world, I would love to hear what she meant to you as a child and what she means now.  If you have never met her, I highly recommend that you find a copy of the book and make her acquaintance. You won’t regret it.

Subscribe now

Share

But that story of origin, like the story of the origin of the River Thames, a river that ran through my childhood , is disputed. Disputed by whom you may ask. Well, I'm not quite sure how to answer that, in case you think I'm crazy or delusional. That has happened to me before you see.  Sometimes it just resulted in me being laughed at and the subject of teasing but other times it had more serious consequences, like being shut away in the sterile rooms, my body injected with substances that drained all the colour from my life and cut me off from the song that kept my soul alive. Another time it left me on the outside of a tribe I had thought to be my lifelong companions.

My soul knows the smell of sea air and peat bogs, my hands remember how to weave and the rhythm of spinning coarse fleece is carried in my cells.

So perhaps you can understand that it is with some trepidation that I offer another origin story, the one that says the story of my beginnings is held in the songlines of the landscape where I place my feet.  That ancient song reminds me that I am a child of the forest who walked between the worlds, even before my little legs could take physical steps. My soul knows the smell of sea air and peat bogs, my hands remember how to weave and the rhythm of spinning coarse fleece is carried in my cells. I am a friend of four legged creatures who has traveled eons by gazing into the eyes of a horse, listening to their story.

I am a creative dreamer who allows a canvas to be a portal, knowing that not knowing is the best way to begin, even though it causes my heart to beat loudly and a cacophony of inner voices to arise in protest.

I am a lover of the sacred, who finds solace in the echoing silence of old churches, and hears the prayers of my ancestors hanging in the air, mingling with the smell of candle-wax and incense. I see the face of the Divine in the fragrant blossom of old apple trees and the majesty of mountains, rising from purple mists.

I am a hearth tender who loves old cottages with beamed ceilings, patchwork quilts, tea poured from teapots and crumpets by a log fire, a cat by my side.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Share

.

Subscribe now

Today,                                                                                                                                               there is                                                                                                                                                                                 birdsong,                                                                                                                                                                          apple-blossom                                                                                                                                                           white against                                                                                                                                                                shadowy greens                                                                                                                                                 just emerging from the covering of night.                                                                                                    Grey clouds                                                                                                                                                                   make morning                                                                                                                                                             slow to arrive.                                                                                                                                                              The light                                                                                                                                    creeping in at the edges,                                                                                                                    tiptoes across the landscape                                                                                                                             kissing the word awake                                                                                                                                             oh                                                                                                                                                                                             so                                                                                                                                                                                       slowly

Today is a wild autumn day, wind and rain are lashing at the windows of the little cedar cabin where I sit to write.  Watching the rain dance on the surface of the lake outside my window, I am reminded of another autumn day, almost a year ago.  I had driven with my partner to a wet and windy racecourse to meet a man called Rod. Three weeks earlier, Rod had come to the farm one evening, to collect the body of our beloved horse Bouncer who  had died that morning. Now we were meeting him again, this time to collect Bouncer’s ashes.

As Rod, a kindly man who looked for all the world as if he should be a jockey, prepared to transfer the heavy wicker casket from his car to ours, he asked me how I was coping without my old friend. “Feeling  empty?” he said,  his eyes full of kindness. My response was to say, “Don’t make me cry”. Smiling gently, he replied, “You probably will”, as he passed me Bouncer’s last set of shoes.

He was right of course. About the emptiness and the tears. In the three weeks since Bouncer had left us, the world had forever changed. Looking at the wicker casket, it seemed impossible that such a little thing could hold the physical remains of that huge body.

A gentle giant whose presence  had had filled so much of my heart for the last twenty plus years, it was hard to believe that he was gone, but every day the gap was, and still is, there. No more huge head looking over the stable door, mane in disarray, mud hanging off his forelock like beads at the end of dreadlocks. No more thundering of hooves on a windy day as he and the ponies FireFly and Bonnie-Lass ran and bucked in the field, the wind under their tails, whilst  the herd matriarch, Wizard- Star, grazed on unperturbed. No more kicking at the door requesting, or rather demanding more treats, if I as much as went near the vicinity of the feed room.

 I wasn’t alone  alone in feeling the emptiness. Oh dear Bouncer, your little herd missed you so in those early months, the herd you were so caring towards. Always looking out for them,  herding them away from danger, standing  between them and any threat.    Bonny Lass, your night time field companion,  took to  standing by the fence line alongside Manny, a horse in the adjoining field . He and his herd mates had stood there the day your huge body lay still on the grass. Despite the fences, some instinct in them knew your leadership.

 In the days following your death,  Bonnie -Lass jumped at noises  and walked more cautiously.  You gave her confidence despite her failing sight, and she was devoted to you. Sometimes, arriving at the barn in the dawn hours, I would find her standing sentinel like over you as you slept.  My heart ached watching  her walking alone into the field those darkening evenings, her small frame suddenly looking old and forlorn. One day when she lay down in the field for the first time, I was initially pleased to see her taking some rest.  Then I realised that out of the huge expanse of field to choose from, she was laying on the spot where you had lain on that last day, the place where we had said goodbye.

Wizard Star, your soul mate of eighteen years, once so confident and self- possessed, called for the others if they went of sight. During the day she took over the leadership of the herd, driving the ponies back from the gate with flattened ears and well placed heels. But at night, when I went into her stable to change her rug and hang her night hay,  her eyes, deep pools of compassion followed me and she gave low throaty nickers.  It’s then that my tears would spill over and as I leant into her, she wrapped her neck around me. ‘I know, I know,’ she seemed to whisper with her breath and the way she nuzzled my hair. 

I am grateful that on that day, Bouncer, as I collected your ashes,  I had no inkling  that just four months later, Wizard Star would follow you.

When she first came into my life over eighteen years ago, Wizard- Star had frightened me. Fierce and feisty in temperament, she was seen as being wild and out of control. I had no idea then, that she was offering me a new model of femininity, where I could learn to set boundaries and stand in my own power. 

Wizard-Star insisted  that I respond to her in an authentic way, a way that involved listening deeply to my body and offering respect, treating her as an equal. She refused to tolerate methods that were based in the dominance and control so prevalent in traditional horsemanship.

As the years passed, I saw a gentleness emerge in her as countless wounded children walked into our lives through my therapy practice. Even when Wizard -Star was teaching them about boundaries and ways of being in relationship without manipulation or deceit, I saw compassion in her eyes.

 I will never forget the day a little girl had run into the barn, a child who refused touch and who never stayed still enough to receive a loving look. That day, Wizard Star licked her all over, soaking her t-shirt with her raspy tongue. When she went to move away, the old mare gave a deep nicker and the child relaxed back into her. The foster carer and I watched with tears wet on our cheeks. “She is treating her like a foal’, the carer whispered to me. And she was right. She licked that little one for almost twenty minutes and I watched as the child leaned into her at the end, her small hands running through the mare’s thick black mane. That day as she left the barn, the child reached for her foster carers hand for the first time.

Wizard-Star was no stranger to rage and taught many, including me, to express the powerful emotions that  often covered grief. I think of the foal she lost, the way she was used, and her talents exploited by those who should have been looking out for her, until one she struck out in rage and were immediately deemed dangerous. But still, week after week out on a windswept hillside with rooks and ravens calling nearby, this mare bore witness to adolescent boys finding tears instead of violence, she encouraged silent girls to find their voices and traumatised women let go of their pasts and step into the present.

In recent years our lives took on a different pace. Covid meant that the barn was no longer filled with children’s chatter. We found an easy rhythm with each other, enjoying each other’s company. Plagued by dermatitis caused by an autoimmune disease, she had no reservation in placing her body beside me and lifting her hind leg so that I could scratch around her teats and belly. She embodied her aging physicality and expressed her needs in a way that encouraged me to do the same.

Then one day in February, Wizard- Star developed colic.  Even as I walked her in the field in an attempt to ease the symptoms, a raven circling over our heads, I knew in my heart that she was going to leave. But I didn’t want her to go, and I tried to believe that she would recover, as she had so many times before. Indeed, she rallied for a while and the vet suggested that we allow her to follow her instincts to graze. It was an unseasonably warm day and for a few hours she grazed with Bonny -Lass and FireFly by her side. But the colic returned and her  eyes sought mine, locking me into her gaze. “It’s time. Are you ready? I can’t stay any longer. I have other work to do. You have to let me go”.

It was then that I witnessed something I have only seen once before in my thirty-five  years of being with horses. Wizard -Star shed tears. It wasn’t a case of eyes that were simply watering, these were real tears that left tracks down her cheeks. I knew in those moments that she loved me deeply, she loved my partner and she loved Bonny-Lass and FireFly.  That she wanted to stay but had other work to do, work that could only be done from the ancestral realm, alongside  Bouncer and all those who had gone before. She loved us, loved me, enough to leave.

Taking the ponies out to where Wizard Star lay in the field, I watched them bid her farewell. In turn, both cautiously approached her still body and both kissed her muzzle with such tenderness it broke my heart.

Losing Wizard Star so soon after losing Bouncer was hard for them.  Little FireFly developed severe skin infections following both of their deaths, a result of the shock, the vet said, to his already compromised immune system. When I returned Bonny Lass to the field after Wizard Star’s body had been removed, she sniffed the ground and  pawed at the dirt for a few moments, snaking her head from side to side as if in confusion or pain. Then suddenly she took off around the field at a frantic gallop neighing and calling, stumbling twice to her knees as she ran, shrieking for her friend.

In the  weeks that followed, the ponies fought and bickered, unsure of how to be together without the presence of their elders. But slowly as the days passed, they began to settle into a new rhythm, and as the spring equinox drew close, they could be seen grazing close together or galloping around the field in play.

As for me, I remember the day things began to change. I was riding FireFly.  It was the sort of day British people might describe as miserable or dull. It felt like the landscape was mirroring my feelings. The lack of bright colour, the rain that threatened but never quite appeared. The subdued sounds and the feeling of heaviness in the clouds.

But something happened as FireFly kept walking. Feeling the repetitive 1-2-3-4 of his walk, watching his ears flick this way and that, listening to him inhale the different scents that I wasn't even aware of, helped me embody the moment I was in, to come out of endless replay of recent events. John O'Donahue wrote in 'Divine Beauty' that "Animals have a native closeness to the earth and they move in the sure rhythm of this belonging" One thing I was sure of as we wandered the hedgerows, was that FireFly's mind was not full of analytical thoughts. As the ride went on, I let myself just be with him and with the land. As I did, something shifted. Instead of feeling alone with my sadness and wanting to avoid seeing it reflected in the environment around me, I felt like I was being held, witnessed. It seemed as if the land itself felt the loss our beloved Bouncer and  feisty, beautiful Wizard Star. The line of silver birch trees along the edge of the path became  a guard of honour, witnessing our loss. When a breeze suddenly made them rustle their remaining dry leaves, I imagined they were applauding little FireFly and his bravery at navigating the world without his elders Bouncer and Wizard-Star to protect him.

Some might call it fanciful thinking. Whatever it was, it changed the way I saw things The colours no longer looked drained and dreary. I could see the subtle hues were offering a respite from the fierce onslaught of emotion that had been a feature of the days since Wizard-Star had left. I experienced being held by the beauty of a landscape. And I was grateful.

Day 1: Simon- Imbolc Brigid and the Iona connection.

Day 2: Polly- Embracing the Energies of Imbolc held in the trees.

There will be conversation, songs, poetry and stories, I do hope you will join us!

February 1st and 2nd 10.30am to noon PST, 1.30pm,-3pm EST and 6.60pm-8pm GMT

Cost $60 Recordings available.

Register at link below:https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ek6x441ed4d1795a&oseq=&c=&ch

=

#WinterWritingSanctuary

All reactions:

11

One of the ways I connect to the wild is to make dolls. A couple of years ago I was blessed by having the opportunity to craft a Cailleach Doll for a friend in Shetland. I never know who or what is going to emerge and I love the way the wisdom comes through. Someone asked me recently if I actually hear words. Sometimes I do but more often there is a growing awareness as my hands work on the fleece or whatever material I am working with. It’s a whole body listening and I sometimes see or sense images. The words come as I sit to write. For me, what comes through is sacred. Sometimes it is comforting. Sometimes it is challenging. Always there are layers of meaning that emerge over time.

When I make a doll, I always share the wisdom they have shared with me with the new guardian (for we can never own such a creation just as we can never own a prayer). Sometimes the person will send me something to be included in the heart of the doll. I place herbs, leaves or stones that seems to call for inclusion and pray for the person and ask the great Creator to guide my hands.

With permission, I am sharing what I sent to my friend. As you read I invite you to allow the words of the Cailleach to settle in your heart and see if there is a line or phrase that resonates for you.

Beginnings:

The beginning always starts with intention. I lit a candle and spent some time with the images you had sent, holding the fleece in my hands. As I stroked the wool I was given impressions of strong rock, wild winds and stormy skies. The word remembering came to my heart. As I listened,  She spoke,

“You will remember who you are as you discover who I am.”

As I placed into the heart of the doll the ash of the surrendered regrets and tokens of the land, I added  Rosemary for remembrance, Elder flowers for wisdom, Willow for healing and Rose petals for the Great Lady, praying that we would remember who we are in all our Wildness and raw beauty.

As I worked the wool, folding and shaping I noticed that the offerings had in fact worked their way to the base.

She spoke,

“All that is surrendered, no matter how difficult, becomes the very strength that holds you up. But it has to be surrendered. Allow the elements to do their work. Then there is strength and stability.”

As I worked, my hands found landscapes that were rich and full of beauty. There were deep greens of moss, silvery lichens and the gold of gorse. Rock and stone emerged, raging seas and endless skies. My heart was moved by the beauty, but then, my hands reached for swirling mists, ice and snow which covered up the beauty. I resisted, not wanting to lose it.

She spoke,

“How can anything be lost? Just because the mist covers the mountain does not mean the mountain has disappeared. You have become used to looking at the surface, judging from appearances. You must look below the surface if you are to understand the present and to find beauty that survives. You think that what is in front of you is all there is but below your feet exists the wisdom of age upon age. It is the same within you. Your cells remember. What and who came before? How have they shaped you?

The Whirlpool

My hands began to remember a strait of water between two landmasses. As the water thundered through, I could feel the churning and heaving of the Whirlpool of Corryvrechan

She spoke,

“Pressures can increase a flow and uneven sea floors will bring turbulence and powerful surges to the surface. It is in the midst of this that I wash my plaid and the season changes. Remember this as you experience great turmoil and clamour. The landscape will surely be changed, all will be covered and you will fear the silence means death. But this is a season, and seasons pass.”

She wanted a shawl. I had some white Shetland wool and it seemed fitting that She would carry back some of the sheep’s essence to its homeland as a gift. The weaving seemed so slow, I kept thinking that it must have grown but when I put it against her, the many rows were barely perceptible. I was tempted to find another way to make her shawl.

 She spoke,

“Weaving can’t be hurried. If you want to weave a different garment it will take practice. It will take showing up and moving the weft, thread by thread. It will not be hurried.”

As my hands formed her face, I kept trying to make her look severe, as all the legends that I have been told speak of her that way. But try as I would, a soft expression would come through and a smile would hover on her lips.

She spoke,

“You interpret my actions in the same way you interpret  death and winter. Because you cling onto things, believing that they will be lost to you, you fail to see the beauty in simplicity. I strip away so that what remains is pure essence. My motive is not to destroy but to reveal.”

 She impressed upon me that the next line was particularly for you.

“Let her see my smile. I would have her come under my plaid and find shelter. As she shelters she can  feel my body supporting her. It does not have the plump softness that some associate with comfort, but as  she  leans into my firm contours she will find enduring strength and courage.”