tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59139831864320929942024-03-18T19:51:46.097-07:00PRAYER IS THE GROUND OF ETERNITY'And so it was I entered the broken world /to trace the visionary company of love...' - Hart CraneBohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-82671620761002110872008-06-10T02:31:00.001-07:002008-06-10T02:31:30.575-07:00Opening the Ways<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjGSejjACYGbmQsm_F2la1PA1udRwyFKXA4opiBq6eYSaGzctfmZFNkxnNu7UcyDtcyUqKbEvQ3Wt92H64rKQf8xPHGt_PukIXvxQRf248izn24V3bExKSXbfCgxIqbwl1HpWpbVnYJNc/s1600-h/Dscf0015.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjGSejjACYGbmQsm_F2la1PA1udRwyFKXA4opiBq6eYSaGzctfmZFNkxnNu7UcyDtcyUqKbEvQ3Wt92H64rKQf8xPHGt_PukIXvxQRf248izn24V3bExKSXbfCgxIqbwl1HpWpbVnYJNc/s400/Dscf0015.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5210169052076938850" /></a><br /><br />One important aspect of the spiritual journey, I find, is the art of learning when to take a hint. My spiritual path has been colourful so far, and I have no expectations that it will become any less so. Having always been an instinctive polytheist, some years ago I became deeply interested in the various traditions associated with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orisha">Orishas</a>, the Yoruba deities of west Africa who were taken to the New World in the horror of the Slave-trade. There they flourish, especially among Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian communities, and indeed the various forms of Yoruba tradition are widespread among Hispanic communities in the US, especially in New York, Miami and Los Angeles, and anywhere where there has been wide immigration from the Caribbean. <br /><br />Startlingly similiar to the Greek pantheon, the Orishas are a group of around 20 deities each of which has control over a particular area of life: the one I love and honour most of all, <em>Ochun</em>, is the goddess of fresh water, rivers, love, honey, sweetness, desire, and sensuality, whose colours are yellow and gold. Very often, they are syncretised with Catholic saints. Each of these beings is complex and multifaceted, and it must be emphasised just how immensely profound and beautiful I found Yoruba-derived sprituality to be. Embracing paradox and contradiction, dealing with life as it really is, it is astoundingly sophisticated, leaving any form of western Paganism in the dust, as far as I'm concerned. (After being exposed to the path of the Orishas, a lot of Druidry, for example, just came to seem like self-indulgent buggering about: people turning up to rituals dressed as Hindu brides, for example, or honouring spring with libations of Green Chartreuse, <em>because of the colour</em>.)<br /><br />Central to all forms of the tradition is a reverence for the Ancestors, the <em>Egun</em>, and their presence and advice is sought in all things. Practitioners will always have a shrine to their ancestors, with glasses of fresh water, white flowers and candles, and perhaps photographs. They will be regularly offered food and drink and cigars. They can also be consulted through divination. This powerful sense of ancestral connection, which is both mysterious and everyday, is one of the most moving aspects of Yoruba tradition. Ancestors are considered to come before the Orishas, in the sense that ordinary worries and problems are taken to an individual's ancestral spirits before being bring them to the great powers.<br /><br />The pantheon of the Orishas is one of the most vibrant, profound and beautiful spiritual conceptions I have ever come across. They are imagined not as gods and goddesses exactly, but as emissaries or great angels under the One God, <em>Oludumare</em>. <em>Ellegua</em> is the Orisha that you always start with; he is the youngest, and the mischievous, tricksterish, and amoral personification of chance. His colours are red and black, and he is visualised as an old man and as a young child. The chief of the Orishas under Oludumare himself (or herself) is <em>Obatala</em>, the personification of peace and purity, the Father of the Orishas. His colour is white. <em>Yemaya</em> is their mother, the Orisha of salt water, whose colour is blue. There is <em>Shango</em>, the virile god of war and thunder, whose colours are red and white, who is comically syncretised with a female saint, St Barbara. His wife is <em>Oya</em>, the tempestuous Orisha of storms and the whirlwind, but his paramour is Ochun. There is <em>Orunmila</em>, the Orisha who controls the intricate system of Ifa divination. There is <em>Ogun</em>, the blacksmith, who lives in the woods and rules over accidents and metals. There is <em>Ochosi</em>, the hunter, and <em>Babalu Aye</em>, the leprous Orisha of pestilence and recovery, whose sores are licked by dogs and who walks with a stick. There are also a large number of others, who vary between the various traditions. In Yorubaland, each city had a tutelary Orisha, who was worshipped by the people of that town; with the Middle Passage, people from different cities were mingled together, and now all the Orishas are honoured by all practitioners. They also were reduced in number; in Africa, the number of Orishas was given as ‘401’, the ‘one’ signifying potential infinitude. In the New World, the number hovers around twenty.<br /><br />Anyway. Since moving in with my partner, who finds any form of spirituality wierd and off-putting, I'm sorry to say that my devotion to the Orishas has sagged. (A situation I intend to rectify - I can't continue to operate on spiritual standby in the way that I have been doing for over a year.) You can see the shrine to Ochun that I had in my old house above, by the way. On Saturday last, I picked up a book in Waterstones - Lewis Hyde's fantastic <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Trickster-Makes-This-World-Mischief/dp/0865475369">Trickster Makes This World</a></em>, a poetic and anthropological study of the mythology of the Trickster figure, including Coyote, Raven, Legba, Loki and Hermes. One of the beings discussed is the <a href="http://www.paganwiki.org/index.php?title=Ellegua">orisha Ellegua, also known as <em>Eshu</em>. </a>This, I recognised immediately, was a Big Hint. You don't ignore the deity who, like Hermes, represents the wildcard, the twist of fate, the windfall, the threshold and the boundary, the door-hinge, the stroke of luck and the nasty accident which no one could have foreseen. I'm standing at the threshold at the moment - on the verge of my first proper job, a move to a different city, the start of a new book. A new phase of life, in fact. So I took the hint, and last night (Mondays belong to Eshu) I made the prescribed offering: a handful of red and black sweeties, three copper pennies, a white candle, and a glug of dark rum, left at a nearby crossroads. As I did so, calling on Eshu to open my ways to good fortune and close my ways to bad fortune, I suddenly felt a huge sense of homecoming and relief. I walked home and fell asleep almost instantly.Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-49992848591869079942008-04-12T05:39:00.000-07:002008-07-17T13:04:48.238-07:00Loyalty to the Real<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Meadow_argus_on_leaf_litter.jpg/800px-Meadow_argus_on_leaf_litter.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Meadow_argus_on_leaf_litter.jpg/800px-Meadow_argus_on_leaf_litter.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />The following is an article I (Mark) wrote for the Druid Network a few years ago.<br /><br /><br /><br /><em>We have died, and now we are in love with the world.</em><br /><br />- a Greek Orthodox hermit<br /><br />Druid: a maddening paradox. The following is merely a series of thoughts on what Druidry means to me. It is thus personal, and what I write here is simply my understanding, filtered through my own personality and circumstances.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />I adopted the term ‘Druid’ because it was the nearest fit to the spiritual longing which is integral to my soul - so a passive rather than an active decision. This longing is difficult to put into words without lapsing into cliché. As a child, it manifested as a delirious sense of kinship with the natural world matching a sense of alienation from the human one. I could only really breathe when out in the woods, on my own, where I never felt in the least bored or lonely. Out in the wildness and wet, I found the soul dilates. The twilight thrush on its branch calls within your skull. You taste the dewfall in your mouth. The smell of rotting leaves wafts like incense. The human world seemed (and seems) garish, frenetic, unreal. I also knew instinctively that nature was what I was made of, that there existed an inner landscape that too was part of nature, with its own wilderness and its own seasons. Of course as a child, this was entirely unconscious, and it was only as an adolescent I realised this perception was a ‘spiritual’ insight, and that it had ethical implications. As soon as I became aware of nature religion, something profoundly devotional awoke inside me - a sense of the presence, both intimate and inexplicable, which I now term god or the gods. Everywhere I look, I see your face. Something inside broke open to this terrifying, almost unbearable joy, like a camera being shattered and the film being exposed to light. Whatever part of the soul’s membrane broke back then, I’ve never managed to mend it. Despite my stupidity and self-distraction, somewhere that light, or perhaps something more akin to a lustrous darkness, ceaselessly seeps in.<br /><br />So Druidry for me is a shorthand term to indicate that nature and especially the landscape of Britain is at the heart of my spirituality. Druidry for me flows first from a feeling, and my loyalty is to that longing, and only to the label in so far as it is congruent with the longing. I am not by nature a very gregarious person and find large ‘faith’ gatherings difficult. Ideally, Druid ritual for me takes place in the context of the small Grove which I jointly run, or as part of a pair, or alone. Jointly leading a group of fifteen people in ritual is exhausting. Being part of a circle of several dozen is impossibly jarring and makes me want to run away screaming. <br /><br />The necessity of any link between this longing that I have been describing and ‘Druidry’ is beginning to elude me. A lot of modern Druidry mystifies me. I suspect it would be entirely possible to be true to this unassuageable inner conviction and not call myself a Druid at all.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />To me, Druidry is loyalty to the Real. <br /><br />This doesn’t mean ‘loyalty to the merely tangible’. But it does mean that, for me, being a Druid integrally involves of stripping away layers of ignorance and fantasy. This means being aware of where your food comes from, and who is being paid a fair or unfair wage for it. It means being responsible for what you buy, where your clothes come from, what your government is up to. It means keeping your eyes and ears and heart open, and confronting the urge to seek refuge in fantasy yourself. It means keeping grounded, not drifting off into New Age sentimentality or solipsism. (‘Sentimentalists always have brutal eyes’, as Gore Vidal said.) It means connecting with the real world, real rain, real wind, real seasons. Real earth. Not dressing up or sci-fi. In relating to the ancestors, loyalty to the Real means honouring them for who they really were, as far as we are able to discern that, not our fantasy of what we would like them to have been. This goes for our ancestors of two thousand years ago as much as for our grandparents. <br /><br />In our creativity, loyalty to the Real means trying to root out that which does not flow from the deepest parts of us, in order to find the untamed life which dwells there. Virginia Woolf said something like this in her diaries:<br /><br /><em>If I could catch the feeling I would: the feeling of the singing of the real world, as one is driven by loneliness and silence from the habitable world.</em><br /><br />It means living at the edge of ourselves, clear-eyed, always seeking for depth. Real suffering, real pain, real fear, real justice. It means a process of self-emptying, of becoming clear. This definition applies to what I believe is the necessary heart of any authentic spirituality. I’m not going to attempt to define ‘the Real’ here, though this is a profound philosophical problem which I am unqualified to address. I personally equate the Real with the Universe, in both its seen and unseen aspects. A panentheistic monotheist would see it as God, Ultimate Reality; a Buddhist, as the web of interdependent co-arising. My definition is thus a form of mysticism, or mystical activism, recognisable to anyone from any tradition, and involving a purification of the soul. Perhaps I should qualify it slightly – Druidry, for me personally in practice, is loyalty to the Real as it manifests through the web of life here where I live, in Britain. This definition also allows me to side-step the things about contemporary Druidry which are not to my taste, and also allows me to insist loudly that calling oneself a Druid whilst behaving grossly unethically is not attending to the singing of the real world.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />THE BARD<br /><br /><em>Who but I <br />Speaks for the mute stone?<br />For fragile water feels<br />With finger and bone?</em><br /><br />- Kathleen Raine<br /><br /><br />We know that the Bard was an institution in the ancient and medieval Celtic world. The bard is the living link between the past and the present, maintaining the old lore and the deep memory. The bard is guardian of the songlines of the land. The bard is a preserver and remembrancer of language. A good example might be the Anglo-Welsh poet David Jones (1895-1974) who saw his own bardic art as being in a specifically Celtic mode, the hallmarks of which he saw as intricacy, complexity, and ties to culture and place. He wrote: <br /><br /><em>My view is that all artists, whether they know it or not, whether they would repudiate the notion or not, are in fact ‘showers forth’ of things which tend to be impoverished, or misconceived, or altogether lost or wilfully set aside in the preoccupations of our present intense technological phase, but which, none the less, belong to man. People think one is being deliberately obscure or affected, but the fact is that one ‘thinks’ in those obsolete or becoming obsolete terms. This all sounds as though I thought that poetry could not be written (in English or Welsh or double Dutch or what will you) without this reference back. I don’t think that at all; I mean only that for me it gets difficult if people don’t know what Aphrodite, let alone Rhiannon, signifies.</em><br /><br />The bard mediates the past to the present, certainly; but her role is also fundamentally to praise. Though she mediates the past, she lives in the present, and her role is to use metaphor to unconceal the being of things. Using her language, by likening unlike things, she is able to cleanse our vision and let us see the world afresh, letting us feel our way into a new connection with reality. The bard is one who renders-strange; she uses language to defamiliarise the world, only to hand it back to us a second later, made new, so that we can experience its wonder afresh. This is why cliché is not just bad poetry – it’s the opposite of poetry, because it deadens our experience of the world. This is also why writing bardic poetry isn’t just an attempt to write down your feelings as a kind of therapy; it must break new ground. The bard’s consciousness must revolve and rhapsodise around another being, to reveal its nature, its inner being. It is from metaphor that we can lay hold of something fresh. The bard should lay the world before us in its prismatic brilliance.<br /><br /><br />THE OVATE<br /><br />The Bard is concerned with remembering the past and transmitting it to the present. She is skilled at setting the world afresh before us through art. She is rooted in the present moment. But the Ovate is different. She comes to us bearing the perspective of Eternity. With the Ovate stage, the letting-go of the self begins. The Bard mediated the world to us through her own self (I am a wind on the sea, I am a wave of the ocean, I am…I am…I am sings Amergin.) But the Ovate begins to dissolve herself away. The Bard speaks, but the Ovate rests in a great silence. By removing herself from herself, she enters a dark and empty space where she can perceive dispassionately. She becomes intimate with endings, untyings, grief and dissolution. The Ovate remembers that death is inborn in us. To be an Ovate is to begin to disappear. The mystic Simone Weil expressed the same idea when she said:<br /><br />If only I could see a landscape as it is when I am not there. But when I am in any place I disturb the silence of heaven by the beating of my heart.<br /><br />Who could live up to this all the time? Nevertheless, the longing comes to you and must be followed. I once wrote a poem about this feeling, which I experienced sitting in the middle of nowhere in the Hebrides:<br /><br /><em>O holy rain, strip me bare.<br />Make me nowhere.<br /><br />Wind which grinds heather,<br />pluck my teeth,<br />Pare bones and hair.<br />Make me air.<br /><br />Fern and falling hawk,<br />my self discern,<br />In darkness and dearth.<br />Make of me earth.<br /><br />Bloodwater midges,<br />dark-mirrored pool,<br />Drain me dry.<br />Take from me this I.</em><br />The Ovatic stage is the point in Druidry equivalent to that found in all mystical traditions, at which what you experience as most real ceases to be you. You begin to find your own self a tiresome distraction to the task of faithfulness to the Real. A profound peace wells up in the soul as you begin to be emptied of yourself. For a time, you become a vessel waiting to be filled. This, I think, is why the Ovate is associated with the darkness and emptiness of night and winter. The speech of the Ovate is prophecy, because in her heart a dazzling darkness has come to dwell. It is as though she always holds within herself that moment of midwinter, just before the mistletoe touches the earth: an enfolding darkness, holding seeds of uncreated light.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />All we can say for certain about the ancient bards and ovates is this: bards praised and ovates prophesied. My definitions above are nothing but meditations on the labels and would certainly be incomprehensible to the ancient bards and ovates. I we could go back and hear it, the poetry of the pre-Christian bards would be uncongenial to us – rhythmic and metrical, glorifying the violence and profligacy of warlords and petty chieftains, boastfully obsessed with their aristocratic pedigrees. <br /><br />I often wonder also what the Druids would have looked like too. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find them chanting immense bodies of complicated, subtle scriptures from memory, describing the relationship of gods and the world, much like the Indian Rig Veda. It’s entirely possible that they had an intricate polytheology of the soul rooted in the landscape of Gaul and Britain, perhaps expressing the idea of the continuous recreation of the world through sacrifice. Their Indo-European cousins, the Vedic rishis, or seers, had precisely such as system in India at the time. On the other hand, I’d also be entirely unsurprised to find that they regularly performed human sacrifice, and that their teachings would strike us as violent, hierarchical and concerned with safeguarding their own privileged social status. Of course, I’d like the first picture to be true, but the second is just as likely, and so are a lot of things between those two extremes. Loyalty to the Real means not getting stuck on any pet vision of the druids and just accepting that we know next to nothing about them. We need a peaceful resting in uncertainty, without free-association or agenda-driven shrillness.<br /><br />***<br /><br />Why Druids? So much depends on with whom we confuse ourselves, as Elias Canetti said. The only constant in the tangle of associations clustering round the word ‘Druid’ through the years is this: that being a Druid puts you a special category of person. It makes you different. In using the term, isn’t there a kind of hidden threat of self-aggrandisement? As Bobcat has suggested, ‘Druid’ perhaps shouldn’t be a self-applied term: it is something one can aspire to be, but never become.<br /><br />So am I Druid? As I wrote this I realised slight shifts in emphasis would make entirely different labels possible. I playfully tried ‘British Folk-Buddhist’ on. That fitted remarkably well. ‘Nature Mystic’ also was comfortable. Sufism inspires me deeply. Is what I do ‘Druidry’? I have absolutely no idea, especially as I am left completely bemused by the concept of the ‘Druid Tradition’, for reasons partly outlined above. I reverence my ancestors and various divine beings (principally Brighid), and nature is both the absolute heart and context of my religious life. Is that Druidry? Perhaps. But I have no time whatsoever for most of the extraneous trappings, finding them an irritating distraction. <br /><br />I keep coming across artists and poets who express a devotion to the spirit in nature in these islands with clarity and longing. We have an immensely rich tradition of such people. It is this devotion to the texture of the world, with its sense of historical consciousness, which I mean by ‘loyalty to the Real.’ There is a shock of recognition when I find it. Andy Goldsworthy’s organic, evanescent sculptures are exquisite offerings to the spirits of place. Alice Oswald’s long poem Dart is a songline, a rich watery spool of words in the voice of the goddess of the river Dart in Devon. Ted Hughes’ stark mythic poems enshrine him as ‘a guardian spirit of the land and language’, as Seamus Heaney called him. There are many others – Cathal Ó Searcaigh, Richard Mabey, David Jones, and Kathleen Raine. And further back, the Gawain poet, John Clare, and Dafydd ap Gwilym. Their work and lives reverence the fragile wilderness and fragile histories of Britain. They used and use their imaginations to unconceal its being, to reverence the Real with both joy and heartbreak: stars, strata, leaf-litter, trees, tears, time.<br /><br />That, for me, is Druidry enough.Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-28428754648236365192008-01-10T02:27:00.000-08:002008-01-10T02:28:04.106-08:00Icon<a href="http://www.matrisdomini.org/Images/icona_gly.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://www.matrisdomini.org/Images/icona_gly.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.christusrex.org/www2/vartanova/images/c_nativity.gif"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.christusrex.org/www2/vartanova/images/c_nativity.gif" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />We're coming up to the Feast of the Epiphany, and to Orthodox Christmas, so I reproduce here a poem by Anne Stevenson, from her<em> Poems 1955-2005 </em>(Bloodaxe, 2005), with the Orthodox ikon of the Nativity.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Icon</strong><br /><br />The scene they play<br />is the midwife's<br />without the midwife.<br /><br />Blood, groans,<br />have drained into the gold,<br />and all her pain<br /><br />is inward and to be.<br /><br />The child<br />is like a prophet<br />on her knee.<br /><br />A Doctor of Science.<br /><br />In joy<br />his forehead<br />flexes in its sphere.<br /><br />His hand<br />that claws her face<br />catches her tear.Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-36537880812613434472007-12-04T02:31:00.001-08:002007-12-04T02:41:31.936-08:00Pascal's crisis<a href="http://www.swlearning.com/quant/kohler/stat/biographical_sketches/Pascal_2.jpeg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://www.swlearning.com/quant/kohler/stat/biographical_sketches/Pascal_2.jpeg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Samhain, and the whole winter season, is a time for reflecting on existential issues, and confronting - even submitting to - periods of nullity, nihilism and despair. Blaise Pascal (1623-62), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal">the French mathematician and philosopher</a>, described this feeling rather wonderfully. I find myself asking if this passage should become part of our Winter Solstice liturgy.<br /><br />'I do not know who put me in the world, nor what the world is, nor what I am myself. I am in a terrible ignorance about everything. I do not know what my body is, or my senses, or my soul, or even that part of me which thinks what I am saying, which reflects on itself and everything but knows itself no better than anything else. I see the terrifying spaces of the universe enclosing me, and I find myself attached to one corner of this expanse without knowing why I have been placed here rather than there, or why the life alloted to me should be assinged to this moment rather than to another in all the eternity that preceeded and which follows me. I see only an infinity on every side, enclosing me like an atom or a shadow that vanishes in an instant.'Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-29286872533799092712007-11-05T06:43:00.000-08:002007-11-05T12:07:53.610-08:00Samhain<a href="http://www.walkcarmarthenshire.com/art/uploaded/webres.20.11.05.DSCN4470%20Autumn%20colour%20in%20Brechfa%20Forest,%20Abergorlech.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://www.walkcarmarthenshire.com/art/uploaded/webres.20.11.05.DSCN4470%20Autumn%20colour%20in%20Brechfa%20Forest,%20Abergorlech.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/MH8Asmm9a40&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/MH8Asmm9a40&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><br /><br /><br />It has been curious not doing a Samhain ritual this year. <a href="http://www.groveofthestars.org/index.php?categoryid=9&p2_articleid=2&p2_page=7">My grove has always pulled the stops out for Samhain</a>, and I'm feeling the lack of the yearly excitement as we all dress in black and go deep into the dark, frosty woods early in November. The trees drip with moisture and the smell of smoke and leafmould hangs on the air. (We normally sing the Dead Can Dance song performed on the video above.) Amid the piles of rotting leaves, we sink into what Angela Carter described as 'nearly, but not quite, the saddest time of the year.'<br /><br />And it is sad. I sometimes feel the Druidic emphasis on darkness doesn't quite ring true, at least not for me: yes, it is rich, yes, it is voluptuously inspiring, velvety, exquisite, all those other words which get tokenistically overused. Not yet at that time of winter, in late December or early January, when the cold rings like a bell and the fields are like locked rooms, Samhain has a heavy, emotional feeling. The season bears a weight of grief.<br /><br />This year, I decorated my altar with red and yellow leaves, the last of the scarlet dahlias from the garden, and twisted black branches. I collected little golden apples, and have piled them up with some rabbit bones. The ikon of Brighid is swathed in black cloth (to honour the Gaelic goddess of winter, the Cailleach, whose name means 'Veiled One', and who is a kind of wintery alter ego of Brighid.) There are photos of my ancestors: I treasure one of my great, great-grandmother, Elizabeth McRae, whose is standing holding my great-grandmother as a babe in arms in a back garden of turned earth. I looked out at the earth I have just turned in my new garden and thought of her. I burned some sage from the garden, lit the candles and stood by the open back door looking up and the stars through the trees. The squealing of rockets and the bangs of fireworks made the night sound like a flock of shrieking gulls had been disturbed by mortar attacks. But in the flat, silence reigned.<br /><br />I put on Lisa Gerrard's last album and let myself fade into it; the freezing night air, the candlelight, the smoke, the stars. I had a little cry. I thought of all the suffering in the world: maudlin, I know, but at least it cut through my ingrained compassion fatigue. It tenderises the heart. I recited to myself part of the liturgy that Justine and I had cobbled together from Carol Ann Duffy for our Samhain ritual:<br /><br /><em>Learn from the winter trees,<br />the way they kiss and throw away their leaves<br />and hold their stricken faces in their hands<br />and turn to ice;<br />winter flays them to the bone.<br />We are sinking into darkness,<br />we are sailing through the night.<br />For man and woman, <br />the days turn into years<br />and the body is a grave filling up with time.<br />We are drowning.<br />All that rescues us is love.</em><br /><br />And then I sat in darkness and let the cold wash in. Welcome, winter.Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-48449265217740435202007-09-21T03:18:00.001-07:002007-09-21T03:18:36.187-07:00Poem<strong>Prayer</strong>, by Carol Ann Duffy<br /><br /><br />Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer<br />utters itself. So a woman will lift <br />her head from the sieve of her hands and stare<br />at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift. <br /><br />Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth<br />enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;<br />then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth<br />in the distant Latin chanting of a train.<br /><br />Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales<br />console the lodger looking out across<br />a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls<br />a child's name as though they named their loss.<br /><br />Darkness outside. Inside the radio's prayer -<br />Rockall. Malin. Dogger. FinisterreBohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-70002205099543071392007-09-09T11:15:00.000-07:002007-09-09T11:18:42.868-07:00Angel<a href="http://www.tamsquare.net/thumbnail/R/Russian-Icons-An-Archangel-(the-so-called-Archangel-with-the-Golden-Hair).jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px;" src="http://www.tamsquare.net/thumbnail/R/Russian-Icons-An-Archangel-(the-so-called-Archangel-with-the-Golden-Hair).jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />The so-called 'Angel with the Golden Hair': a Russian icon, from the Novgorod school, mid to late 12th century. Keep looking. It's a deeply strange and beautiful image.Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-22220819425453142722007-09-09T06:38:00.000-07:002007-09-09T08:25:24.621-07:00Magic<a href="http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news_features/2006_01_11.russian/RUSSIAN-4.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news_features/2006_01_11.russian/RUSSIAN-4.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br />It has gradually become a conviction of Justine and myself that <em>casting spells</em> cannot be considered the activity of a mature personality. A big part of our problem with Paganism derived from the importance placed on magic, or even, God help us, 'magick'. It's the element of Paganism that leaves us most mystifed, I think, though Justine may disagree. <br /><br />But, as always, this bald statement of mine requires qualification, and the ways in which magic(k) is conceptualised within Paganism differ considerably. At worst, it is a manipulative, self-aggradising spiritual technology, based very largely on chronic self-delusion, and those who practise it often tend to have some very nasty power issues. In this form, it's a bit like spiritual hacking: a way for geeks to go behind the scenes, round the back, under the radar, in order to achieve some selfish end. <br /><br />But at best, as the work of luminous writers like Rae Beth makes clear, magic is a kind of embodied prayer, entirely compatible with the concept of petitionary prayer within other religions. It's something done in humility, on behalf of others, in openess to the divine generosity, which grants the request or not. It's not something that the practitioner does by themselves. I don't mean to be doctrinaire here, but it's clear, at least to me, that Pagan thinking about magic and prayer is all over the place. <br /><br />* * *<br /><br />There are various schools of thought about how magic works (putting aside, for the moment, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Persuasions-Witchs-Craft-Contemporary-England/dp/0674663241">the brisk objection that it doesn't</a>.) The least sophisticated view is that represented by, say, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Spells-They-Work-Janet-Farrar/dp/0919345638">Janet and Stuart Farrar</a> in Ye Olde Wiccan mode.* According to this view, magic is an inherent force within human beings, which can 'raised', by chanting, dancing, sex, visualisation, etc., and 'channelled' by will-power towards particular desired goals, through the use of ritual objects such as charms, coloured candles, and the like. <br /><br />If this was true, if it was <em>really true</em>, that with simple household objects and a few herbs wonderful results could be achieved, because a mysterious power unknown to science resides in the human body (easily activiated by reading a £6.49 book) <em>no one would be fat, and no one would be lonely</em>. We would simply all be calling ourselves SylverFaerieDancer, shutting the curtains, and sticking a needle through a coloured candle, in the full expectation that we'd then be more able to hold off the Chelsea buns or could expect Mr or Ms Right to troll round the corner in the imminent future.<br /><br />Freud, despite many peculiar ideas, had the useful concept of the 'Reality Principle'. It needs rigorous application here.<br /><br />A more sophisticated view might be that of Starhawk, a highly intelligent woman who is true to her Jewish roots in her mixture of practicality and prophetic witness. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley">Aleister Crowley</a> coined the axiom of ritual magic, that "Magic is the Science and Art of causing change to occur in accordance with the Will"; this alerts the reader at once that Crowley was a sub-Neitzschean third-rate nerd, addled on smack and deluding himself that his Dungeons & Dragons hallucinations represented some daemonic psychic reality. Dion Fortune adapted Crowley's dictum to read: 'Magic is the art of changing consciousness at will', which Starhawk has retained and built on. The difference is vital: instead of the quasi-scientific assertion of a hidden, manipulable system behind the manifest universe, Fortune recognised that it is only ourselves which we can change. In books such as <a href="http://www.starhawk.org/writings/dreaming-dark.html">Dreaming the Dark</a>, Starhawk fused this (ancient) insight with political and environmental activism, daring people to change their consciousness to envision radically more just ways of being-in-the-world. If this is magic, it's a long way from the Farrars' concept thereof.<br /><br />The English Hedgewitch <a href="http://www.knibb.org/rae/index.htm">Rae Beth</a>, who is in my opinion one of the only genuine and profound mystics among Wiccan writers, goes further. She recognises that ultimately magic must collapse into prayer, because human beings, and all creation, are radically dependent on the immanent and transcendent divine, in whom we live and move and have our being. She refers to the divine as 'Goddess and God', in classic Wiccan fashion, but in terms with which the 13th century <a href="http://placetoputthings.blogspot.com/2007/09/jnaneshwar.html">Hindu saint Jnaneshwar would have been quite familiar</a>.<br /><br />Though she preserves the usual impedimenta of magic - candles, cords, herbs, and so on - she is quite conscious that all power for transformation ultimately comes from the divine, and that the only magic worth doing is that which aligns us with the divine will for healing, peace, and justice. Otherwise, we would be like fish in an aquarium on the back of a lorry headed north: no matter how hard the fish were to try to swim south, they would never get anywhere. For Rae Beth, magic is ultimately both a discipline of meditation, and a method of deepening mystical communion. Her writings glow with a sense of the divine's unimaginable wisdom. In its inerradicable sense of awe and gratitude, her magic is not self-aggrandisement, but self-abandonment. Thus, ultimately, it is prayer.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />I quote now from Donald Spoto's beautiful <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Silence-Why-We-Pray/dp/0670033472">In Silence: Why We Pray</a></em>, on this subject.<br /><br /><br /><em>Without doubt, petition at prayer is a topic often poorly understood - not only because of magical tendencies, and our attempts to manipulate or bribe God, but also because of a false opposition we tend to presume exists between human and divine intent. That divergence is due to the subtle, unspoken notion that submission to God's will means disaster for us, or at least some unpleasantness...At the root of this misperception is a lack of trust - of faith itself - in God's unimaginable and infinite mercy, and the lingering anxiety that He may not, after all, be Love straight through.<br /><br />This sort of thinking...leads by a direct route to a wholly false idea of prayer. The practical result of such spiritual malfunction is 'prayers' that are not really prayers at all. - not expressions of longing for God and what harmonizes our existence with His, but rather examples of unattractive designs on destiny. Hence we pray to win a lottery, or to be rid of a meddlesome person in our life, or to control someone (by brute power or romantic ardor, for example) or to be spared the ordinary lot of the human condition.</em><br />...<br /><em><br />But prayer is not a means of escape from the ordinary lot of physical and emotional life, which necessarily inolves experiences of dimishment, darkness and dying. In fact prayer is rarely the solution to any problem at all. We do not pray for utilitarian or functional or financial reasons, nor because prayer can produce beneficial results. We pray to know more deeply </em>Whose<em> we are; from that awareness derives everything we genuinely neeed in this life.</em><br /><br />Donald Spoto, <em>In Silence: Why We Pray</em>, pp. 75-6.<br /><br /><br />*Note the Amazon review by 'OakRaven', referring approvingly to the Farrar's 'Spells and How They Work' as a useful guide to 'SpellCraeft' [sic]. Blergh.Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-24718484104243708442007-09-03T06:51:00.000-07:002007-09-09T08:38:23.863-07:00Wild GeeseStill on the 'nature of mind', this beautiful poem by Mary Oliver never fails to blow me away. I first discovered it not long after my (now) ex-husband and I separated, and it pulled me through some very dark times. Not overtly 'spiritual' but stunning all the same.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.springthyme.co.uk/wildgeese/wildgoosesleeve.jpeg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.springthyme.co.uk/wildgeese/wildgoosesleeve.jpeg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />You do not have to be good.<br />You do not have to walk on your knees<br />for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.<br />You only have to let the soft animal of your body<br />love what it loves.<br />Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.<br />Meanwhile the world goes on.<br />Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain<br />are moving across the landscapes,<br />over the prairies and the deep trees,<br />the mountains and the rivers.<br />Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,<br />are heading home again.<br />Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,<br />the world offers itself to your imagination,<br />calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -<br />over and over announcing your place<br />in the family of things.Justinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10234304828891285202noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-33475678299423309552007-09-02T12:18:00.000-07:002007-09-09T08:28:20.219-07:00The Nature of Mind<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZJ-imNVwfDmuHGXNzyH6StjzzWjKOD2FdvaRtKLraq9PtOpMPfw_dQFDLd214XcL-eHMvLKhMWEN_3-ORDxdJrhbx2rfd9iudgo9XU3xZBKn9AMrqnGqC9emnAfDtlnuTX2d3HQeZu3F-/s1600-h/sky1024.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5105707023573118274" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZJ-imNVwfDmuHGXNzyH6StjzzWjKOD2FdvaRtKLraq9PtOpMPfw_dQFDLd214XcL-eHMvLKhMWEN_3-ORDxdJrhbx2rfd9iudgo9XU3xZBKn9AMrqnGqC9emnAfDtlnuTX2d3HQeZu3F-/s320/sky1024.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /> Bo and I have been talking a lot recently about how, as 'post pagans', ritual fits into our lives. I love ritual; sadly it's often the only chance I get to spend any real time out in nature. Feeding the ducks or walking in the woods with my 5 year old son is sacred in its own way, but, not surprisingly, there isn't any time for being able to sit silently and just let nature in. Ritual gives me a sense of connection and direction I just haven't found in any other spiritual practice. (I must put a note in here to say, at the risk of sounding like a terrible old snob, I am talking about <em>good</em> ritual, filled with poetry, music and silence - see Bo's other blog for examples of how this isn't done). Ritual is often connected with pagan practice, and we do still meet whenever possible at the natural turning points of the year (equinoxes, solstices, and the ones in between), and with other members of our little group we still mark the circle by calling quarters, though we no longer call specific deities. I have been questioning that now I no longer label myself as a druid and certainly my daily prayers and practice aren't recognisable as pagan, then where does ritual fit into my life?<br /> <br />Tibetan Buddhist teachings talk of the 'nature of mind'; this is our inner most essence that is not touched by change or death. It is immune to the thoughts, plots, desires and emotion that we experience in our daily lives - the part of the mind Buddists call <em>sem</em>. It is our true essence, what others might think of as our soul or God within us.<br /><br />Buddhists believe that at our death when all our wordly illusions fall away this boundless, 'sky-like' nature of our mind is revealed. However they also believe that under some circumstances glimpses of our nature of mind may be seen. Sogyal Rinpoche describes it "just as clouds can be shifted by a strong gust of wind to reveal the shining sun and wide open sky so some inspiration may uncover for us glimpses of this nature of mind". This is the understanding found in the heart of all religions -that there is a fundamental truth and that this life is an opportunity to recognise it and evolve. What the sufis would describe in terms of the hidden essence, the process of becoming a Lover and allowing the rest of your life to be burnt away by Love. <br /><br /><em>The Direct Path</em> by Andrew Harvey demonstrates exercises and meditations from many different paths and religions, showing the underlying truth that connects them all. He recomends before starting any meditation to read a poem or piece of text that inspires and awakens awareness of God. To me, this is 'blowing the clouds away' to reveal the true nature of mind. Some of the times I have felt this most strongly has been in ritual with Bo. We have learned over the many years that we have been writing and practising ritual what type of poetry, text and music works for us to assist opening to that hidden essence. We have a full-moon ritual once a year during the June/July moon. This year, despite having both learned reems, the ritual, as they are often wont to do, took its own form, and we perfomed the whole thing in silence, with just some beautiful inspirational music to meditate to. It was probably one of the most powerful moments of my life, and there felt absolute connection between me, the summer night sky, the meadow we sat in, and the rabbit that came to sit with us and Bo. To me, that was definitely a moment of experiencing the nature of mind. Obviously Bo will have his own view on this, but I think it is this connection with God, the nature of mind, the hidden essence, that keeps us continuing to have a deep need for (good) ritual, despite being post pagans.<br /><br />Songyal Rinpoche: <em>The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying</em><br />Andrew Harvey: <em>The Direct Path</em>Justinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10234304828891285202noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-46406380855823540952007-08-24T09:38:00.000-07:002007-08-24T10:28:29.385-07:00Azam Ali<a href="http://www.lilasound.com/images/azam.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://www.lilasound.com/images/azam.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Here is Azam Ali of Vas, looking very Mirabai-esque, in a decent updating of traditional Persian music (which is absolutely amazing). She often sings Sufi poetry, in both Urdu and Farsi.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pEeUEntf3g0"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pEeUEntf3g0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><br /><br />Two songs in one video - an Orthodox hymn from the Levant and another, medieval, song which appears on Ali's <em>Portals of Grace,</em> but the name of which I cannot recall.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/NiCOsvqUKHU"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/NiCOsvqUKHU" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-11587725091868201142007-08-23T10:26:00.000-07:002007-08-24T08:05:39.388-07:00Rublev<a href="http://www.uocofusa.org/images/icon_Trinity_Rublev.gif"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.uocofusa.org/images/icon_Trinity_Rublev.gif" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Having quoted Rowan Williams earlier, I reproduce this poem, which means a great deal to me. Its simplicity, as always with Williams' poetry, hides great learning and tremendous psychological and spiritual subtlety. I hope to write something more about it soon.<br /><br />Rublev is, of course, the famous <a href="http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/rublev.html">Andrei Rublev</a>, the greatest master of Russian icon-painting, who was born in the late 14th century. The poem is deeply bound to Rublev's miraculous <a href="http://www.wellsprings.org.uk/rublevs_icon/trinity.htm">icon of the Trinity</a>, which shows the persons of the Trinity as angels seated at a table. It is in the Tretyakov gallery in Moscow.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br /><strong>Rublev</strong>, Rowan Williams, from <em>The Poems of Rowan Williams</em><br /><br />One day, God walked in, pale from the grey steppe,<br />slit-eyed against the wind, and stopped,<br />said, Colour me, breathe your blood into my mouth.<br /><br />I said Here is the blood of all our people,<br />these are their bruises, blue and purple,<br />gold, brown, and pale green wash of death.<br /><br />These (god) are chromatic pains of flesh.<br />I said, I trust I make you blush,<br />O I shall stain you with the scars of birth<br /><br />For ever. I shall root you in the wood,<br />under the sun shall bake you bread <br />of beechmast, never let you forth<br /><br />to the white desert, to the starving sand.<br />But we shall sit and speak around<br />one table, share one food, one earth.Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-35990609455794588362007-08-23T08:43:00.000-07:002007-08-23T08:59:22.448-07:00Dhrupad<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/LxUD1LyAyp0"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/LxUD1LyAyp0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><br /><br />One of my own particular loves is sacred music, and the absence of any such tradition in Paganism was a constant disappointment. Accordingly, I'm going to try to post links to various traditions of sacred music that I particularly love on this blog.<br /><br />The example gven above is of Hindu <em><a href="http://www.dhrupad.info/">dhrupad</a></em> chant, with demonstations of particular ornamental techniques. At first listening, it may sound like a collection of twangs and blips, but in fact it is an immensely subtle - and ancient - form of sacred music, with its origin in samavedic chant. Sir John Tavener has written that he listens to <em>dhrupad</em> more than any other form of sacred music, and the influence of <em>dhrupad</em>'s microtones, sober ecstasy, and immensely long melodic lines is obvious in his own compositions. It's best listened to by candlelight, but be warned that at points the performer, a descendant of the famous Dagar brothers, interrupts himself. First he demonstrates a technique in which the voice is used to imitate the sound of a stringed instrument with uncanny accuracy, and later performs an ecstatic riff which sounds like a kettle boiling over.<br /><br />I suspect the chant given here may be in honour of Krishna (if I am right in picking up the word <em>Nand</em>, a tender name used of Krishna) but wiser readers must enlighten me.Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-50350456742718457332007-08-23T07:17:00.000-07:002007-09-02T13:36:58.056-07:00Mirabai ( c.1498-1573)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWTB7gO8SInwXBrdLCE4RHskJ1Wq0UJ9Z08oHejApBa83AYFjQ0jGaWGHkROLxYBLmhSI8xrwCS4mdJJIOEXPfmif0eqSwQMj_M0SKHEKt0WVMGQxqR_9Zz18rO01Tc4rPbQURRAO_yBYf/s1600-h/mirabai.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5101906823624715570" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWTB7gO8SInwXBrdLCE4RHskJ1Wq0UJ9Z08oHejApBa83AYFjQ0jGaWGHkROLxYBLmhSI8xrwCS4mdJJIOEXPfmif0eqSwQMj_M0SKHEKt0WVMGQxqR_9Zz18rO01Tc4rPbQURRAO_yBYf/s320/mirabai.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Mirabai is the most reknowned poet/saint of India. She was reluctantly married at eighteen to the Prince of Mewar. Her husband died soon into their marriage leaving her free to dedicate herself to Krishna; this for Mira was her life purpose. She spent time in public temples (usually only visted by those from lower castes) and sang, danced and embraced with untouchables. In order to escape from her murderous in-laws, Mira, now in her early thirties, renounced her title and fled. She spent the rest of her life living in places sacred to Krishna, dedicating her poetry to him. She spoke out on the injustices of religion, politics and the caste system and was clearly a formidable intellect. Her poetry is often humourous, erotic and ecstatic, reflecting the estatic union she achieved with her God. Mira would often dance with and for Krishna, like many transcendant mystics. She spent the last few years of her life attending the destitute near the Ranchorji temple.<br /><br />The way Mira addresses Krishna is reminiscent of how many Sufi poets address Allah, with the tenderness and intimacy used to speak to a lover:<br /><br /><div> </div><div align="left"><strong>I Get Dizzy</strong><br /><br /></div><div align="left">I can't forget about love </div><div align="left">for more than two seconds</div><div align="left">I get dizzy if I think about anything</div><div align="left">but the way you pant</div><div align="left">in my ear.</div><div align="center"> </div><div align="center"> </div><div align="left"><br /><br /><strong>I Want You To Have This</strong><br /></div><div align="left"><br />I want you to have this,</div><div align="left">all the beauty in my eyes,</div><div align="left">and the grace of my mouth</div><div align="left">all the splendour of my strength,</div><div align="left">all the wonder of the musk parts of my body,</div><div align="left">for are we not talking about real love,</div><div align="left">real love?</div><div align="center"> </div><div align="center"> </div><div align="center"> </div>Justinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10234304828891285202noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-91419067129851138212007-08-22T15:31:00.000-07:002007-08-23T03:01:40.900-07:00Simone Weil<a href="http://www.cacradicalgrace.org/conferences/psca/pics/cloud_of_witnesses/med/15%20-%20simone%20weil.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://www.cacradicalgrace.org/conferences/psca/pics/cloud_of_witnesses/med/15%20-%20simone%20weil.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />A wise insight from the extraordinary French mystic Simone Weil. She died of anorexia, but that is a bald way to describe a death in which others have found, with whatever justification, deep meaning. Rowan Williams wrote, in a poem in her voice, 'at least I can be light and hungry, hollowing my guts / till I'm a bone the sentenced god can whistle through.'<br /><br />I have always loved the following bleak, profound statement of hers: <em>The extreme affliction which overtakes human beings does not create human misery, it merely reveals it.</em><br /><br />But that is not the axiom which I intended to quote. Instead, it was this which caught my attention:<br /><br /><em>Each religion is alone true, that is to say, that at the moment we are thinking of it we must bring as much attention to bear on it as if there were nothing else...A "synthesis" of religion implies a lower quality of attention.</em>Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-27521235376232955462007-08-22T04:45:00.000-07:002007-08-23T02:59:21.108-07:00Grapes ripen smiling at each other<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD6Jgma5_D4Y4mAEpsTYNtjMF57pGjktZteHKY8plNQSZIWsREKUKkpmriDkVVVMcivdNLBrTqZ6sL0mmwSWjv-pTMbmh9g3KXFpswWhHs3kZ4rtUVVrG5eW30C2dpG41kY577jsLzRdsM/s1600-h/grapes_purple_leaves.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5101640544242298098" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD6Jgma5_D4Y4mAEpsTYNtjMF57pGjktZteHKY8plNQSZIWsREKUKkpmriDkVVVMcivdNLBrTqZ6sL0mmwSWjv-pTMbmh9g3KXFpswWhHs3kZ4rtUVVrG5eW30C2dpG41kY577jsLzRdsM/s320/grapes_purple_leaves.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><em>The tart and hearty grapes, destined to ripen,<br />will at last become one in heart<br />by the breath of the masters of heart.<br />They will grow steadily to grapehood,<br />shedding duality and malice and strife.<br />Till in maturity, they rend their skins,<br />and become the mellow wine of union.</em><br /><br />- Rumi<br /><br />I love this. I am a 'tart and hearty grape', but sufism has began to ripen me. I have studied sufism for about a year now, and though I don't think I'll convert, I have found my daily prayer and meditation becoming infused with sufi practice. I feel I am on dodgy ground here, because I don't want to find myself shopping in the New Age spiritual supermarket, you know that pick'n'mix attitude to religion where you chose the bits that suit you, ignore the bits that don't, and end up with something truly meaningless. In sufism I have found something that was never apparent for me in Druidry, and that is submission to God in Love; and I think now that is what I will continue to search for in my own practice and whatever I happen to be studying at the time. Kabir Helminski says "it is not necessary to replace one religion or no religion with another, but to purify ourselves and our religion with Love".<br /><br />I want to enter the fire of Love and become one with the fire. For me, at the moment, I feel this has more depth of meaning than searching for a convenient hook on which to hang my spirituality. We shall see ...Justinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10234304828891285202noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-2566430102872489042007-08-22T02:54:00.000-07:002007-08-22T03:07:02.217-07:00To the Creator through the Creation<a href="http://www.stmarymagdalenes.org/iconkateri.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://www.stmarymagdalenes.org/iconkateri.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br />At some point I need to sit down and write about where I am spiritually, and where I feel I'm headed. This blog has been rather strong on Orthodoxy lately, and there are other strands, especially Buddhism, which I need to speak about.<br /><br />But here is an essay by Bishop Kallistos Ware, the Orthodox Bishop of Britain, which Yvonne has drawn my attention to. It's called <a href="http://incommunion.org/articles/previous-issues/older-issues/through-creation-to-the-creator">'Through Creation to the Creator'</a>, and it is very beautiful.Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-60378304109477743222007-08-21T09:19:00.000-07:002007-08-21T10:39:21.995-07:00Litanie a la Vierge Noire<a href="http://shell.amigo.net/~ma3/Clermont%20CU%20Web.gif"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://shell.amigo.net/~ma3/Clermont%20CU%20Web.gif" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br />Justine told me yesterday that she had visited the Cathedral at Canterbury with her son, my godson. It was somewhere I used to pray a lot when I was at school. I'll leave her to write about it if she wishes, but thinking about that wonderful place brought this prayer forth from me. It's not what I say every time I kneel before that beautiful statue of the Black Virgin in the darkened, underground crypt, but it is the kind of imagery I use. I used to spend hours there, and I miss it.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Blessed Lady<br />And hidden treasure,<br /><br />Black brightness<br />And star-enwoven bower,<br /><br />Fragrance of myrrh<br />and dew of the sea,<br /><br />From all who suffer,<br />Hide not thy face.<br /><br />Most holy Mother,<br />gentled by candles<br />and soft smoke of prayers,<br />Here in this darkness,<br /><br />Hide not thy face.Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-22020571176381260982007-08-21T08:46:00.000-07:002007-08-21T08:53:08.349-07:00Chant<a href="http://www.trinitystores.com/.php/catalog.php4?image=35"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://www.trinitystores.com/.php/catalog.php4?image=35" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><em><strong>Become All Flame - The Desert Fathers</strong><br /><br />Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, 'Abba as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?' then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become all flame.' </em><br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Chant from a Georgian Monastery. Worth sticking with this...<br /><br /><object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FJy_WUrKLEk"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FJy_WUrKLEk" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><br /><br /><br />And with female voices:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xtEtNpuohLs"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xtEtNpuohLs" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-54702483479163161622007-08-20T13:12:00.000-07:002007-08-20T13:23:11.635-07:00Regeneration<a href="http://www.cornwall365.co.uk/cornwall_image/1,Woodland-Scene,2_IMG_0227_310706.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://www.cornwall365.co.uk/cornwall_image/1,Woodland-Scene,2_IMG_0227_310706.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br />A deeply mysterious and mystical poem, this. Vaughan had a twin brother Thomas, an alchemist; both attended Jesus College, Oxford, where I write. I recently had the priviledge of handling <a href="http://landofspices.blogspot.com/2007/03/donnes-signature.html">some of Thomas Vaughan's own books</a>.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Regeneration</strong>, Henry Vaughan (1622-1695).<br /> <br />1.<br /><br />Award, and still in bonds, one day<br />I stole abroad,<br />It was high-spring, and all the way<br />Primros'd, and hung with shade;<br />Yet, was it frost within,<br />And surly winds<br />Blasted my infant buds, and sin<br />Like clouds eclips'd my mind.<br /><br />2.<br /><br />Storm'd thus; I straight perceiv'd my spring<br />Mere stage, and show,<br />My walk a monstrous, mountain's thing<br />Rough-cast with rocks, and snow;<br />And as a pilgrim's eye<br />Far from relief,<br />Measures the melancholy sky<br />Then drops, and rains for grief,<br /><br />3.<br /><br />So sigh'd I upwards still, at last<br />'Twixt steps, and falls<br />I reach'd the pinnacle, where plac'd<br />I found a pair of scales,<br />I took them up and laid<br />In th'one late pains,<br />The other smoke, and pleasures weigh'd<br />But prov'd the heavier grains;<br /><br />4.<br /><br />With that, some cried, Away; straight I<br />Obey'd, and led<br />Full east, a fair, fresh field could spy<br />Some call'd it Jacob's Bed;<br />A virgin-soil, which no<br />Rude feet ere trod,<br />Where (since he slept there,) only go<br />Prophets, and friends of God.<br /><br />5.<br /><br />Here, I repos'd; but scarce well set,<br />A grove descried<br />Of stately height, whose branches met<br />And mixed on every side;<br />I entered, and once in<br />(Amaz'd to see't,)<br />Found all was chang'd, and a new spring<br />Did all my senses greet;<br /><br />6.<br /><br />The unthrift sun shot vital gold<br />A thousand pieces,<br />And heaven its azure did unfold<br />Checker'd with snowy fleeces,<br />The air was all in spice<br />And every bush<br />A garland wore; thus fed my eyes<br />But all the ear lay hush.<br /><br />7.<br /><br />Only a little fountain lent<br />Some use for ears,<br />And on the dumb shades language spent<br />The music of her tears;<br />I drew her near, and found<br />The cistern full<br />Of diverse stones, some bright, and round<br />Others ill'shap'd, and dull.<br /><br />8.<br /><br />The first (pray mark,) as quick as light<br />Danc'd through the flood,<br />But, th'last more heavy than the night<br />Nail'd to the center stood;<br />I wonder'd much, but tir'd<br />At last with thought,<br />My restless eye that still desir'd<br />As strange an object brought;<br /><br />9.<br /><br />It was a bank of flowers, where I descried<br />(Though 'twas mid'day,)<br />Some fast asleep, others broad-eyed<br />And taking in the ray,<br />Here musing long, I heard<br />A rushing wind<br />Which still increas'd, but whence it stirr'd<br />No where I could not find;<br /><br />10.<br /><br />I turn'd me round, and to each shade<br />Dispatch'd an eye,<br />To see, if any leaf had made<br />Least motion, or reply,<br />But while I listening sought<br />My mind to ease<br />By knowing, where 'twas, or where not,<br />It whispered: Where I please.<br />Lord, then said I, On me one breath,<br />And let me die before my death!Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-74932920156396451082007-08-18T09:17:00.000-07:002007-08-18T09:23:15.315-07:00Orpheusby Rainer Maria Rilke, from <em>Die Sonette an Orpheus</em>, translated by Don Patterson, <em>Orpheus</em> (Faber and , 2006).<br /><br />Silent comrade of the distances,<br />Know that space dilates with your own breath;<br />ring out, as a bell into the Earth<br />from the dark rafters of its own high place -<br /><br />then watch what feeds on you grown strong again.<br />Learn the transformations through and through:<br />what in your life has most tormented you?<br />If the water's sour, turn it into wine.<br /><br />Our sense cannot fathom this night, so<br />be the meaning of their strange encounter;<br />at their crossing, be the radiant centre.<br /><br />And should the world forget your name<br />say this to the still earth: <em>I flow</em>.<br />Say this to the quick stream: <em>I am</em>.Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-77166270705344091812007-08-18T04:45:00.001-07:002007-08-18T04:50:53.958-07:00<a href="http://www.fayoum.gov.eg/face.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://www.fayoum.gov.eg/face.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />How one walks through the world, the endless small adjustments of balance, is affected by the shifting weights of beautiful things.<br /><br />- Elaine ScarryBohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-22129676122882184792007-08-18T04:38:00.000-07:002007-08-18T04:40:24.310-07:00Leafby Jacob Polley, from <em>Little Gods</em> (Picador, 2006)<br /><br />Vessel of water, vessel of wind;<br /> old yellow eye<br />lost in the fall, lost in the mind<br /> where the other leaves lie<br />as leaf by leaf the trees go blind.Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-68187128282633471692007-08-17T08:14:00.001-07:002007-08-17T08:14:50.076-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://adbusters.org/the_magazine/images/stories/50/art-insanity_432x429.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px;" src="http://adbusters.org/the_magazine/images/stories/50/art-insanity_432x429.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Andy Goldsworthy, <span style="font-style:italic;">Yellow elm leaves laid over a rock in low water </span>(1991)Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913983186432092994.post-80234516308445940412007-08-17T08:04:00.000-07:002007-08-17T08:07:30.708-07:00OWL<a href="http://www.ridinglights.org/images/people/alice_oswald.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://www.ridinglights.org/images/people/alice_oswald.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br />by Alice Oswald, from <em>Woods, etc.</em><br /><br />last night at the joint of dawn,<br />an owl’s call opened the darkness<br /><br />miles away, more than a world beyond this room<br /><br />and immediately I was in the woods again,<br />poised, seeing my eyes seen,<br />hearing my listening heard<br /><br />under a huge tree improvised by fear<br /><br />dead brush falling then a star<br />straight through to God<br />founded and fixed the wood<br /><br />then out, until it touched the town’s lights,<br />an owl elsewhere swelled and questioned<br />twice, like you light lean and strike<br />two matches in the wind.Bohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333815636018847583noreply@blogger.com0