Living Spirit

Underworld

2011-04-22T18:58:00.001+01:00

It's Good Friday...what better time to finally write about a meditative journey to the Underworld!

I've been thinking back over the myths we have worked with in the Wood Sisters Days, many of which centre around a death and resurrection experience:

In the story of Ceridwen, Taliesin's taste of spiritual reality, the Druidic Awen brewed in the cauldron of the goddess, propels him into the Otherworld. Here he is driven through a series of challenges and transformations until finally surrendering to the Goddess and passing through gestation, first in Ceridwen's womb and then in the 'skin bag' before being reborn into the everyday world at the salmon weir of Elffin.

For Inanna, the Sumerian Queen of Heaven, there's an unambiguous journey of descent into the underworld kingdom of her dark sister Ereshkigal. A process that strips her of all her status and wealth. She has to face the Underworld judges and their words of anger and shame and even give up her physical body to be hung on a hook...and the process of re emergence isn't easy either!

Facing the dark twin and passing through death and transformation are also central to the story of the Egyptian Osiris, and his queen the goddess Isis also suffers her own journey of loss and profound grief and suffering. Is all this starting to sound just a little familiar now on God's Friday? Myth as a vessel for spiritual truth may change its forms....the characters belong to shifting times and places and cultures but the core principles continue.

In Kabbalah there's an idea that every human soul is given at least one perfect taste of divinity, of awakening to the bigger picture. It's not earned through being good or practising deep meditation or whatever, but simply and freely given...one pure glimpse of what we may be. It can awaken in the soul a longing to return to its Source, a longing for depth, for Mystery, for we know not what.... This is the deeper meaning of 'conversion' in the Christian tradition, which means 'to turn'. We turn our gaze away from our everyday preoccupations and towards another way of seeing, little realising at first what the cost to the ego may be on the journey of waking up to Spirit... 'costing not less than everything' as TS Eliot says in the Four Quartets....as Taliesin, Inanna, Osiris and Jesus all discovered.

Golden spring celandines guarding an entrance to the Underworld

Often this longing of the soul for its source is couched in terms of a love story. We know this ourselves from every time we've fallen in love and longed for union and completion with that mysterious 'other'. This theme is very much present in all the mythic stories above, perhaps especially in Isis and Osiris and in our most recent story of Persephone and Hades. For Persephone that beautiful god given glimpse is initially the golden flower sent by Zeus, which she pulls at only to discover that it cracks open the Underworld. (Just like falling in love in fact!) Perhaps later it's the mysterious otherworld allure and love of Hades himself that draws her to taste the pomegranate that will change her self and life for ever, while for Hades it's Persephone that is the otherworldly source of longing and love.

Working with this in meditation, I wondered for myself and others...what draws us? I found myself imagining it like Mary Oliver's 'Wild Geese'...that call from the wild, deep core of ourselves....that strange pull of otherness and wilderness mixed with a paradoxical sense of homecoming. So the meditation that arose for the Wood Sisters Day had a shamanic feel as we travelled in imagination along an inner path until our attention was drawn aside by some small or vast wild creature and we were led onto a hidden path and to a dark opening into the earth.

Within those dark depths of each person was the invitation to surrender, to let go of our carefully constructed daylight selves and discover the dark fullness of who we are. Last night I dreamt of being cruel...of every part of myself that I push into the shadows...those plutonic treasures loved and reclaimed. It's interesting how we think we want to let go of our pain and perceived ugliness and hold on to all that is bright and beautiful. But the soul's longing is quite different...like the Celts, it's willing to sacrifice its brightest and best treasures to the Gods , to give freely what has been freely received and to love the darkness back to life.

I can't comment on what each woman discovered in her own dark Underworld Meditation place...what she let go of to be composted and what she let fall like a seed ready to grow. But for myself I realised again that I don't have to be afraid of either the best or the worst of what I can be. That I can tell myself the truth about the full range of life that flows through me and be open and vulnerable enough to show it to others too.

Palm Sunday and approaching the underworld

2011-04-17T09:37:00.000+01:00

Contrary to appearances, beginning with my previous post I am actually attempting to head towards writing about the underworld meditation from our last Wood Sisters day. But reflecting on it has led to many other thoughts, meanwhile the sacred cycle of the year rolls on and brings fresh preparations and reflections...

The perpetual huge pile of partly digested books beside my bed, has recently been topped by an eclectic mix of spiritual reading in preparation for Palm Sunday today. Top place has changed over the week from Buddhist Pema Chodron's "When things fall apart" to Edward Hoffman's "Opening the Inner Gates - New Paths in Kabbalah and Psychology" to Geza Vermes' "The Authentic Gospel of Jesus....interspersed with readings from the Bible and from the Bardic Grade of the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids. (I've come to the conclusion over the years that, in matters of spiritual reading, it can be wise to draw upon more than one tradition at a time....it helps to offset a mental tendency towards fixed ways of thinking!)

This rich diet probably goes some way to explain why, when shocked awake in the night by the wild sound of cats fighting under the bedroom window in the bright light of the almost full moon, I felt very in touch with the 'groundlessness' of life. I've had a lot of apparent 'grounds' swept away in my own life in recent years and especially in recent weeks and sometimes I wake in the night, or even on a sunny morning like today and feel afraid and sad. Years of meditation practice has taught me how to just about be present with this, with some kind of acceptance and kindness. Although sometimes, it has to be said, I fall back into old habits of taking my discomfort out on my family or falling into despair and eating digestive biscuits to cover the pain.

Reading Matthew's description of 'The Triumphal Entry' this morning, I felt no sense of joy or triumph but only sadness. For actually this passage marks the beginning of the end for the earthly Jesus. He enters Jerusalem in faith and hope and exits through despair and surrender to God and death on a cross. The palm lined path that we Christians imagine is an approach to an underworld of dark and difficult experience and death....and though many mythic stories hold in common with the Christian story the promise of resurrection...this liberation only comes through first facing the reality of groundlessness.

I feel great sympathy with and gratitude for Geza Vermes' scholarly work on the historical Jesus. I find it most refreshing to cut through the endlessly replayed christian hype around the 'Triumphal Entry' with a good dose of historical fact. Vermes explains how it was common for people to ride into the Holy city for Passover and that "the Palestinian Talmud records that before Passover ass-drivers did flourishing business in carrying pilgrims to Jerusalem. In particular the rich preferred to ride on donkeys to the Temple mount and thus publicly demonstrate their higher social status." (Pg 21)

This actually seems quite at odds with everything else we see about the historical Jesus as an itinerant rural teacher who actively eschewed wealth and status. Vermes points out how 'the authentic Jesus' didn't use images of kingship and powerful leadership for God or himself, these are a later emphasis in Christianity. Jesus stressed rather a relationship with God as a loving father and his own leadership role as one of serving others. The historic Jesus had nothing to prove in entering Jerusalem. He was a faithful Jew among other Jews simply entering the Holy City for Passover, probably with no awareness of the suffering that lay ahead. He wasn't a religious revolutionary or a political warrior but rather upheld the centrality of the Torah and a way of non violence.

It's really rather a relief to read Vermes' words that "In order to associate the event with a messianic prophecy, Matthew rewrote Mark, and introduced a she-ass as well as her colt. His story is laboured and artificial." It never made any sense to me as a child how Jesus would have written these two donkeys....surely he would have fallen through the gap between them! It's like the emperor's new clothes and the child in me experiences the relief of finally having a reality that was denied, acknowledged....Matthew "deliberately overlooks that in the poetry of Zechariah 'a colt, the foal of an ass' is a mere literary parallelism.....No native Semitic speaker would have made such a mistake."

So where does this leave me on the morning of Palm Sunday? With an inner picture of a ordinary and extraordinary man who probably walked quietly into Jerusalem with his friends, but would soon be facing difficulty and death. A faithful man fully engaged with the uncertainties and injustices of life in a way that gives me courage to face our own times of insecurity. Perhaps as the Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa says "Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news"

Full Spectrum Spirituality

2011-04-16T19:07:00.001+01:00

As I move between reflecting on the Wood Sisters Spring Equinox meditation and preparing for the Beltane one, plus writing notes for the Tree of Life School on spiritual living, I am finding myself thinking hard about the nature and purpose of meditation and spiritual practice.

An interesting question arose at the last Wood Sisters' Day about how meditations based in creative imagination can seem to create the impression that 'spirituality' is somewhere else, in an imaginary other place that is somehow separate from the realities of daily life. I can understand a concern that spirituality is some kind of escape into an imaginary better world that might stop us from engaging with the need for action in a suffering world. Just as I can understand the importance of seeing our ordinary, everyday lives as intrinsically spiritual.

The relationship between contemplative and action for instance is a very old debate, certainly in the religious traditions I have a little experience and understanding of, especially Christianity and Judaism. But I can't help thinking that it's a debate with a built in contradiction. It seems to assume that there are two unrelated or even opposing worlds... the inner world of imagination, intuition and contemplation and the outer world of matter, action and the 'rationality' of what can be perceived and proved through the physical senses.

Somehow it's much easier to appreciate contrast in the colours of the natural world!

I remember having a bit of a 'breakthrough moment' as a young person in school studying the electromagnetic spectrum, which gave me a picture of how even at a very rational, physical level we know that there is a much broader band of frequencies than we can consciously perceive with our physical senses. It's a picture that acknowledges difference and yet doesn't create opposites... it's all electromagnetic radiation after all and no one is debating whether X rays are 'better' than radio waves, or ultraviolet is 'truer' than infrared!

A few years later I was studying Kabbalah, whose 'Tree of Life' diagram gives a similar picture of a 'spectrum of consciousness'...whose 'high' frequencies we call God and whose 'low' frequencies we call Earth. As with the electromagnetic spectrum, the Kabbalistic teachings as I received them, emphasise the underlying energy of the whole spectrum of consciousness and that each expression is simply a different aspect of one spiritual reality.

In this 'full spectrum' context there's no need to set contemplation against action for example ....contemplation is simply waking up to the subtler forms of Divinity and action is waking up to God as World and both have their own beauty and significance.

Serenity demonstrates the principles of 'full spectrum spirituality'
- by settling down with a Kabbalistic Tree of Life

When I allow consciousness to be a broad spectrum which takes many forms, I find I can be more accepting of different aspects of myself and others. I find it quite helpful to think about the different parts of the brain and their different functions and 'evolutionary age'. I like to imagine that when I try to be more aware of the physical present and engage consciously with the world around me, I'm using the cerebral cortex for example... but it's just as valid to use the 'older' parts of our brains which respond to myth, story, imagination and emotion and which simply show us 'reality' from another perspective.

Many more people would be able to appreciate the spiritual depth of their Christian and Jewish heritage if they could learn to hear how it speaks through story and symbol, not through the intellectual discourses we have been educated to expect and recognise. In my early twenties I was quick to dismiss my own traditions and to turn to the clear, rational spiritual explanations that I found in Buddhism. But though I judged my religious upbringing as lacking, it was really I who lacked the capacity to see the wisdom that had already been given to me.

Working with mythic imagination through meditation gives us access to a vast, ancient pool of human wisdom, wisdom that the rational, pragmatic parts of us don't always see... and this wisdom pool is about how to live well, how to engage with the everyday, it's just that it's expressed in a different language, the language of image, metaphor and symbol. When we bring all these different aspects of consciousness alive within us, life can be transformed...an inner grail becomes the communion chalice becomes a cup of tea shared with another and each perspective is enriched by the other.

So I for one shall remain a quiet champion of full spectrum spirituality. My meditation practice will continue to range from simple practices of breath and body awareness through to the intricacies of creative visualisation and mythic imagination.... and whatever the method the purpose remains the same....an ever more liberated and loving life.

Wood Sisters Spring Equinox

2011-04-03T16:20:00.001+01:00

Wood Sisters Wishing Well

It was a pleasure to welcome both familiar and new faces at our Wood Sisters Spring Equinox celebration on Saturday. Sisters started to arrive at 9am and got the day underway with a fair quantity of tea drinking before we settled down to 'stir our wisdom pot' of seasonal reflections from 10. It was great to hear of various springy new beginnings, from new books to new boyfriends! At least two sisters were moving into the unknown having sold their homes, while another had moved into a cabin in a pine wood next door to her horse...go wild women!

Sue was our priestess into the Eleusinian Mysteries with a spirited telling of the sacred myth of Demeter and Persephone. I'll leave her to tell more of this in her own post but the motif that most struck me was how Persephone was tempted towards the Underworld by a beautiful golden flower created by Zeus. Out in the garden I later saw a tulip open to the spring sun, its golden heart set with pure black, pollen dusted stamens. I thought of Persephone, whose desire for just such a fascinating flower (that was 'not of her mother's earthly garden') cracked open the ground to release the dark, mysterious otherness of Hades.

In meditation, we made our own inner journeys into the Underworld and then spent silent time in nature. I'd love to share something of the rich insights that were then added to the wisdom pot...but in true mystery school style, each woman's secrets must remain her own....

Making floating candles

The ever delicious bring and share feast featured various cauldrons of remarkably green soup, from nettle, to wild garlic and water cress and there were many other treats, including Sue's half light, half dark 'equinox biscuits'. After yet more tea, we moved on to our natural craft time, taking it in turns as some moulded flower like floating candles from beeswax, while others of us created three wishing wells in the garden. It reminded me of how I used to create lenten gardens as a child, as we decorated our wells with moss, spring greenery and flowers and I enjoyed staggering back with Sarah with from the nearby brook, with my mop bucket full of river water to fill our muslin strewn bowls.

We then gathered altogether again by fire and water, while Ronnie spirited us away, this time to the Celtic Otherworld and into the presence of the Goddess Arianrhod. I especially appreciated hearing of her castle by the sea...that sometimes could be reached by a causeway, while at other times the way was closed by tumultuous waters...the ultimate 'room of one's own'!

The day ended with simple ritual as each of us lit our candles and floated them on the water and threw in our copper, silver and gold and made our wishes for ourselves, our friends and families and for the world. All that wanted to, then had a chance to share their own poems, stories and songs and I've been singing Cat's "The dark days are over" ever since!

Vernal Equinox

2011-03-20T17:03:00.000Z

There was a surprisingly amount of howling happening in the sleepy hamlet of Week, Dartington last night... and while some was certainly coming from the Vicarage garden, we were not alone in noisily celebrating last night's especially magnificent and misty full moon.

Vicarage Japonica

I saw the moon rise as I was driving home, with a slight case of soul indigestion following a day spent sitting 'at the feet' of the ever characterful Robin Williamson (of Incredible String Band fame) and listening to all four branches of the Mabinogion...phew! The moon was coming up as I crested the hill above Buckfast Abbey and the combination of the deep blue twilight with the orange glow of both the huge full moon and the floodlit spire of the ruined Buckfastleigh Church was mysterious and moving.

I woke to this Equinoctial second Sunday of Lent feeling very grateful to be alive. A sentiment that I know is shared by many of us as we contemplate the losses and sufferings of people in Japan and New Zealand. Living and dying seems so incomprehensible and I think in this age of information and global awareness, we suffer a kind of collective guilt to be waking up safely in bed and not be floating out to sea on the ruined roof of our home. These are extraordinary times...

It seems strange somehow to be be focussed on the fact that the japonica is now enjoying flowery pride of place in the Vicarage garden...or spending the morning stalking Fred our resident pheasant with my camera. (Not helped by our long haired tabby, Serenity, who was also stalking him but with rather different intentions!) But I've read how when people are suffering in prison camps and suchlike, it's the small things that they focus on and that give them hope.

Fred the pheasant who lives here in the Vicarage garden with his rather reluctant harem of seven Frederikas

Our very own soft and furry killer...

In the warm and sunny afternoon, Ian and I walked down to the River Dart. The wild geese and goosanders were flying low over the shining water. I felt held in a quiet calm that mostly I experience in meditation, but is simply present in the natural world. I was watching the way the light patterns from the wind stirred water surface moved over the dark mud of the river bottom and how the impossibly green water weed was swirling sensually in hidden currents. On this day of equal light and dark, the world seemed full of contrasts, whether this be Japan and Devon, pale wood anemone against deep water or the half bright, half shadowed face of Serenity hunting. If you are reading this, I wish you may be blessed in your own balancing of impossible contradictions and darkbright Mystery moments...

A thing of beauty

2011-03-12T17:34:00.000Z

Spring arrived briefly this morning in Dartington (but had fled by tea time) and the sun was warm, the trees full of chattering birds and the playing fields full of footballers! Dartington Hall gardens get more beautiful with every passing week and now have the first flowering magnolia and delicate fritillaria, to name just two new arrivals. If only I had an elevated tower truck and could show you how beautiful the pink petals of those towering trees are against a pure blue sky. Or if only I had progressed further in my plans to mount very small cameras on snails or bumble bees and get underneath a shy flower...

However, I can offer the latest in my series on Dartington robins, yet more crocus and the first stanza of Keats poem Endymion, which does a much better job than I could ever do in celebrating the power and spirit of natural beauty.

For the rest of this small photo album (including my favourite grape hyacinth), please visit me on Facebook...

A Thing of Beauty (Endymion)

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:

Its lovliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing

A flowery band to bind us to the earth,

Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth

Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,

Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkn'd ways

Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,

Some shape of beauty moves away the pall

From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,

Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon

For simple sheep; and such are daffodils

With the green world they live in; and clear rills

That for themselves a cooling covert make

'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,

Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:

And such too is the grandeur of the dooms

We have imagined for the mighty dead;

An endless fountain of immortal drink,

Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

John Keats

Wood Sisters and Sacrifice

2011-03-05T11:54:00.001Z

Dartington Daffodils

It's just a few weeks now until our next Wood Sisters Day on Saturday 26th March, when we'll be celebrating the Spring Equinox with our usual rich feast of meditation, myth and storytelling, simple ritual and sacred time in nature. More details coming soon from Sue...all I'll say for now is that we'll be drawing inspiration from the ancient Greek Goddess Persephone....so it's a taste of the Eleusinian Mysteries for the wild women of the Wood Sisters this time!

As Sue prepares a storytelling of Persephone, I'm reflecting on the themes from this story and the season for meditation...along the lines of my last entry. I'm very struck by how there is often a sacrificial element that is part of the transformation of the soul in its descent and emergence from the underworld (spiritual emergency). Inanna has to find a substitute in order to return, Persephone can only emerge for half the year. This feels to be very true to me...there is no 'returning to normal' after profound experience. Rather we become 'walkers between worlds'...with one foot in the otherworld and one in the everyday world...

I've been pondering this sacrificial element in reading celtic history. Many of the archaeological artefacts found in Europe and Britain are now understood to have been 'given to the Gods'. It seems that sometimes the best and most beautiful items, from weapons to cauldrons, were made specifically for sacrificial purposes, usually through being placed in rivers. (The River Thames has provided many examples).

This seems quite counter intuitive to most people in our postmodern materialistic times. It's hard for us to imagine giving up the best and most treasured aspects of either our belongings or ourselves. From the everyday ego perspective accumulating personal wealth and status is a driving force and our economies of 'growth' are based in it. But the soul is fed by myth and story, which upholds a quite different agenda...one in which the deeper aspects of our being are actually enriched and freed by the demanding process of letting go of purely personal preoccupations.

The subtle art it seems to me is to find some real way of experiencing a larger reality and going through a process of realignment. So it's not simply an unskilful business of self denial... I've found this is so often (in my terms) misunderstood in Christian contexts, where the beauties and talents of the self are downplayed or seen as 'sinful' in a way that has much more to do with self hatred than true sacrifice. The Celtic artefacts give us a clue here - they created the best and most beautiful things to give away... and this was in the context not of destroying them but releasing them into the larger life of the Otherworld. This is not a process of self harm, of cutting ourselves or throwing our beauties away, but rather a journey into re-orientating ourselves as part of some greater whole.

I feel this in my own life. I struggle with the deeper patterns of change in my life and sometimes I suffer as the forms I thought I knew are stripped away. But in my more conscious moments I see myself being gradually freed of confusion and rooted into some greater network of being, from which deep Source vitality and energy flows back into the world.

Approaching the Spring Equinox and Lent

2011-03-05T10:11:00.003Z

New moon at Sunset from the Vicarage

We met in that dark time, just before the new moon for the Circle on Thursday. As we fed ingredients into our shared 'wisdom pot', the equinoctial theme of balance kept recurring. During our meditative walking time in nature, the cold frosts of winter and the bright beginnings of Spring were equally evident. Here at home, how I wished I had photographed our beautiful Vicarage rhododendron before the delicate pink flowers were frosted to a sad brown!

The early Spring of Imbolc really is drawing to a close, as the snowdrops fade and the slow, veiled start of the season begins to move to a faster pulse. Everyday new shoots are emerging...wild garlic and dogs mercury especially are the great green pulse in our local hedgerows. I walked to the old ash by Bidwell Brook, past a bank starred with celandines shining in the sun and got down on my knees in the frosty grass to smell my first violet flowers. (Which turned out to be scentless 'dog'...rather than 'sweet' violets). Apparently we have Zeus to thanks for violets, who created them as a fitting food for the nymph Io, after turning her into a white heifer to hide his lover from his jealous wife... hmmm

Dartington crocus... on the 'lenten purple' colour theme!

I remember how the approach to the Spring Equinox in our shoreside crofting environment in the Highlands, often included storms and extreme tides. It seemed as if the full birth of Spring and the move towards a moment of balance between light and dark was something of a labour. There's a similar sense in the life of the world at present, with the 'Arab Spring', as the young forces of democracy struggle against the frosty grip of tyranny. I keep thinking of these people who are giving their lives to this new birth and how buffered we are here from that level of struggle and sacrifice. I think the only time I've had any personal sense of that was in home birthing...an experience in which power, pain and the real presence of death are the inescapable path to the wonder of new birth.

The theme of suffering and sacrifice as a path to renewal is of course central to the story of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection and very close to my heart as we approach the start of Lent... by eating up our rich foods on Pancake Day next Tuesday and preparing to enter a period of austerity, reflection and preparation from Ash Wednesday. This motif is very much in my mind as Sue and I prepare for our next Wood Sisters Day...but more of this in my next post!

Beautiful Soup

2011-02-28T12:11:00.001Z

Spring is almost sprung and we now have flowering rhododendron and daffodils to rival Dartington Hall (almost), right here in the Vicarage garden. We also have our first crop of nettles, picked by Tam and his friend Benedikt who arrived on Saturday from Germany. Here's a photo of the two of them busy making soup, scones and flapjack in the Vicarage kitchen....you can just never start training young men too soon!

The flapjack was made to my mother's original 'toothbender' recipe and in honour of our friend Philip Reeve, who has his birthday today.
Happy Birthday Philip!
We had a blow over the Moors with him and his lovely family yesterday, before getting stuck into serious quantities of Devon cream tea and cake. Do check out his blog on the link below

http://philipreeve.blogspot.com

Not only is Philip one of my favourite authors, but he's a talented illustrator too and often posts his drawings of both Dartmoor and the W.O.M.E (That's the World of Mortal Engines to the uninitiated... which took me months to work out, even after reading all the books. Actually this is due to a medical condition known as post church acronym traumatic stress disorder.)

Here's our tureen of beau - ootiful green Soo - oop...
aka awful green scunge & worthy of the Soup Dragon
This photo is for you, Philip!

Our first nettle soup of the season, toothbender and time with the Reeves has brought on an attack of nostalgia for much loved stories from my childhood and I found myself cleaning the kitchen, while singing Lewis Carroll's parody of 'Star of the Evening'. Here are both James M. Sayle's original and Carroll's 'Soup of the Evening'. Personally I much prefer Carroll's version...

Soup Of The Evening
Lewis Carroll

Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!

Beau - ootiful Soo - oop!
Beau - ootiful Soo - oop!
Soo - oop of the e - e - evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!

Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish,
Game, or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for two
pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?

Beau - ootiful Soo - oop!
Beau - ootiful Soo - oop!
Soo - oop of the e - e - evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!

Star Of The Evening
James M. Sayle

Beautiful star in heav’n so bright,
Softly falls thy silv’ry light,
As thou movest from earth afar,
Star of the evening, beautiful star.

Chorus
Beautiful star,
Beautiful star,
Star of the evening, beautiful star.

In fancy’s eye thou seem’st to say,
Follow me, come from earth away.
Upward thy spirit’s pinions try,
To realms of love beyond the sky.

Shine on, oh star of love divine,
And may our soul’s affection twine
Around thee as thou movest afar,
Star of the twilight, beautiful star.

Early Spring Delights in Dartington

2011-02-12T14:00:00.007Z

Vicarage Hyacinths

I woke just before sunrise this morning and was indeed delighted to see a clear blue sky. Walking through to the living room, still warm from last night's fire, I was met by the sweet scent of hyacinths...and our long haired tabby Serenity who can't eat her breakfast until someone has walked up to her bowl and said "biscuits!" while looking meaningfully at her and then the aforementioned biscuits.

Once the sun was well up Ian and I set off for Dartington Gardens, which is a constant source of transformation and wonder at this time of the year. If you are reading this and live anywhere nearby...get yourself to Dartington gardens! As Walter de la Mare wrote

let no night
seal thy sense in deathly slumber
till to delight
thou hast paid thy utmost blessing

My first honey bee of Spring

Dartington Gardens has drifts of species crocus with honey bees. Hallelujah! The first honey bees of Spring! No doubt many of us are concerned about the bees and if you haven't already signed the Avaaz petition to help protect them... please do it now at the link below

http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_bees/?copy

Robin at Dartington Gardens
Dartington also has...the first daffs, a robin at every turn, deep purple hellebores in full bloom, shocking pink rhododendron and camellia flowering amidst dark, shining foliage, more snowdrops then you can shake an intricately carved shamanic walking stick at....
and even an entire avenue of flowering witch hazel with the Goddess Flora at the end, waiting to bless and greet you! What more could anyone ask for? (And to see the rest of the photos, visit my 'soon to be less neglected' facebook page)

Dartington Camellia
In the face of such a bubbling up of Spring optimism and delight, I'll return to my usual theme of light and darkness with the rest of Walt's wonderful poem

Fare Well

When I lie where shades of darkness
Shall no more assail mine eyes,
Nor the rain make lamentation
When the wind sighs;
How will fare the world whose wonder
Was the very proof of me?
Memory fades, must the remembered
Perishing be?

Oh, when this my dust surrenders
Hand, foot, lip, to dust again,
May these loved and loving faces
Please other men!
May the rusting harvest hedgerow
Still the Traveller's Joy entwine,
And as happy children gather
Posies once mine.

Look thy last on all things lovely,
Every hour. Let no night
Seal thy sense in deathly slumber
Till to delight
Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;
Since that all things thou wouldst praise
Beauty took from those who loved them
In other days.

Walter de la Mare

Wood Sisters Imbolc

2011-02-07T14:13:00.004Z

Dartington Witchhazel - Early Spring Light in the Darkness

Once again the gathering of the Wood Sisters was a total inspiration to me. I think I will never cease to delight in all the depth, wisdom, creativity and laughter that a group of wild women can conjure up together.

We started the day sharing seasonal reflections on Imbolc/Candlemas and early Spring. As we spoke around the circle, a wild wind was circling around the house... with sudden silent moments in which the pure, delicate notes of bird song would ring clear . We spoke of clearing away old leaves and discovering and delighting in the tender green shoots of snowdrops emerging from the dark, moist earth...of working through dark, difficulties in our own lives and feeling the vulnerability and hope of new beginnings.

Soon we were moving into meditation, where in both inner stillness and walking silently out in nature we each had our own encounter with the spring goddess, Brigit. I was struck by the diverse and vivid images and words that later emerged as we each spoke of our inner experience. Sharing and giving form in this way to our inner worlds is a brave and beautiful work.

Lunch was a resplendent feast as ever. If anyone out there is wondering about joining the Wood Sisters, I would say...put aside all other doubts and come for the lunch!

Wood Sister Brides

In the afternoon we moved from a quiet, reflective mode to a dynamic, creative one...starting with making Bridie Dolls (and a marvellous mess!) I wish I was better at seizing photo shoot moments...such as the one when a line of finished dolls were lined up along the kitchen window sill. It was the ultimate catwalk with a rich range of styles from twiggy gatherings of greenery to glamourous women with round woollen breasts and sumptuous red satin skirts!

After we'd all drunk our umpteenth cup of tea, Sue spirited us out of the damp celtic lands and into the hot sands of ancient Egypt with a storytelling of Isis and Osiris. This is a epic tale that really deserves a journal entry of its own, especially with the resonances it now has with the present political struggles in modern Egypt.
For now all I shall say (in a lighter vein) is that, like my woodsister Maggie, when asked what struck me about the story, images of Osiris' golden penis came to mind!

The day concluded in quiet again, with a simple candle lighting ritual. For all that I love the juicy discussions, the rich images and crafts of women's mysteries...it is these quiet, sacred times that really touch me. Watching as each woman lit her own flame and planted it strongly in the earth....listening to the carefully chosen words and songs...seeing how each light dipped and danced in the still spaces as that wild spring wind circled the house...this is what shines in my mind's eye now as I remember and give thanks for our wonderful Wood Sisters Imbolc.

Serenity helps sort out the lost property and tries Daphne's bowl for size!

Closing Song
(traditional Canadian folk song)

Land of the silver birch,
Home of the beaver
Where still the mighty moose
Wanders at will

Refrain

Blue lake and rocky shore,
I will return once more
Boom-diddy-ada, Boom-diddy-ada, Boom-diddy-ada, ehaaa

High on a rocky ledge
I'll build my wigwam
Close to the water's edge
Silent and still.

Refrain

My heart grows sick for thee
Here in the low lands
I will return to thee
Hills of the north

It may also be mixed together with another short song that is used to keep time while paddling a canoe:

My paddle's keen and bright Flashing with silver Follow the wild goose flight Dip, dip and swing Dip, dip and swing her back Flashing with silver Swift as the wild goose flies Dip, dip and swing

Bride's Day

2011-02-02T18:09:00.000Z

According to the ever marvellous 'Moonwise Diary' yesterday was officially Imbolc and today Candlemas. In my mind imaginary pagan selves are gathering around a spring pool, where golden catkins hang from the wisdom giving hazel trees and the sacred salmon circles and circles in the cool, deep waters. Meanwhile imaginary High Church selves are blessing beeswax candles in the rich, dark, incense laden depths of an old, stone church. Within myself, these selves each feel equally true...though no doubt if they were to meet in the outer world they would judge and disapprove of each other!

While Pagans and Christians often misunderstand each other, to be able to, within oneself, look back over a long continuum of spiritual tradition and embrace it all, is a wonderful sacred marriage. In this the archetypal Bride seems the perfect symbol as she is beloved as both the goddess Brigit and Saint Brigid. At this time last year, Sue wrote a wonderful poem which she has given me permission to share here...

Bride

Winter's nails

Reach up,

Achingly slow,

To pull back the grey cloak and hood.

Thin white bones

Fracture

Into ice dust

A cover of cold white glory

Bride arrives

In droplets

And vapours

Laced with a burning hidden light

Green limbs

Poke up

Promises dangle

Behind the veil of her approach

A whisper

Of hope

A buried heartbeat

Soft dreams of wild colours to come

Purpose

Forgetfulness

The worlds are married

Bride is breathing: asleep, awake, asleep, awake.

Birthday

2011-02-02T17:50:00.000Z

This weekend I celebrated my fortyfifth birthday with a seasonal blend of light and dark moments... and by finally cutting the Christmas cake, which was hastily converted to a birthday cake by virtue of swapping the tasteless silver plastic 'Happy Christmas' sign for a 'Happy Birthday' one. Let no one say that I am anything but dedicated to the principle of recycling (cake).

The dark side was well represented by spending the morning rehearsing a favourite argument with Ian, while the afternoon was lightened by tea, cake and good friends (followed by more tea, cake, champagne and good friends) Early spring seems rather like this... a delicate blend of tender hopes and new beginnings, which nevertheless have to remain rooted in all the dark, deep winter moments that have come before...and at any time can reoccur, like an old argument or a sudden, sharp frost or a dark, wet day.

I continue to work with this in meditation as well as in daily life. I had something of a small revelation as I reflected on the stories of Inanna/Erishkigal and Cailleach/Brigid. These are not masculine, hero tales where difficulty is braved, overcome and left behind.... these are cyclical, women's mysteries where the dark side is discovered to be your sister and the underworld, once truly entered, is never fully left behind but regularly revisited. This may seem depressing but actually it's liberating. There need be no more pressure to be 'normal', to have to maintain some ever bright, electric lit way of life where everything should be fine...

Rather we get to wax and wane like the moon. Sometimes full of creativity and energy, sometimes empty, hidden and dark...and everything in between. What a relief...I don't have to wait for my life to get less difficult in order to feel ok about myself! In the last Circle meeting meditation I was walking away from the Cailleach's cave again. This time I saw a tiny pile of twigs and realised it was another perspective on the deadwood blocking my way forward. This time I strode over it like a giantess! But whether by this way or by the slipping through as a small snail...still the Way goes on...

Come and celebrate Imbolc with the Wood Sisters

2011-01-19T13:19:00.001Z

We are really looking forward to our next Wood Sisters gathering for Imbolc on Saturday 5th February. As the days start to lengthen again and we look for the first signs of Spring, Sue will be drawing us into the mysteries of rebirth through the story of Isis and Osiris, while Sam will be guiding us into a deep meditative encounter with the celtic goddess Brigid. Woven into myth and meditation will be sacred time outside in nature, creative time to make your own 'Bridie' doll and a closing candle blessing ritual to include all our own contributions of story, songs and poems... plus, of course, the ever delicious bring and share feast!

We currently have a very full house with 20 wonderful women already booked, but do get in touch if you want to join us as there may be last minute cancellations. Dates are now out for future days, with the next being a Spring Equinox celebration at the full moon on Saturday 26th March.

The Living Spirit website has now had its new year update with further details, including contacts, for Wood Sisters, The Celtic Circle and Devon Kabbalah Group. Steam is rising from the Vicarage office as we work on an all new site, including a dedicated Wood Sisters page. (We hope you like the new logo above that Graphic Alchemy have created for us). We also hope to soon be launching a new blog page to include reflections, contributions and pictures from the many creative and soul full women who are the Wood Sisters. Watch this space!

Signs of Spring

2011-01-19T13:02:00.000Z

Dartington Snowdrops

Although Spring is late this year in my personal life, it is a great encouragement to see that the natural world is now full of change and new beginnings. I'm sure I am in good company here in Dartington, in having taken great pleasure in the clear blue skies (and sharp frosts) and warm sun over the last couple of days.

Our local walks are full of wonders...yesterday we were blessed to see a goldcrest in the wonderful flowering witch hazel walk at Dartington Gardens.... and later the same day we enjoyed a remarkably close encounter with a little blue tit in another witch hazel by a neighbour's wall here in Week. I've also now seen my first open snowdrops (Dartington Gardens again) my first primrose and hazel catkins all dusty with golden pollen (both here in Week).

Blue Tit in a Witch Hazel at Week

In my meditations at present I am preparing for a guided meditation to form part of the next Wood Sisters day for Imbolc. I've been re-visiting the dark cave and deep source pool of the Cailleach that I started exploring before the Winter Solstice. The Cailleach's power has now gone underground and she sits still as stone by the spring source, from which flows a small but steady stream of water. As I follow it to the cave entrance that opens into the early Spring sunshine, I find the opening completely blocked by dead branches. I've spent some time reflecting on how to respond to the obstacles and challenges in my inner and outer life as nothing I do seems to resolve or remove them. Today an image finally welled up in meditation as I found myself becoming a very small snail. All thoughts of grappling with difficulty dissolved and I simply and quietly slipped through a very small space in my insurmountable issues and left them behind...

Beginning Again...with Dying

2011-01-12T15:42:00.001Z

After Christmas I travelled through a thaw fog to visit my father who is dying of cancer. Spiritually we often speak of death and rebirth...but how often do we speak of simply dying? Perhaps I could cope with death, but I can't cope with dying. I can't cope with it in my own life, nor with being with the suffering of a beloved other. I wish I could write about the power of compassionate witness, but sometimes I simply struggle and 'awareness' sounds like 'a good idea I heard somewhere but can't remember what it means just now'...

As we moved into the 'New Year' I was utterly disheartened to have to acknowledge that I was still going through the dying of my marriage (and still not divorced), the dying of my career as a christian priest, the dying of my material and financial life... Just how many years does this have to go on for? When does one get to be just plain dead to something and have a chance for beginning again?

Quite a number of good folks wrote to me over Christmas and New Year. They were experiencing their aloneness at a time when the pressure is on to be happy with others....or dealing with cataclysmic shock waves moving through their selves or their families. I wanted somehow to be able to show them how close we all were in our depths and struggles... and how much they helped me by telling the truth. As the year turned and bloggers were sending out 'best of 2010' messages and new year resolutions, I felt like the grumpy old hag of blogdom, as all I wanted to write about was shame or despair or waking up in the night again worried sick about paying the bills...

yes...I'm the rabbit...

I remember a story motif from time with the westcountry school of myth of 'riding on the back of the wolf' because getting up in the morning feels like that...it's another wild day of feeling terrified and vulnerable. Strangely, when I take hold of painful reality, it's full of power and fierce life and it finally comes home to me again that I'm having to just ride with it and begin again...with dying...

The farther side of death

2010-12-23T16:24:00.009Z

I just received the verse below from Abigail and felt it perfectly brought together images of life and death, of virgin, mother and crone and all such thoughts and images that are swirling around in my mind at this time...thanks Abigail!

O VIRGA MEDIATRIX

Alleluia-verse for the Virgin
By Hildegard of Bingen
(1098 - 1179)
English version by Barbara Newman

Alleluia! light
burst from your untouched womb
like a flower on
the farther side
of death.

The world-tree
is blossoming.

Two realms
become one.

2010-12-23T15:29:00.010Z

A very Merry Christmas
from Sam, Ian and Tam
at the Vicarage!

Click on the image above to view our Christmas message...

Wood Sisters Winter Solstice

2010-12-23T14:37:00.000Z

The wonderful Wood Sisters gathered just before the Winter Solstice for their second seasonal celebration.

The Old Mother Yew in the graveyard that we visited at Samhain

This time we started with a meditative journey to the Scottish Highlands to meet the Cailleach (literally Old Woman) who is also known as Nic Neven, Daughter of the Bones. Those who know their "Women who run with the Wolves' by Clarissa Pinkola Estes will recognise the Cailleach as a form of the Wild Woman, who calls us back to our deep, intuitive and creative soul selves. It seems this is so often not an easy process, but one of dipping down into the dark, neglected parts of ourselves to find the inner wellspring. In our story the young soul, represented by Brigid, has to work hard for the Cailleach and pass through a number of tests including a near death experience, before freeing the spring waters in a way that brings healing to both herself and the land....

The first (very small) snowman of winter

I found this a hard story to enter into, feeling that I'd had my fill of darknesses and difficulties...and yet when I finally stopped resisting the Daughter of the Bones, I found a restfulness in her darkness, in being able to become like a dormant seed in the deep, cool earth. All the tinsel brightness that has become Christmas, all the business and the relentless pressure to make others happy could fall away in the face of a grumpy old hag who doesn't need things to be nice.

Putting the dark back into midwinter and Christmas became a theme for me for the day. We were free to acknowledge death before new life, free to weep over people and things lost over this last year, free to feel low and sad and uncertain...

As the sun was going down we walked out to the river. Behind us were all the glowing warm colours of the sunset over the fields and the houses with their soft lights lit....ahead was the darkness of the longest night in the wild woods with the moon bright and cold and clear on the snow and the icy water. Who wouldn't want to leave home for all that wild beauty? Who wouldn't go looking for the wild, old hag of their soul down by the dark moonlit water? It was so painfully cold and beautiful as we lit our little beeswax candles in their walnut shell boats and floated them on the river. It was hard to turn for home and stop watching those tiny lights in the huge darkness. It seemed impossible they could survive (don't we all know how it feels to be a very tiny flame in a walnut boat on a huge river in the freezing air of the longest night?) and yet those little lights floated steadily on, each both moving slowly in its own dance and making shifting constellations of light with its companions. I can't really express how powerfully that very simple ritual affected me and how the picture of it remains in my mind, as if I had seen something deeply true.

Midwinter sunrise at the Vicarage

We came home to a shared feast, to lighting candles on the Christmas tree and singing songs and carols together (and to the inspiration of Abigail's magical harp playing). The evening concluded with our final story, as we travelled this time to Russia to meet another awe-full wild woman of the woods, Baba Yaga. Like the Cailleach she is a hard task mistress but the rewards are to be able to carry one's own sacred fire home to defeat evil and light the hearth. How wonderful it was to have a day with the dark mother. The virgin Mary, meek and mild, had taken on an older face and reminded us of the real labour of bringing new life to birth. I feel so strengthened and inspired by these 'tough as old bones' mythic women. They've given me a new sense of the fierce light of the new born sun and the creative power of all those darknesses and difficulties that are the birth place of all truly creative and soulful new beginnings. It's going to be a wild new year!

Goosanders and chai tea

2010-11-29T11:24:00.000Z

This Saturday, for the first time in a weekend while, I had time to do nothing much and so spent as much time as possible outside, walking by the river. It was cold enough to make my face feel rather stiff but the rewards were some wonderful bird encounters. Firstly I saw a brown and shaggy headed female goosander gulp down a writhing, shining fish... as her jealous mate motored across the water in an unsuccessful attempt to seize the treat for himself. Go girl! When researching goosanders online later, I came across this wonderful image by local photographer Nick Leslie of a River Dart goosander female and chick...a little unseasonal I know but irresistible...

Soon afterwards Ian spotted a little egret fishing in a sheltered, stoney pool and we lingered in the freezing cold to watch this exotic and elegant bird, also known as the night heron or Indian darter. While looking for egret images, this time I discovered a beautiful antique book by Oliver Goldsmith. Published in 1870 with the rather inspiring title of "A History of the Earth and Animated Nature', it features drawings by James Stewart, such as this print of various members of the crane family including the little egret with its delicate white plumage and striking combination of black 'stockings' with bright yellow feet!

As we turned and headed for home, the walk concluded with the ever magical flash of kingfisher blue as this small and speedy bird swept over the water towards Staverton bridge. What a blessing to live in this place and alongside such inspiring fellow creatures.

It was quite a different day from last Saturday, which I spent labouring over a hot urn in the Steiner Fair Chai Cafe. Although a less spacious experience, it was still inspiring to be alongside a wonderful team of fellow human creatures. One of the great things about the school is experiencing the range of creative talents people bring. We had a fantastic team cooking authentic Indian food from scratch (and from local, organic ingredients) and brewing spicy chai tea, while others had painted Bollywood posters and filled the cafe rooms with colour, flowers and live music.

In the afternoon, I went straight from the cafe to the Kindergarten 'Angel Garden' to spend two hours terrifying small children as the resident (and strongly curry scented) angel. I wasn't sure if I had discovered my true vocation...or had been transported into a bizarre comedy show. There were moments of real delight in meeting the children and being in this extraordinary position of representing in some small way a force of goodness and blessing in their eyes. There were also some painfully comedic moments, such as when one of my wings fell off...or when my attempts to gracefully pluck a golden star from the muslin covered heavens and draw it down to the carpeted earth, resulted in my singeing the other wing in a nearby tea light, adding a powerful smell of burning to the heady aroma of curry! So it's back to angel school for me....

Great people....great poetry

2010-11-25T15:16:00.000Z

Life just keeps on getting the better of me and these blog entries don't get written (or only in my head) and as for Facebook....I can't seem to get into that at all!

But in amidst the general chaos of my life, good things happen and this journal is my way of marking that. So here at last are a few words of appreciation for Peter Brennan's wonderful day on 'The Transcendent Art'... a great group of people spending a whole day with great poetry...what could be better.

After a day in the company of Coleridge, I felt quite sane and together (though untalented) At least I can cross opium addiction off my list of life failings...but then I haven't written Frost at Midnight ... or the ultimate 'depression poem' ... Dejection... read this and weep!

II
A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear-
  O Lady, in this wan and heartless mood,
To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd,
  All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing on the western sky,
  And its peculiar tint of yellow green:
And still I gaze - and with how blank an eye!
And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
That give away their motion to the stars;
Those stars, that glide behind them or between,
Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen:
Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew
In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;
I see them all so excellently fair,
I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!

Ascent/Return

2010-11-11T14:11:00.000Z

A Golden Yew that I photographed in Kent recently
...it seems like a fitting symbol of death and rebirth

The stories of Inanna and Ceridwen continue to circle around in my mind. My thoughts, as in my last journal entry, were initially very focused on 'descent', perhaps because I've been so aware of the 'descent' experiences of hurt and loss and letting go in my own life. But recently I've started to think more about the journey of coming back to life, more about the 'ascent' from the underworld.

I find it interesting that in Inanna's story, she returns not as a beautiful Queen of Heaven but surrounded by merciless demons seeking a substitute to dwell in her place in the underworld. Although she refuses to let the demons take her helper Ninshubur or her sons, she vents her rage on her husband Dumuzi and decrees that he is beaten, bound and taken away. This has a rather disturbingly familiar ring... isn't it often the case that we only show the darkest and most unmediated parts of ourselves to those we are closest to? As Sylvia Brinton Perera says in her Jungian study of the Inanna myth..."Often enough, in the modern world, a close family member or a therapist is chosen to bear the eruption of untamed energies when an initiate returns reborn, and initially demonic, from the underworld."

It seems that the process of return and rebirth is at least as arduous, if not more so, than the initial process of death and descent. While the descent includes surrender, the loss of control and suffering humiliation, judgement and 'death', the ascent is a much more dynamic but still challenging process. Later in the Inanna story, Dumuzi is 'driven' through his own series of transformations, which are very similar to the shamanic animal transformations that Gwion is hounded through by Ceridwen. I don't think I'm alone as a woman (or as a human being) in sometimes actually finding it almost easier somehow to understand and affirm the rather passive and collapsed 'loss and suffering' stage, than to engage with the pressing challenges of coming back to life. The hope is that we are transforming into a new creative self, just as the hunted Gwion is transformed by his trials into the bard 'Taliesin' - Shining Brow. But the process of turning rage into passion, or suffering into creativity involves a lot of effort and courage. Somehow we do have to find and keep affirming an inner drive for creative living.

Wood Sister Sarah carved a lantern with two faces...the other side scowls while this side smiles...
Sue reminded us that we can see a Samhain lantern as serving to scare away ghosts
....or to welcome the spirit wisdom of the ancestors

Today in the Circle it was wonderful to hear one of us describing just such a turning point. After months of plumbing the depths of grief and despair, a new sense of empowerment is unfolding and an awareness of really choosing to work on creating a happy life. In our meditation I too received images that I found similarly affirming. The meditation includes facing an inner obstacle. Mine was a bog of thick, black mud that seemed to threaten to engulf me, a feeling just like that I've had recently as I've slogged through the book keeping for our beleaguered finances! To make it through the mud without sinking, I had to lie down and roll across it - a counter intuitive act of surrender or 'descent'. Later, as we came to the central part of the meditation symbolising an encounter with the divine, I saw the image of a consuming fire. This engulfed my 'muddy' self and baked me into a hard shell that at first seemed entombing. But as I realised that the divine fire was within as well as without, the clay vessel shattered. Looking down I saw the broken pieces scattered around me and how each looked like a sumerian clay tablet marked on the inside with stories. The power of meditative experience is such this had a quality of reality that really helped me. I have seen my own mythic journey of return and it gives me strength and hope.

Wood Sisters Samhain

2010-11-02T17:14:00.004Z

Samhain was extra special this year thanks to the wonderful Wood Sisters. Twenty of us gathered to celebrate this ancient turning of the year and to make our own new beginning as a women's mystery school.

We started with Sue's spirited telling of the mythic story of Inanna's descent to the underworld realm of her sister Ereshkigal. I was struck by how much the great Queen of Heaven had to let go of as she descended through the seven gates of the underworld and all her powers and adornments were stripped from her. Those of us who have been through illness, bereavement, divorce or suchlike could certainly relate to the image of Inanna standing naked before the underworld judges as they spoke their words of anger and guilt. How difficult it was to hear that it was her sister who struck the mortal blow and hung Inanna's body on a hook! But at the same time I found it deeply helpful to have the reality of suffering and loss acknowledged. Our culture has so little tolerance for difficulty and death, which doesn't help us as individual's to witness our own and others suffering in a way that genuinely enables healing.

Another aspect that struck me this time in listening to the story, was that not only was there this dissolution of the ego and external achievements but there was also the presence of love and compassion. Inanna couldn't 'come back to life' alone and by her own powers. She has a community of support whose healing power takes the form of strange little beings created from dirt from the fingernails of the God Enki. These basic beings listen compassionately to the sufferings of Ereshkigal in labour and in return are given Inanna's body which they bring back to life. This acknowledgement of the life giving power of compassionate witness seems so true to me and I experience again and again in my own life the transformations that follow from cultivating this for the darkest and most challenging aspects of myself and others.

Miriam's shrine to Inanna and her dark sister

While there remains much more of the story to be explored, for now I want to stay with this first stage or 'descent', the acknowledgement of the depth, power and meaning of 'underworld' experience and the importance of our capacity to engage consciously and compassionately with it. In this vein, I'll fast forward to where the story ends with a hymn to Erishkigal. It feeds my soul to hear the dark sister praised... as it did also to hear the poems, songs and stories that some of the group then shared (before I had to nip off and stir a few soup cauldrons in the kitchen.) After a resplendent feast of a bring and share lunch, we shot forward in time from ancient Sumeria to Welsh myth with a telling of the story of Ceridwen and her cauldron. I'm working on some further thoughts on this in another journal entry. The day concluded with quiet reflective time, which for some of us took the form of a silent walk to the ancient yew in the old graveyard on the Dartington estate. Walking silently through the rain with my sisters, surrounded by the rich autumn colours shining out in a dull day, was quietly inspirational for me and perfectly summed up by Ronnie saying afterwards..... "how beautiful dying can be..."

Local Beauties

2010-10-19T17:12:00.000+01:00

'Autumn Olive'

Over the last couple of weeks I've visited some inspirational local places, starting with the Riverford Field Kitchen. It was a pleasure simply to walk there, past a field of monster pumpkins and the apple press and then to sit down in the sunny barn at the long refectory tables and meet our fellow diners. Because I am a very small person who likes simple, organic food it's unusual for me to really enjoy eating out. Everything seems too heavy and rich, over flavoured and the portions are too large. So it was just perfect for me to be able to help myself from a selection of dishes brought to the table and to find that this was essentially really fresh, good quality food that was naturally full of flavour and cooked with care and imagination. I can't remember the last time I so enjoyed a meal out...why has it taken me so long to visit the Field Kitchen?

The next highlight was a tour of the Agroforestry Research Trust Trial Site, which is right here in Week so naturally Ian and I were the last ones to arrive and had to sneak in at the back of the group. The tour was led by Trust founder Martin Crawford, who generously allowed us to graze our way through a remarkable collection of tree crops including giant walnuts, chestnuts, plums, apples and more. My personal favourites were the 'Autumn Olives' and 'Himalayan Buckthorn'. The former is a beautiful grey-green leafed shrub with jewel like red berries which are like eating the ultimate sour sweet...the first impression is like being hit with a lemon followed by a delicious sweet aftertaste.

Himalayan Buckthorn

I remember watching Ray Mears wax lyrical on the health giving qualities of Sea Buckthorn, which has been native to England for thousands of years. Quite which sea the Himalayan version grows by is anyone's guess but they do taste slightly less astringent than our native ones, though still very like neat vitamin C tablets. If you have any ground of your own, why not consider some permanent agriculture? Martin has a wonderful nursery of plants to help you get started. Check out the links to his and the Riverford site at the side of this blog...

Autumn Alchemy

2010-10-09T14:44:00.003+01:00

Our moorland harvest

It continues to be a beautiful autumn here in Dartington, as all the work of nature over this growing season bears fruit in the local gardens, fields and hedgerows and days are often lit with a warm, gold autumnal sunshine. As part of my musing and preparation for a Living Spirit 'Women's Mystery School', I've been re-visiting some of the practical, handwork mysteries modelled and taught to me by my own mother. Recently I even bought a new preserving pan...my very own cauldron!

Ian, Tam and I started our autumn alchemy by making quince jelly for our Autumn celebration and house warming. It was surprisingly inspiring to go through the process of transforming some rather rough windfalls into translucent, jewel-like jelly. First we gathered the golden 'japonica apples' from under the quince trees, then chopped 2lb of them into our cauldron (cores and seeds and all), added a couple of pints of water and watched and stirred over a few hours as the cooked 'base material' turned from off white into a pale rosy red. Next we strained our unpromising looking sludge through a jelly bag (in the form of a scalded muslin tied onto an upside down stool). By the following day we were reboiling the resulting liquid with piles of sugar (1lb to 1pint) in a process of purification that involved regular 'scum skimming'. Watching the scum boiling up to the surface reminding me rather of my daily meditations, only I was now working with a tea strainer rather than the breath!

Tam at the Vicarage 'jelly station'

The atmosphere was certainly intense and the Vicarage kitchen suitably steamy, as the sweating alchemists laboured towards attaining the mystery of 'setting point'. Happily the Great Work was achieved as we found the delicate balance between a runny syrup and something you would need to eat with a knife and fork. Huzzah!

Inspired by the resulting feast of quince jelly and warm scones, we sallied forth onto the moors to forage for haws and crab apples. Watching Ian hang from the tree while hard green and gold crabs rained down on his head was a real highlight(!) and there's certainly some ancestral inner hunter gatherer who feels very happy to be heading home with a full basket of wild foods. This time we tripled our output and as we visited our neighbours with jars of our crab apple jelly, we received gifts of their own preserves, their own fruit and empty jars....another wonderful outcome to this simple, autumn alchemy...

Autumnal Alchemical Gold

Open Spirit Two

2010-10-06T12:39:00.001+01:00

I've been re-visiting Huston Smith's writing on World Religions.
He has that perfect balance for me of a fine intellect and a great heart
...and this edition has pictures too!

Members of the new group 'Open Spirit' gathered for our second meeting on Monday and we got straight into continuing our reflections on the nature of suffering even as we made the tea. Rosie and Ifa have sadly suffered another bereavement in their extended family in the Cameroon. There they are faced with sufferings that can seem almost unsurmountable - from corruption, counterfeit medicines, environmental destruction etc. A family can lose members of an entire generation to disease, leaving young people not only struggling to simply survive but also without the experience and guidance of their elders, which in turn brings conflicts and more suffering.

Then thoughts turned to the writings of a woman in a concentration camp and her observation that suffering often does not bring out the best in people. Some will do whatever they can, often at the expense of others, to lessen their own suffering alone. This woman was offered the chance of personal freedom from the suffering of the camp but chose to remain to care for others, which speaks of another level of freedom. So we had found our way to the Buddha's second truth....tanha....'the desire for private fulfilment' at the root of suffering.

We each had reflections to share from having carried last weeks question through our lives. Noticing how easily we lose that open sense of being connected to a larger whole. But somehow living with that spirit of enquiry had opened some space in moments of suffering....just to be able to pause rather than react (and withdraw or lash out, however subtly!) and to be able to compassionately ask in that moment, 'what's going on, what is the nature of this suffering?' Not to have to find an answer, or a judgement ('I'm so selfish...useless...anxious...needy'...delete as appropriate) Just to be interested or, as Adrienne Rich would say, to have a care for all the many-lived, unending forms in which we find ourselves.

Our emphasis for this week's meeting was more on practice than discussion and so we spent an hour in silence. Firstly in walking meditation outside in nature and then sitting still. I was focussed simply on breathing and awareness of the body, including a fair amount of physical discomfort and pain as mental and emotional tangles played out in physical tensions. All week I've kept returning to the breath. I've had in my mind Thich Nhat Hahn's teachings on training oneself to be a free person through simply practising being present and how one conscious breath can bring us back into the present. This seems manageable in a way that 'deciding to become a really spiritual person and spend several hours every day in meditation' does not! I also like his idea of having a beautiful pebble in one's pocket to remind one to breathe and smile. It's like a kind of everyday, any moment rosary.

The question that had emerged by the end of the session was 'what is my burden and how can I set it down?' I think I'll be taking that pebble with me this week, to help me remember to breathe and put down some of the much heavier inner boulders that I otherwise carry around!

Here be dragons...and raisins...

2010-10-04T13:12:00.000+01:00

The only fiery presence in the Vicarage garden
was this red admiral butterfly on our Michaelmas daisies

To keep on track with my seasonal musings, I had high hopes of writing an entry for Michaelmas Day last Wednesday, until a dragon of a stomach bug got the better of me. Then on Thursday the women of the Celtic Circle gathered and had many more interesting things to say than I did. Sue reminded us of the story that is told in the local Steiner school for Michaelmas, which I remember acting out with my children while making 'dragon bread'.

The story begins in a happy valley aka a large mason cash bowl with smooth fields of flour. Life is beautifully sieved and fine and all terribly nice (and faintly dull and nauseating) Suddenly a fierce dragon attacks wielding a dalek like whisk and lashings of milk and egg. Everything and everyone within striking distance of the happy valley bowl gets in a terrible mess and there is much wailing and gnashing of parental teeth. After a valiant but ineffective struggle, in the true spirit of Western Esotericism, archangelic intervention is sought.

The archangel Michael then comes to a sort of rescue in the form of raisins (which actually represent shooting stars... really...) It's a sort of rescue because all good esoteric stories involve the practitioner having to engage with 'the Work' themselves. So the people of the now unhappy valley (and the alchemical cooks) have to get busy digging up and smelting the meteoric iron (mixing in the raisins and kneading and baking the dough). As this is a pc post modern tale, all this raising of will power and transformative fire is then used in some slightly inexplicable way, not to kill the dragon, but to harness its energy for the greater good. At this point I became fairly depressed at the thought of the wild and rampant dragon circling the village treadmill and grinding the corn for next year's bread.

There's no doubt that the most exciting part of the story and the bread making is when terrible disaster befalls the happy valley, though eating the bread at the end is pretty good too. I really must try to bring a similar wild enjoyment to disasters in my own life.... and to remember that this mix of chaos and transformation does create something good in the end...

Open Spirit - coming back to life

2010-09-27T13:20:00.000+01:00

Tam knows a great deal about being happy
(not sure about that T shirt though!)

Today we started our new weekly group, called Open Spirit. It always seems very special to take time out from everyday jobs and meet with others to explore our deepest concerns. Today, as often, I was inspired by the honesty and depth that emerges in meeting, talking and engaging in spiritual practice together.

I want to try and distill in writing some of the key themes as I see them, partly to focus my own thinking and practice over the next week, but also for group members who can't always make a meeting. If you are reading this from afar, why not journey alongside us in your own thinking?

My grandparents, and even to a large extent my parents, grew up in what seemed like a smaller world and one with more defined choices. In terms of religion, one was unlikely to be exposed to anything other than a local Christian Church where traditional patterns of belief and religious life were clearly formalised. Now we have so much choice and the freedom to choose. While some still opt for a particular path, perhaps now in Buddhism or Paganism (or Atheism for that matter) rather than Christianity, many of us do not choose to commit to 'one way'. This is often denigrated as a kind of spiritual immaturity or a dilettante approach but the people I know who find themselves outside tradition are often anything but immature dilettantes. They are people struggling to make authentic and conscious choices about what they believe, about what the guiding principles are in their lives and, perhaps most importantly of all, how to put them into practice everyday.

The word 'dilettante' comes from the 18th century Italian dilettare 'to delight', from the Latin delectare. Perhaps this would not actually be a such a bad approach to bring back into the arts, including the spiritual ones. When was the last time you found going to church delightful? I certainly found deep delight in the silence and conversation shared this morning.

What has stayed with me were the questions about suffering. Every spiritual tradition asks about the nature of suffering and how to alleviate it. Everyone of us grapples with this in our lives. Suffering seems so often to be cyclical....ignorance leads to hate, leads to violence etc. I can see how suffering spreads out in my own life...my fears and tensions leach out into my relationships and limit how I live. Have you ever had that moment of losing your temper, of hurting a loved one, of speaking or acting in ways you can't seem to control and later deeply regret? We all know this in our lives and we see it everyday on the news. I know I'm not alone in really wanting to understand and transform those forces in my life.

The question is how? There are lots of answers, lots of resources but really the question is always a personal one, am immediate one. We talked today about recognising in ourselves a state of fear or disconnection. In Buddhism it's called dukkha, which in the Buddha's time was a word referring to wheels whose axles were off centre or bones that had slipped from their sockets. In Christianity it's called sin, a word that means 'to miss the mark'. But whatever we call it, we all know it in our own experience - that sense of 'wrongness', of feeling somehow numb or ill at ease or quietly despairing. This is the real suffering. It's possible to feel grief, even anger and yet paradoxically still feel open and connected to others...suffering then is a shared state, an opening of the heart that, while it may hurt, also brings release and understanding. How different is that state of tense and fearful isolation in which hurt becomes overwhelming and a justification for shutting ourselves off from others, from life.

'Lucifer' enjoys the Autumn sun

Today it really came home to me how much I want to come out of these cycles of suffering, not to feel this inside or inflict it on others... and that what I really need to notice is this disconnected, fearful state. This is what I need to take care of when it arises. Not with some blanket, super ego driven 'spirituality', the 'I ought to be kind, grateful, mindful' etc. It never works for long because it really comes out of the fearful, judgemental state we are trying to heal. Instead I need a personal, authentic, conscious approach. What right now is truly going to help me reconnect with life... a breath, to step outside and see the sky, a quiet cup of tea?

It seems to me that one of the amazing things about spirituality is that we all know a great deal about it, just from our own experience. We all feel the difference between being anxious and being genuinely happy and we all have the capacity to find our own answers about how to move from one state to the other. So that's the work of Open Spirit this week....to notice when we feel disconnected and to discover and delight in what brings us back to life.

Fall

2010-09-23T19:16:00.002+01:00

According to my Ecological Calendar, today at 03.09 was the Fall Equinox. I have made many attempts to understand the seasons, solstices and equinox...mostly using a tilted orange as the earth and two cocktail sticks as the earth's imaginary axis, while explaining to any of my unfortunate children who just happened to be by the fruit bowl at the time. It's all to do with the tilt apparently and how our end of the orange is sometimes closer to and sometimes further away from the sun as we make our orangey way around it. Being an 'off kilter' planet, the suns shines maximally on different points of the earth at different times of the year and from our earth centered perspective is briefly directly over the equator at the spring and autumn equinox, giving us an equal day and night.

When I lived in the Highlands, I associated the approach to the autumn equinox with stormy weather and extreme tides. At a human level this year's UK storms seem to have been focussed around the Pope's visit, with accompanying rude remarks from everyone from Richard Dawkins to Philip Pullman and... Stephen Hawkin's new book. On the one hand we are washed by the low tides of child abuse in the Catholic Church and on going papal pronouncements diminishing women, sex, other faiths and even other Chrisitian churches. Meanwhile the opposite tidal pull of anti religion rants from the atheists seems equally unedifying. Where is the equinox in all this one wonders...where is the recognition from either 'side' that each has its share of light and dark?

I wonder about this in my own self also, as it continues stormy in my own tea cup of the psyche. I've woken repeatedly from vivid nightmares and found that during the day I'm shifting from strong anger to strong feelings of hurt and despair. How to actually cope without resorting to some form of tranquilliser or taking it out on one's loved ones? In meditation today, it really struck me how hard it is to simply experience pain. It's much easier to lash out at someone else or distract oneself in some way. But actually what I find my own struggles really need is my own full and careful attention. In between the tangled, endless loops of thoughts, little spaces of breathing and simply feeling open up like quiet, sunny clearings in a dark wood....my own equinox moments...

Mellow fruitfulness and all that

2010-09-18T18:55:00.004+01:00

I recently re-read Keats 'to Autumn' and no matter how many biscuit tins it now graces, the poetry is no less beautiful and seems so particularly true this year. Ian and I have often been out walking in these golden, still September days, as we explore and settle into our new home at Dartington. After the open spaces of Dartmoor, the landscape here seems so, I'm afraid to say, mellow and fruitful!

A Dartington quince

Now that I no longer spend hours in the car every day, I have time to contemplate not only murderous rage but also more creative activities such as photography... and jelly making. A walk yesterday in the ever magnificent Dartington gardens provided a guiltily scrumped quince to add to those gathered from a friend's garden and our very own apples. So guests at our Autumn celebration next week will be the unwitting test subjects for Sam's quince and apple jelly. Ian was less enthusiastic as I set about harvesting puff balls from the playing fields ready for a 'lovely mushroom soup' this evening. He's just told me that he's actually planning on giving his stomach a rest this evening and giving supper a miss...

Hobbit house with handy mulberry tree

Meanwhile we continue to search for a more permanent home. I quite fancy this one in Dartington gardens which, while being rather small, does have the great advantage of a mulberry tree just outside the door. Here we discovered that it's impossible to discreetly scrump mulberries as the dark red juice runs down your arms while you quietly reach up to pick the ripest fruit, leaving you to then walk in for a drink at the White Hart looking like a mad axe murderer. Black mulberries, such as this one, were apparently mistakenly introduced to England by James I as food for his plan to boost the economy through silk production. Sadly the silkworms prefer eating white mulberry leaves, but it did leave us with beautiful, old trees such as this one (and badly stained arms).

Also in Dartington, we discovered a medlar tree. I remember renting a house with an unusual friend at Uni who used his bedroom floor for 'bletting' medlars. The pungent aroma of over ripened fruit pervaded the first floor, but we did then get to avoid scurvy throughout a poverty struck winter by living on a steady diet of porridge and medlar conserve. No one has fully grasped the true meaning of 'mellow fruitfulness' until they have lived next door to a room of rotting medlars....happy times!

Autumn Celebration

2010-09-15T17:11:00.001+01:00

Grace and Anger

2010-09-13T18:12:00.001+01:00

Time passes and I feel less hurt and angry then when I wrote my last journal entry. Due in part to time and in part to some grace unexpectedly received from attending a traditional church service for the first time in ages. The creed was still unbearable but there were moments when the crusty old shell of the liturgy cracked open to let through a little light. My personal epiphanies came firstly through the prayers, while reflecting on the floods in Pakistan and the local man who recently lost his life to a runaway round bale on the Kingsbridge hill. Remembering the shared nature of suffering and feeling glad to be alive was a powerful balance to my own small struggles.

But what really got me thinking was the bible passages and especially the psalm, which contained some wonderful expressions of divine and human anger. Would be spiritual types like myself generally have a problem with anger. Years of religious conditioning can make it hard to know how to handle anger, which tends to be heavily judged and denied in 'spiritual' circles. When I discovered my husband was having an affair, instead of packing his clothes in a suitcase and putting them on the doorstep (as a friend of mine did....and later went on to mend her marriage), I flailed around trying to understand everyone else's perspective. But I'm slowly learning to be more honest with myself about the fact that pain hurts and betrayal makes me angry... and as I scanned Psalm 139 and thought about my buyers, it was a blessed relief to read "If only you would slay the wicked, O god! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!" because actually that was exactly how I was feeling!

But feeling anger is just a beginning. Where next? Probably not the actual slaying of enemies either literally or in some more subtle way! Where is the middle ground between unconscious suppression and mindless acting out of anger? Given that I've been personally specialising over recent years in experiencing murderous rage....how to handle it? Are there skilful expressions of anger? There must be or surely we would have no capacity to stand up to injustice?

I spent many years in psychotherapy, both individually and in groups. It involved a fair amount of yelling and cushion bashing, but one thing I noticed as the years passed was that it didn't seem to help me or anyone else much. We didn't get more resolved about our anger, we generally just got angrier...or exhausted! I recently read that the world famous therapist Dr Harville Hendrix had come to a similar conclusion and he has a section in one of his books called 'Why anger breeds anger'. He was able to back up his observations (and the fact he no longer uses the method of 'venting' pent up emotions like anger as a therapeutic technique) by referring to recent discoveries in neuroscience. The brain apparently is very adaptable throughout our lives - experience creates neural pathways... and nerve connections that are not stimulated are 'pruned away'. So when we exercise our capacity for anger (or depressive thinking...or loving...or whatever) through our thinking, feeling and actions we actually grow those neural connections in our brains and become more able and likely to be angry, depressive...or loving...

Buddhism has a real grip on this, it seems to me. I think some of the most skilful teaching about how to handle strong emotion is currently coming out of the Buddhist tradition from teachers such as Thich Nhat Hahn and Pema Chodron. Hahn writes beautifully about holding anger mindfully, like a mother lovingly holding a feverish child. Another image he uses is of composting the garbage of anger into the flower of compassion and its not just irritating, idealistic psychospiritual-babble but very practical, down to earth advice involving compassionate recognition of our own anger and mindful understanding of its roots and how it works.

As I write this, I'm still trying to get my head round his teaching that the seeds of anger lie inside us and what they grow into is up to us. They may be triggered by others' unskillful behaviour but we don't have to then become either a passive, disempowered victim or lash out and punish in return. I think he's saying it's possible to acknowledge a problem and work to transform it, both within and without, but through strength and courage and compassion, rather than through imposing force and fury. I think that's something I'm trying to figure out in myself. I need something of the passion of anger, that capacity for setting boundaries and standing up for what is creative and life giving and I need that balancing force of open heartedness and compassion.

It doesn't seem possible to generalise...each of us is working out our own balancing act. In Kabbalah there's a recognition that on the tree of life, the 'branch' of mercy is balanced by that of judgement. Each of us has to figure out which way we habitually lean, in order to find balance.

Still Birth

2010-09-05T10:49:00.000+01:00

Like many people in these 'interesting' times, our family has been going through many difficulties, disappointments and high levels of change. On Friday of this last week, we were due to finalise our sale of Badarroch House in Scotland and to progress our purchase of the Linhay in Rattery, which was to become our new base in South Devon. In late July we were 'gazundered' by our buyers and only agreed to their unreasonable demands for a £30,000 reduction, in order to finalise the sale and enable us and Living Spirit to move forward with our eco project. Then on Friday, just as the contract was due to be signed, our buyers withdrew because 'they couldn't make up their minds'. This, after months of expensive legal work, surveying and suchlike...we even let them stay at Badarroch House on a donation basis as part of the sale and withdraw weeks for their own use as future owners... because we trusted them and believed in their good intentions, including their expressed wish to continue to make Badarroch available for retreats.

Words cannot express how much stress and suffering we have endured over these months, in addition to the thousands of pounds in fees and lost income. But this is not just about our personal suffering. One of our buyers is a doctor, the other a Karuna Institute trained psychotherapist. These are people I would expect to be committed to 'do no harm' and to deal with others with awareness and compassion. Whereas, not only have they harmed our family but more importantly, the work of Living Spirit. Many people have visited and stayed with us over the years...in times of crisis and need and when looking for rest, renewal or fresh inspiration. Our residential facilities, groups and counselling service have made their own small contribution to 'mending the world' but now we find ourselves stopped in our tracks.

I am sure that soon we will rally and find new ways forward, but for now it is with great sadness that I have to report the still birth of all our hard worked plans for a new retreat base. Please hold us in your hearts and prayers, as we hold all who in their own ways face an uncertain future.

Celtic Circle

2010-09-02T19:01:00.000+01:00

Here at the Vicarage, the vine on the south stone wall is turning a deep rich autumnal red and there's that cool taste behind the sweetness of the September sun. So the wheel turns, the summer holidays draw to their close and the Celtic Circle prepares to gather again for our fortnightly feast of meditation, quiet time in nature and seasonal sharing and reflections.

We'll be re-grouping on Thursday 16th September and looking towards the Autumn Equinox....followed by the next in our seasonal gatherings for members, family and friends on Saturday 25th. For more details contact Sam.

Launching the new Living Spirit Blog

2010-08-24T13:52:00.005+01:00

If you reading this, you'll have noticed my belated flurry of journaling as I attempt to catch up with all the changes Living Spirit and our family have been going through. Steam has been rising from the new Vicarage office over these last days as, having finally got an internet connection (don't you just love 'BT'?), Ian and I have been feverishly updating the website and creating a new blog.

This entry will therefore appear briefly on the old one, before Ian uploads an all new version later today. As you'll see, it has some new features, including something of the story of Living Spirit, as well as links to interesting sites and easy access to details of our new eco build at The Linhay.

The picture opposite shows the unconverted Linhay from the back garden with the village of Rattery and its splendid church in the background. For more details of the project, please click on the Linhay sign at the side.

We hope you enjoy our new blog!

New Beginnings

2010-08-24T13:38:00.005+01:00

I don't think we are quite out of the transitional phase but we certainly have made some new beginnings. One small but significant effort on my part was to make sure that we actually had at least a small summer holiday. Our family has spent every summer for the last four years either being homeless and moving from long suffering friend to friend...or moving house. Yes, we still did the latter this summer too... BUT we also had a summer holiday in Cornwall. Here are Tam and I braving our beachside Cornish 'cold tub'!

Also we have now unpacked at our new home, The Vicarage and are gradually settling into a new beginning here. I still haven't got over the excitement of being able to walk and cycle everywhere... from the excellent Barn Cinema at Dartington to the health food shop in Totnes. It's saving a fortune in fuel as I hardly use the car and my eco conscience is much clearer. Living in the wilderness, as we did for many years in the Highlands and on Dartmoor, has many beauties but the excessive amounts of driving required just to survive is not one of them.

Our property sale in Scotland and purchase of the Linhay at nearby Rattery are in their final stages. As we've had a rocky road thus far, it may yet all go pear shaped... but in order to sleep at night, I'm engaging in some 'positive reality creation' and trusting that all will be well ( while being prepared that it may well not be well in the form of my preferred outcome! )

Given that we hope to be starting on site in a couple of weeks, there's much work going into planning our eco build... more details in due course for those who are interested. Meanwhile, do check out our updated website, which now features a page about The Linhay and which can be accessed directly from our new blog by clicking on the Linhay sign at the right side of this page.

Transition

2010-08-24T13:10:00.002+01:00

If you have ever been through any kind of birth experience, then you'll know that before a new beginning always comes a transitional time. This can be kind of graced but it can also be kind of like hell...or both! It's the stage at which home birthing mothers, as I once was, often start screaming that they want to go home.
Jesus may have had transitional times in mind when he said (something along the lines of) 'no one who puts their hand to the plough and then looks back is fit for the kingdom of Heaven'. Tough love!

After the parties, the final groups and gatherings, us Bonehill dwellers entered our transitional time, which was mostly just very hard work. Eighty boxes of books and a lot of other stuff, from saucepans to incense, had to be packed up, followed by a long hard day with three 'especially-Dartmoor-lane-sized' removal lorries. Then came a lot of cleaning and a short exhausted collapse before starting to unpack and redistribute the eighty boxes of books etc.

Alongside all this I was still embroiled in the coils of my dark twin, which in my case seem to be expressed through the unpleasant realities of selling and buying property and getting divorced. Our buyers for Badarroch House added their own special spice to the mix by 'gazundering' us a week before we had been due to complete, to the tune of £30,000!

In the face of all the above, I was determined to keep focussing on the bright side. So we took some trips to the beach and walks on the moor in the midst of it all, which really helped to restore sanity. I even managed to collect a few photos...including a lovely one of, I think, the final foal for this year to be born to the Bonehill Dartmoor pony herd.

Endings...

2010-08-24T11:59:00.003+01:00

I see it's been a couple of months since I last wrote in this blog, which says everything about how busy and stressed I've been over this period! Given the high levels of change Living Spirit is going through, it's hard to know where to start now that I'm finally putting fingers to keyboard, but here goes!

Firstly...endings. Since I last wrote we've been through a series of both wonderful and painful endings. Some were large, sociable and involved a lot of cake, while others were much more quiet and personal, but no less sweet. Here is a sort of potted collection...

I guess we kicked off with our final Bonehill seasonal gathering, a Mad Hatters Tea Party for Celtic Circlers, friends and neighbours at Midsummer-ish. The weather was suitably scorching and we had to forgo our usual strenuous march up Bonehill and onto the open moor, for a more leisurely and shaded stroll by the river at Jordan. The party was suitably mad, with one of us dressed as the dormouse and yours truly 'baptising' her knickers while trying (and failing) to prove to the rest of the party that it really was perfectly possible to 'just wade gently across the stream without really getting wet'. All our lovely guests were on excellent form and gamely brought along lashings of elderflower cordial, cucumber sandwiches, sweet and savoury scones, hot sausage rolls and more cake than you could shake a stick at. ( I've never been quite sure what that expression means, but I like the sound of it and especially in relation to cake).

This highlight was quietly followed over the next fortnight by the final meetings at Bonehill of the Kabbalah Group and Celtic Circle. Although both groups will be continuing in the autumn at new venues, it was very poignant to say 'farewell' to beautiful Bonehill. In the Circle, as we looked towards the harvest festival of Lammas, we were each reflecting on our outer and inner harvests over this growing season and on the sacrificial aspect of harvest, as what has been achieved is let go of, in order to sow new seeds for the next cycle of life and growth. I guess this was particularly powerful for me, as I contemplated all the richness of our last year at Bonehill. Also selling Badarroch House, the eco home we worked so hard to create in Scotland, and the realities of finalising a divorce are all deeply sacrificial experiences.

Our next goodbyes came with our final workshop with the ever wonderful School Of Myth's "Wheel of Story". Once again it was interesting to witness how life and story blend together as we explored 'The Lindwurm' which gives a picture of how each of us has a 'dark twin' or shadow side that tends to emerge at transitional times....hmmmm!

Scary Monsters...coming soon to a retreat centre near you...

2010-06-20T09:19:00.005+01:00

It's just a fortnight until the next of Martin Shaw's 'Wheel of Story' Storytelling Workshops. This will be our final event at Living Spirit's current venue at beautiful Bonehill House... so let's make it a full house and one to remember!

Martin's spring turn of the wheel of story took us all on a fascinating journey of the intricacies and mysteries of love through the story of Tristan and Isolde. Now the adventure continues, as we travel deeper into the dark, wild woods of story to discover the Lind Wurm. Here is Martin's description of what he has planned for us, along with contact details etc...

Deposits for the next WHEEL OF STORY day workshop are now being taken (see below). We will be studying the gnarly old Northern English tale 'The Lind Wurm'. What shadowy twin sister or brother was thrown out by the mid - wife the day we were born? At what stage in our our lives do we meet that dark sibling on the road bellowing 'Eldest Marries First!!'- and lo, soul trouble begins. The ancients say we approach that shadow being with ritual, story and understanding, lest it devour all our best laid plans (plans that involve finding just what it is we want to quest for). So as we follow the movement into summer, and into the creative work of our lives, this workshop we will examine some of what the Jungians call 'shadow material', all wrapped up in this extraordinary story.

I begin an extensive U.S.teaching programme from around the 22 May) and i return only a few days before the event. Please make cheques for £20 to Martin Shaw at: Tregonning House, 27 Eastern rd, Ashburton, Devon, TQ13 7AP. Please forward this onto any possible interested parties. I look forward to seeing you soon- please remember to check in to

http://www.theschoolofmyth.blogspot.com/ for weekly updates and on the road diary!

With love,

Martin

Midsummer Madness

2010-06-13T09:43:00.001+01:00

Everything seems to grow and change so fast at this time of the year. The wisteria has been overtaken by the roses and the meadow is lush with flowering grasses. Down by the pond I've seen my first ever 'broad-bodied libellula'! A rather extraordinary name for a rather extraordinary darter dragonfly and just about the fattest, bluest beast I've even seen cruising our local waters.

Meanwhile, on the personal and family front there is also much growth and change. We have finally had to come to terms with leaving beautiful Bonehill House in early August. Ian and I have therefore been urgently searching for some new and more permanent premises. After several disappointments, I'm happy to say that we have finally had an offer accepted on some local barns for conversion. So... a great opportunity for a more sustainable and ecological base for both Living Spirit and Graphic Alchemy.

So, while the two remaining events on our programme will continue to run (more on these soon) and regular, local groups will continue (after the usual summer break) in alternative venues, Living Spirit will then be taking something of a sabbatical while I oversee our building project. So if you've ever wondered about building your own house and want to know what it would really be like to live through... then tune into this blog for regular updates...

Finally, an invitation to our Midsummer Madhatter's Tea Party. By way of our regular seasonal gatherings and a leaving party, we'll be hosting a tea party at Bonehill House on Sunday 27th June. Usual rules apply... tea party fare to share, but absolutely no jelly and blancmange on pain of death!

'Summer is a comin' in...'

2010-05-15T14:18:00.002+01:00

..and the cuckoo has indeed been loudly singing. The swallows have arrived and the wisteria is just coming into bloom along the south face of Bonehill House. Spring has been intense and I've been so busy living it, there's not seemed to be time for blogging about it! My epic battles with the forces of darkness have continued...the said dark forces consisting mainly of my current favourite blend of different types of agent, solicitors, surveyors etc... along with large quantities of ironing luxury cotton kingsize duvet covers (which almost certainly would have featured in one of Dante's levels of hell if he had been a woman). Happily, the dark forces have been balanced by some great groups, inspiring work shops and lots of lovely guests... and the many natural beauties of Dartmoor and the Bonehill House gardens, which deserve an entry of their own really.

For now however, I shall simply sing the praises of our next wonderful workshop "The Transcendent Art' on Saturday June 5th from 10-5pm. We have a wonderfully learned tutor, Peter Brennan, coming down from London to help us uncover the spiritual depths of the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge. All this in an exceptionally beautiful place... and a delicious lunch...don't miss it!

Click on the picture opposite and the links above for more details and contacts.

The Wheel of Story

2010-03-25T18:16:00.002Z

The Westcountry School of Myth and Story will soon be returning to Bonehill to start the 'Wheel of Story' rolling on Saturday April 10th. Award winning storyteller and mythologist Martin Shaw will be offering a rich feast of story, poetry and reflective, creative time outside on beautiful Dartmoor. Martin always has a wonderful way with words and he describes this first turn of the wheel as

THE VOYAGING HEART AND COURTED SOUL

As we are in Spring, Martin will be offering myths of love and beginnings, spirited poetry from Lorca, Rumi and the Troubadours, practical exercises in nature, and how we explore the seasonal pulses of our own lives.

I'm especially looking forward to the day as rumour has it that a telling of Tristan and Isolde is in the sweet spring air...one of my favourite stories. So if you haven't yet booked your place by the fireside, then get in touch with Martin through his website at www.schoolofmyth.com

Reflecting on Virtue

2010-03-22T13:36:00.001Z

In our Circle Meeting recently several of us have been feeling the relentlessness of difficult challenges in our lives. In my own life I'm struggling through a divorce and the strange and unpleasant process of having my life 'valued' and divided up. My days seem to be full of administration involving agents, solicitors and such like, who (as far as I can make out) never do what they say they will, take forever and cost a fortune...such that it feels like being in the grip of modern day vampires! Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, women are raped on their way to get essential drininking water from a well or are abused in their own homes...

A wise friend of mine once said 'there is no hierarchy of suffering' and it seems true to me that whatever others suffer, each of us often faces our own struggles alone and at times feels overwhelmed. Sometimes it's the small things that grind us down... the daily juggling of money, having to find a another rented home every six months, that load of wet firewood or the day the telephone stops working. I think also that it's not just the difficulties, it's how they make us feel about ourselves and others.

Recently I've repeatedly felt disappointed in others and disappointed in myself... in my own inclinations towards shame, anger or despair. Not that there's anything wrong with these emotions, they seem like pretty understandable responses to hurt and loss...but I don't want to dwell in them, I don't want them to form my thinking about myself and the world.

At such times it can be hard to know where to look for solace or inspiration. I find I can develop a horror of spiritual self help books for example and that if any new age guru were to even murmur that 'you create your own reality'...I'd probably just have to kill them. Period! So I hesitate to even suggest any spiritual reflections, given that one person's deep spiritual solace is another's vomit inducing cliche...

Nevertheless I have found myself reflecting on virtue. It's a rather unfashionable word but a quick visit to good old Wikipedia shows that every spiritual tradition has been concerned with virtue or 'moral excellence' for many hundreds of years. When faced with bad behaviours in others or ourselves, how are we to respond? Careful observation, compassionate witness, mindfulness or suchlike seems always to be a good place to start, but sometimes I find the destructive side of such experiences calls for more than simple observation, a more dynamic calling up of the powers of good in life.

So in this spirit I reflect on and attempt to practise virtue. There's no 'should' here...I'll not be virtuous because I 'should' but because I choose light in the face of my small darknesses, because I want to feel hopeful and happy... because focusing on kindness or patience or sympathetic joy or whatever virtue seems the appropriate healing to the particular suffering I am in, actually works to transform me (and sometimes the situation) for the better.

Is there a 'how to be virtuous' guide? Probably, somewhere! I go for the simple approach...we use our minds to dwell on our pains, so why not use them to dwell on healing? The Buddhists are good at this. I still remember and use the meditation practices I was taught in my Buddhist days of speaking, imagining and cultivating loving kindness for myself and others. I start with myself and people I find easy to like and then move up to agents, solicitors etc! The trick is not to skip the easy ones or to be tempted miss out the difficult ones ...sometimes loving oneself is the hardest...

Abbot Christopher Jamison has some good, straightforward words of wisdom on virtue in his book on finding sanctuary. I love what he says about virtue being the door to the sanctuary..."Virtue is the recognition of the sacred in daily life. As we open the door of virtue in our personal and working lives, we will open the way into a sanctuary of peace for ourselves and others."

Mid March Madness

2010-03-19T14:34:00.002Z

Our day at Embercombe

I'm sitting in bed feeling rather under the weather... the weather itself is also having a low day here on Dartmoor in the form of steady rain and low mist. In fact it's now hard to imagine that just last weekend we briefly ran away to join the circus, inspired by sunshine and my friend Sue who works at Embercombe. For in this case the circus was in fact Embercombe's Mid March Madness Day, to which our giant rabbit Pan had been invited to star as the Mad Mid March (sort of) Hare. As you can see from the photos, our travelling Bonehill caravan provided unusual family entertainment.... and quite a few small children were just as keen to feed grass to the long-haired lady as to the rabbit!

As I understand it, Embercombe is an educational charity and social enterprise and runs all kinds of inspiring courses for all kinds of folks in its beautiful woods, fields and gardens in the Teign Valley. I like being there because it has vitality and creativity and a kind of pioneering feel. I'd recommend you check them out at www.embercombe.co.uk. There's something about the place and the people that makes me feel that anything is possible and that I can be part of it. I was very energised by my day in the rabbit pen...meeting and listening to young children, families, young people... One of my highlights was sitting by the fire listening to Mac, the founder of Embercombe. His story was a wonderful real life take on 'what would you do if offered three wishes' or similar. There was a great moment in the story when the hero had the choice of a large cheque for his personal use, or an even larger one for setting up a charity...and there we all were together enjoying the benefits of him choosing the latter...

I wonder if I could have made a choice with that kind of generosity and vision... what about you? It reminds me of one of my favourite poems by Adrienne Rich, Transcendental Etude. You really need it in its entirety but here's a taste of the final stanza

Vision begins to happen in such a life
as if a woman quietly walked away
from the argument and jargon in a room
and sitting down in the kitchen, began turning in her lap
bits of yarn, calico and velvet scraps,
laying them out absently on the scrubbed boards
in the lamplight, with the small rainbow-colored shells
sent in cotton-wool from somewhere far away,
and skeins of milkweed from the nearest meadow-
original domestic silk, the finest findings-
and the darkblue petal of the petunia,
and the dry darkbrown lace of seaweed;
not forgotten either, the shed silver
whisker of the cat,
the spiral of paper-wasp-nest curling
beside the finch's yellow feather.

Such a composition has nothing to do with eternity,
the striving for greatness, brilliance-
only with the musings of a mind
one with her body, experienced fingers quietly pushing
dark against bright, silk against roughness,
pulling the tenets of a life together
with no mere will to mastery,
only care for the many-lived, unending
forms in which she finds herself,
becoming now the sherd of broken glass
slicing light in a corner, dangerous
to flesh, now the plentiful, soft leaf
that wrapped round the throbbing finger, soothes the wound;
and now the stone foundation, rockshelf further
forming underneath everything that grows.

Easter and Springtime Retreat

2010-03-11T15:21:00.002Z

As mentioned below, on Sunday March 28th Living Spirit will be offering an Easter and Springtime Retreat from 11am -4pm. For those of you who would like a bit more detail... this will be a quiet day of guided and silent meditation, blended with reflection and discussion and time for quiet walking outside in nature. As previously we'll be exploring both a pagan and celtic christian approach to this sacred time... exploring themes of death and rebirth...of letting go of the old and opening up to new life and new beginnings. Offered on a donation basis, with a suggested donation of £30, plus a contribution to a bring and share lunch. Some low cost accommodation is available for those travelling from afar....

The retreat will roll on from 4pm into our usual seasonal celebration of walking onto the moors and returning to feast and have fun! Families and children are welcome to come along at this stage. We look forward to seeing you soon...

Upcoming Events

2010-03-09T14:12:00.001Z

It's been about a month since I wrote about upcoming events...long enough I think to now wax lyrical about our next set of retreats and courses. Following on from my last post...why not join me for our Living Spirit Spring Retreat day on March 28th...the perfect opportunity to get started with meditation or to refocus and deepen an established spiritual practice. Open to all and on a donation basis, with a suggested donation of £30 for the day. Accommodation is also available if you want to make the most of being on beautiful Dartmoor.

As for April...there are some real treats coming up. Starting with storyteller and mythologist Martin Shaw on April 10th. There's been a whisper on the wind that this first day in his 'Wheel of Story' will include the wonderful tale of Tristan and Isolde... soul food for all us lovers!

On the following weekend of April 17-18th, we are welcoming a new tutor, Patricia Chalkley, for a "Return to Source' healing retreat. This will blend yoga and meditation and also sounds like it will really put the treat back in retreat, as I understand Patricia is bringing a colleague who will be offering individual times of aromatherapy massage and healing within the days. Come for the weekend or for either day. More details are available through our website, by clicking on the links above.

Spring and Spiritual Practice

2010-03-09T12:48:00.004Z

I found myself very restless on the meditation cushion this morning...and yesterday morning I didn't find myself on the cushion at all! So I have to admit that, while I'm loving the sunny days, spring is having its effect on my spiritual practice! Why bother, you might ask, to take time to sit still when there's washing to be hung and gardening to be done....let alone all the more delightful activities enabled by extra time in bed in the morning?!

I pondered this while watching my restless mind and body this morning and some thoughts by my first teacher Shunryu Suzuki came to me. He said that when we sit in meditation "we resume our fundamental activity of creation". This first type of creation is the still space, the blank page or canvas...then comes activity, production and all that we usually think of as 'creative'. He calls the first type of creation by the Zen word 'zazen' and he also calls it God. He says "Usually everyone forgets about zazen. Everyone forgets about God. They work very hard at... all kinds of creation, but God does not help the activity. This is why we have so many problems in this world. When we forget the fundamental source of our creating, we are like children who do not know what to do when they lose their parents."

Sometimes I actually experience this when I meditate, in a way that simply but genuinely transforms my day. I start off physically and mentally restless (or drowsy) but after a while of physically restraining myself from getting up or falling asleep, I do start to settle. By focussing gently on simply breathing, even my restless or drowsy mind starts to settles. The clouds of planning the day and worrying about money don't magically disappear but the blue sky space of simply breathing gets bigger around them and I become more aware of that space and less focussed on all the busyness that I usually fill it with. I know this sounds obvious but sometimes one just has to state the obvious...and get on with exploring it!

Which brings me to another thought. What I love about spiritual practice is that it's about discovering the reality of your life for yourself. There are guides but there aren't fixed rules or truths...it's all about gnosis ( to use another word)... a 'knowing' that is based in your own observation and experience. This is something that I really want to stand up for. These days I'm not really convinced by any beliefs, but I am interested in reflecting on living and in the thoughts of those who have lived reflectively. In this vein I'm really enjoying The Gnostic Bible that Joyce gave me for Christmas and so I'll end with a thought from the Gospel of Thomas...

Know what is in front of your face and what is hidden from you will be disclosed

Relaxing Retreats, Wonderful Workshops, Creative Courses & more...

2010-02-07T15:35:00.002Z

Please click on the picture above for a large version of our diary

Welcome one and all to the Bonehill House Spring and Summer Events Programme!

After weeks of planning, endless email exchanges and the unexpected pleasure of making new friends in the form of visiting tutors....Living Spirit is delighted to introduce its Events Diary. For more details, please click on the picture opposite or visit the new diary page on our website.
The website itself is finally fully finished, so if you haven't visited for a while, do take a look... New additions include a profile page, including my favourite part, namely pictures of our giant rabbit Pantalaimon and our neighbours' alpacas. (One of whom is appropriately named Ignatius... no doubt (?!) after the sixteenth century Christian saint Ignatius of Loyola who founded the Jesuits and created the famous 'Spiritual Exercises' still actively used at many retreat centres around the world, including here at Bonehill...)
The picture opposite also shows our new promotional poster...to remind all you good folks that space, peace and spiritual sanctuary awaits you with a warm welcome here at Bonehill. Please do spread the word and come and see us soon, whether for a personal quiet day, a group retreat, a meditation group or just a friendly cuppa!

Bonehill Bridie Dolls

2010-02-07T14:24:00.007Z

Joyce and Sue get crafty

Although Brigit's Day/ Imbolc/ Candlemas was 'officially' on Tuesday, I always feel that the festivals are more like gateways into a season that is based not in the calender but in real times events such as, in this case, one's own first signs of spring. For me this has included the experience of the thaw, the flowering of snowdrops, my first dandelion 'sun' and the way the birds sing in the mornings now. All this just to justify why I suddenly feel moved to write about this festival 'a little late'!

Imbolc (pronounced without the b), apparently from the word Oimelc meaning 'ewe's milk', is an ancient festival dedicated to the maiden aspect of the Goddess in her guise as Brigid, Brigit or Bride, goddess of learning, poetry, prophetic inspiration, craftmanship (especially smithcraft! ), agriculture and healing.

She is a 'virgin' goddess who brings new life to the earth in the very early spring, after the dark, cold depths of winter when the land is in the grip of the crone goddess Cailleach. Imbolc customs include blessing the hearth and creating Bridie dolls of straw, which are later buried in the earth for fertility. Imbolc is also a time to visit sacred wells and springs for blessing and inspiration.

Abigails Bridie Doll

Brigid was Christianised as St. Bridget, who in some folk traditions is described as the foster mother of Christ, perhaps symbolising the transition from the old ways to the new Christian faith in Britain - just as Imbolc became Candlemas, celebrated on 2nd February. On Candlemas the Catholic and some other Churches celebrate the purification of the Virgin Mary after the birth of Christ and the presentation of Christ in the Temple at Jerusalem. Church traditions include blessing candles and holding processions with lighted candles, symbolising the light of Christ coming into the world.

Brigit often features in the Carmina Gadelica, a collection of prayers and poems collected by Alexander Carmichael from the people of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and published in 1900. She is often called upon with Mary and the archangel Michael for blessing and especially when 'smooring the fire' or banking it down so it will keep the hearth and home warm and last through the night. Here are just a couple of examples... may they be a blessing to you...

Prayer

The love of the Mary Mother be thine,

The love of Brigit of the flocks be thine,

The love of Michael victorious be thine,

With their arm each hour surrounding thee.

The great bounty of the sea be thine,

The great bounty of earth be thine,

The great bounty of heaven be thine,

Thy life be hale and fruitful.

The mild grace of the Father be thine,

The loving grace of the Son be thine,

The loving grace of the Spirit be thine,

Laying thee with the graces.

Smooring the Hearth
I will smoor the hearth
As Brigit the Foster-mother would smoor.
The Foster-mother's holy name
Be on the hearth, be on the herd,
Be on the household all.

'Runes left by the Snowman'

2010-02-03T17:54:00.001Z

The post thaw Bonehill snowman

While there was a beauty, wildness and sense of pioneering spirit to being mostly snowed in for a month here at Bonehill, I have to confess to being simply relieved when it finally thawed. At our last Circle meeting, Joyce commented on 'the runes left by the snowman' and I think we were all struck by that sense of transition as the Cailleach of the Snows finally loosened her freezing grip and the very first soft signs of Spring began to show. We met on a gentle, misty day and spoke of the spring goddess Bride still veiled but glimpsed at last in the snowdrops and the pussy willow...also of the vibrant power of the emerging green growth and that strange mixture of the energy and vulnerabilty of new beginnings. I guess that's rather how I feel here at Bonehill as this new retreat centre starts to grow into the world. There's a both sense of purpose and power and moments of setback and uncertainty. To close, here are a few words from Mary Oliver, recently received (thank you, Kamini) for my birthday...

"It was what I was born for-
to look, to listen

to lose myself
inside this soft world-
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?"

Arctic Circle

2010-01-09T16:30:00.002Z

We really were snowed in!

Arctic conditions continue here at Bonehill as we move on into 2010. In such circumstances it has been especially inspiring to see our guests' commitment to spiritual work. The resourceful Ros trekked in for a week in our snow bound Hermitage and, while I was expecting to have to cancel our Twelfth Night/Epiphany Celtic Circle due to the freezing weather, other braver souls were ready to walk across the snowy moor for a somewhat 'Arctic Circle' meeting. When they finally emerged from their many layers of winter clothing, it was good to gather by the fire and reflect together on the inspirations and challenges of Christmas, drawing them into the light of consciousness of a new year. Thoughts circled around the nature of sacred celebration and how the magic ingredient is perhaps not the time or the place, but rather the sacred intention we bring. I like this thought, it reminds me that spirituality isn't for special times or people or places....it's the power of awareness and kindness that we can all practise at any time!

...and a 'happy' New Year

2010-01-01T21:38:00.002Z

Tam and Serenity in the snow

Christmas, for me at least, was so full of wild weather that there seemed to be no still point in the turning year. I've never had much feeling for New Year celebrations but this year, it was on New Year's Eve that a space for reflection opened up and I was surprised by a sense of the sacred. Looking back over the year, I felt a lot of grief, for losses in my own life and in the life of the world. It felt strangely right to pause and simply grieve, like returning to some wellspring of being. For a short time I stopped worrying about the future, stopped trying to get it all sorted and just rested in the present, in a sense of openess and trust....and even though it won't last, it was good to remember. Sometimes my sense of living seems to open up for a time, as if I stand at the edge of a much greater reality and one vibrant with some kind of depth, some sense of meaning. I don't understand and I don't even mind not understanding but if I had any new year's resolution it would be to remember and return to this way of living more.

An Unexpected White Christmas

2010-01-01T16:27:00.005Z

Happy Christmas!

Our various festive season plans here at Bonehill had to give way to some serious outer and inner weather. Rather than running a midwinter retreat, we simply had to go into a midwinter retreat as the Bonehill road became impassable due to ice and snow. Happily our Solstice Celebration went ahead on an enjoyably intimate scale... as only our immediate neighbours were able to join us, by virtue of nipping over the garden wall! Adults and children had a wonderful walk into the snowy moors as the dusk was falling... a memorable and magical occasion.

At Christmas we worked our way through the complications of being an extended family through a mixture of happy times and terrible rows...as someone (possibly Homer Simpson?!) once said, it just isn't Christmas without a good row. On a simpler note, our unexpected white Christmas was very beautiful as you can see from the picture opposite of the Bonehill garden, with its snowy moorland views. Tam built a snow dog and he and Ian discovered just how quickly one can travel by sledge from Bonehill rocks to home...

An Invitation...to silence, stillness, study...and celebration!

2009-12-11T12:56:00.002Z

Calling all celtic circlers, kabbalists, living spirits and friends! Here is a rather late in the day invitation to silence, stillness, study...and celebration! Firstly, a warm welcome awaits anyone wanting to join the Kabbalah group on Thursday 17th December for an esoteric exploration of Christmas. Then on Sunday 20th December I'll be lightly facilitating a midwinter retreat at Bonehill, betweem 11am and 3pm. (Yes, you can still have a lie in... and get home before dark!)
The main menu for the day will be meditation, with a blend of guidance, simple silence and time for reflection and discussion. The morning should suit the pagans amongst us as we journey within to the Sacred Grove. Then after a bring and share lunch, we'll make a meditative exploration of the Nativity. It's a sad fact that many of us struggle with Christmas...it can be a lonely time or one loaded with painful memories...or just too busy, too expensive and too demanding. So why not step back from these inner or outer pressures and take some time to rediscover the deep magic of Midwinter and a new perspective on the spirituality of Christmas?

On the winter solstice, inspired by the celtic circle, Bonehill will be celebrating this still point of the turning year. From 3pm we'll be walking out onto the moors and into the dark on this longest night. Those of us who make it back alive (just kidding!) will then be tucking into mince pies and mulled wine, before gathering around the Christmas tree to light candles, sing carols and celebrate the imminent arrival of the Sun/Son.

Storywork at Bonehill

2009-12-10T15:59:00.005Z

Last weekend Bonehill welcomed back year two students from The Westcountry School of Myth and Story. It was such an inspiring day of storywork and beautifully described by Ronnie, who I now know is not only a great storyteller but also a surgeon (now that's what I call multi-tasking...and multi talented!):

"Last Saturday four of us met at Bonehill to work on stories, and without moving from the cosy fire we wandered in the fire and ice of Norse mythology, visited ancient Russian cities and undersea kingdoms, drifted through a Breton tale of longing and magic, and peered into the depths of Ceridwen's cauldron. We wondered at the start if we'd fill a day but it was easy! Not to mention great fun, full of insights and very useful."

Just in case you are wondering...the picture opposite shows the cow 'Andumbla' who in Norse myth is part of the creation of the worlds. I find it a strange image but reassuringly fertile and nurturing compared to the extremes of fire and ice that otherwise dominate the Norse creation myths. The thought of the first man being licked out of the ice (by his hair) by a giant, lactating cosmic cow is nevertheless downright odd!

Coffee and Kabbalah

2009-12-10T15:34:00.001Z

The Devon Kabbalah Group is now settling into regular fortnightly meetings when our small band meet for meditation and study. Our theme at the moment is a 'school of the soul' with our discussions based around Halevi's diagram as shown opposite. I've found myself thinking...'what is the difference between a coffee morning and a Kabbalah group' ? They certainly do have things in common (mainly coffee!) Looking at that tree diagram, it's clear that both have a place of meeting, members (or students) and their contemplations, rituals and devotions. Us spiritual types may not like to admit it but there's nothing intrinsically more holy in setting out the menorah than the coffee spoons.

In our opening prayer we say "let us gather together, let us draw together, let us rise up and go to that holy place of meeting'. How often have I sat in a meeting listening to the personal agendas, the jockeying for power or control (however nicely done)? It might have been a meeting dedicated to community or to spirit but was it holy, were people really meeting? To actually 'draw together' requires so much more than just being in the same place at the same time. When I listen to the people in our group I hear a lot of honest questions, the willingness to be vulnerable and not have the answers. I hear a real longing for a deeper perspective, for what the poet Adrienne Rich calls "the truths that we are salvaging from the splitting open of our lives." In this way we can each be 'teachers' to each other. I learn more from hearing someone honestly share their loneliness or their uncertainties about meaning and purpose than from any spiritual tome. I learn to face my own difficult life and how to care about others...not out of pity but out of empathy because we are all struggling sometimes. That's my 'holy place of meeting' - it's just that human place of shared brokeness and beauty.

'Intrepid Kabbalists climb Tree'

2009-11-16T14:17:00.003Z

Just to remind me that life running a retreat centre is rarely smooth, on the day before the Introduction to Kabbalah day, general chaos descended on Bonehill. The long awaited builder arrived, the aga was turned off and serviced and hurricane winds hit Dartmoor resulting in a power cut and blowing a large tree down over the drive. Suddenly simple tasks such as cooking soup for lunch and welcoming guests were not at all straightforward and our small band of intrepid Kabbalah students arrived to find they literally had to 'climb the tree' in order to start the day!

But while the winds raged outside, our small group was gathered peacefully in front of the fire for a day of study, meditation and a playful exercise drawing the Tree of Life which involved a lot of coloured pencils and laughter. Conversations ranged from St.Paul to transcendent sex! I think we all came to the end of the day with a renewed sense of connection to a 'bigger picture' and feeling inspired to learn and explore further.

The Devon Kabbalah Group's fortnightly study group restarts this Thursday morning at 9.30am and is open to new members joining at any time. Do contact Joyce on 07890 806857 or 01647 221496 or email soundsofjoy@btopenworld.com for more information.

Upcoming Kabbalah Workshop

2009-11-03T17:39:00.002Z

On Saturday 14th November Bonehill House will be hosting a Kabbalah Workshop from 9.30 am until 5.30pm. Run by The Devon Kabbalah Group in association with The Kabbalah Society, this will be a unusual opportunity to discover more about a fascinating tradition and tutors Joyce King and Sam Wernham will be bringing together theory and practice with a blend of short talks, discussion and practical exercises including guided meditation and drawing your own Tree of Life.

The day is very reasonably priced at £45, including a simple and delicious vegetarian lunch and concessions are available also. While Kabbalah is rooted in Judaism, this day will take an open approach, focussing on essential spiritual principles that can be applied to everyday life and will be suitable for beginners or those with some experience.

This will be the first of a series of Kabbalah workshops and participants will have the chance to be part of an ongoing, fortnightly study group facilitated by The Devon Kabbalah Group. For more details of future workshops and the study group, please click on the 'workshops' tab above. For more details about The Kabbalah Society go to www.kabbalahsociety.org

All Soul's Celebration

2009-11-02T17:08:00.005Z

Tam chose a feline theme for our pumpkin lantern this year

The winter winds came in on Halloween night and reminded us that this growing season has come to an end. By morning, the last of the dark red cherry tree leaves were lying by the back door and I felt both sad and strangely excited. I stood in the shower thinking through the story of Ceridwen's cauldron for our All Soul's Celebration...just what do you put in a magic potion so potent that just a drop will transform a young man into the poet Taliesin and birth the Bardic tradition?
I found out later that evening, as four local families gathered to walk the moors and gather round the fire for feasting, stories and songs. This year Ceridwen's cauldron was filled with 'custard, slime and superglue' (courtesy of the young people) and 'shark's teeth, mermaid's tears and moon cheese' (to name but a few from the 'older' people).
As I reflected on all the elemental transformations that birthed a poet... and the process of being pursued by the dark muse of any creative calling... it struck me how mostly it's simply suffering that matures and sweetens us. That final stage feels so true...becoming nothing more than a seed, down in the dusty earth, experiencing a final humiliation and an emerging humility. In my own journey it does seem that out of these last few dark years of loss, this new birth at Bonehill is emerging. If you are reading this in a dark time...track down those old tales and let them remind you that there can be meaning and process and purpose in pain...

Farewells

2009-11-02T16:17:00.001Z

As the School of Myth Conference woke the dead with wild poetry, music, mythic story and dancing in St. Lawrence Chapel late into Saturday night, I was coming home quietly to my family and then deep in an exhausted sleep back at Bonehill, after days of cooking, clearing and cleaning...

With the conference finished, it was time for our wonderful American guests to head home. It's the ordinary/extraordinary conversations over breakfast that I'll miss... breaking open croisssants and deep feelings together...how one moment we are dunking tea bags and the next discussing divorce...

Martin arrived on Sunday, so tired out that he forgot to put his handbrake on as he parked and ended up chasing his car down the road! With a final exchange of books, whisky, hugs and a last photo in the garden, we said 'farewell'....

Celtic Circle and Conference 'Cook-athon'

2009-10-30T14:40:00.001Z

Well, it's been a wild week (and it's not over yet!) as the arrival of our conference guests was shortly followed by the first meeting of the Celtic Circle. So the Bonehill Sanctuary held its first group meditation, just a month after I lit a candle of dedication and prayed that it become a sacred space from which, in some small way, spiritual light and blessing could flow out into people's lives.
It was good to gather with other women and just be part of all the honest, down to earth, deep sharing and humour that bubbled up as we sat around the fire and walked on the land. As we approach Samhain, the old celtic turning of the year, we are beginning a journey of travelling through the sacred circle of the natural year together, drawing inspiration from the myths of our celtic ancestors and our own everyday wisdom.
As part of our meeting, we made an inner journey through guided meditation to a sacred grove where we could dip down into the deep and transformative waters of the Goddess Ceridwen. The message I received from 'being the broth' was to remember to fully acknowledge the dark difficulties, frustrations and despairs that regularly arise with facilitating a retreat centre and spiritual work...
After the Circle meeting, three of us stayed on to cook for the mythschool conference and so had a whole other perspective on Ceridwen's sacred (pumpkin soup) cauldron. After a 7.30am start to the working day, it certainly felt like a 'cook-athon' as I finally swept the floor at 6.30pm. But it was a great time with my dear, funny friends Sue and Joyce and if you are coming to the conference you can sample delights such as 'Mythic mulled wine', 'Pluto's pizzas... from the fires of Hades' (aka the Bonehill Aga) and Herne's Horn of Plenty (no comment...actually it's ratatouille!)

Cello music in the garden...

2009-10-30T13:50:00.003Z

The School of Myth Conference Caravan converged on Bonehill House last Wednesday, in preparation for helping us to glimpse 'The Wild Hawk in the Lovers Garden' this weekend. It feels like a real blessing to have poets Coleman Barks and Lisa Starr as the very first guests in The Hermitage... and words cannot describe how I felt to hear David Darling's serene cello music as he sat in the autumn sun and played in the Bonehill garden!
If any of you are reading this soon, then I hope you will join us in the Lover's Garden from tonight for music, poetry and story in Totnes Civic Hall at 7.30pm, followed by an all day conference and further evening performance tomorrow in St.Lawrence's Chapel in Ashburton.
More details from www.schoolofmyth.com

Bonehill House welcomes its first guests

2009-10-27T12:15:00.005Z

Life has been very full here at Bonehill, as we recently welcomed our first guests, three months sooner than we had initially planned! But following a flurry of clearing, cleaning and emergency crockery and cutlery buying, we were just about ready to welcome the West Country School of Myth and Story for a weekend workshop led by award winning storyteller Martin Shaw. Martin describes the Myth School as 'a monastery run by pirates' and Bonehill was certainly stuffed to the gunwales as 18 of us settled in for a rich feast of traditional Irish stories by the fireside and under the stars. Champion organiser Sue Charman from Embercombe co- ordinated delicious, organic food and everyone contributed songs, stories, prayers and helped to 'feed the stories'. As our weekend coincided with the Hindu festival of Divali, a real highlight for me was Maggie Squire's beautiful contemporary Rangoli pattern, which she created by the door with coloured rice flour, to welcome Lakshmi, the goddess of good fortune and wealth. Altogether it felt like a wonderful start to our new venture as an interfaith retreat centre.

Welcome...

2009-10-01T09:03:00.003+01:00

Welcome to Living Spirit – Updates.
Here you'll find all the latest news, events, updates and details of coming activities at Living Spirit.
If you wish, you can subscribe to this blog and have up to date Living Spirit news feeds directly sent to you by email so you'll always know what is going on.

Lookout for more details coming soon.