Reaping
Yesterday I caught my first taste of autumn, as red leaves rolled under my bicycle tire and a chill in the evening air raised bumps on my bare arms.
The change always comes so quickly, doesn't it? One moment you're sure you're just going to die from the heat and intensity of the sun, and the next, everything *does* start dying...
It's good to be back here this morning, y'all. It's quiet. And I've found that this is precisely the place I want to come when it's a quiet morning, for my thoughts turn to devotion and nature and a circle of friends who share those inclinations...
It hasn't been too quiet around here of late, of course. My Boy has decoded my stealth and where I thought I was going to be able to wake at 7 each day for an hour of writing before the house was up, he's determined to get up with me, which of course erases any hope of writing. But today, the boys are on a Manly-Man Trip up to the woods of Vermont, and this mama has elected to stay home and celebrate the quiet.
We were able to get help for our boy, thankfully... it's Anxiety, with a big A. With a name and a code we'll have an easier time addressing it; additionally, the new gluten-free diet is beginning to reap wonders. Hope has returned to our little household, and hope is good!
But now it's time for me, for turning inward a bit for some reflection. I've been reading quite a lot this summer about the history of England, in an attempt to really understand something of how the islands of Britain and Ireland unfolded from the receding of the ice to their present configuration. This has included a selection of fairy-lore from England, Ireland and Cornwall; a rather good book on 1066; a book on the genetic background of the Saxons, Vikings and Celts by Brian Sykes; "Daily Life of the Pagan Celts" by Joan Alcock and various documentaries about the English monarchy. But by far my most joyous read this summer has been Berresford-Ellis' "The Druids".
I think I avoided the Ellis for a long while because, well, I didn't want to read more fluff and conjecture about Teh Druidz... but this is definitely *not* that fluff, and actually it's opened an unexpected doorway for me.
I recall this time two years ago standing at a Northern California hilltop with freshly picked blackberries struggling with my offering to Teh Godz. I knew I was having such trouble because, in spite of my relations with Brigid and my history with her, I still felt a psychological distance because I didn't understand fully who she *is* or what my relationship with her *should* be, in the context of my life. All I knew was there was a calling between us, and with others, and desperately wanting to honor that by making offerings and building relationships.
But anything out of my mouth felt more like a mumbled guess than a real communion... the words didn't feel right, the mood felt "off" and it was terribly awkward. It's sat with me like that for a while now in not a very comfortable way but, aha! Finally, something struck me about the nature of the gods in general. As Berresford-Ellis writes it, the gods were/are not understood so much as the creators of life or the origin of it; rather they are simply THE ancestors, the super-natural heroes and heroines of creation itself.
In other words, I've finally had a moment where my upbringing nurtured by the concept of "and then there was the Word', of inherent separateness, tweaked itself into something resembling a more "codependent arising", an inseparable connection between the birth of Place and of Us, together.
Creation is life, after all; and it is continuously rising, resting and falling in all its guises. And I've always understood it thus, since I was small. And it fits in the Zen understanding, the Buddhist understanding, certainly the 'Pagan' understanding of How Things Are. Yet oddly enough, the One True Father God mythos has remained steady enough in my mind as to influence how I have understood It (*Existence*) intellectually, even though my actual experiences have informed me differently. And its influence in my life surprised me, that it could affect me still to such a degree that I could not even approach Brigid on a hilltop and make an offering to her without feeling something of a silly imitation of Father O'Reilly offering Mass in the church of my youth.
So now I eye the black-and-white photos on my ancestor altar, and my little icon of Brigid (hee, actually it's a Princess Leia action-figure circa 1982 that my son gave me in a serious moment), and my heart sings a new understanding of familiarity:
Beloved.
The change always comes so quickly, doesn't it? One moment you're sure you're just going to die from the heat and intensity of the sun, and the next, everything *does* start dying...
It's good to be back here this morning, y'all. It's quiet. And I've found that this is precisely the place I want to come when it's a quiet morning, for my thoughts turn to devotion and nature and a circle of friends who share those inclinations...
It hasn't been too quiet around here of late, of course. My Boy has decoded my stealth and where I thought I was going to be able to wake at 7 each day for an hour of writing before the house was up, he's determined to get up with me, which of course erases any hope of writing. But today, the boys are on a Manly-Man Trip up to the woods of Vermont, and this mama has elected to stay home and celebrate the quiet.
We were able to get help for our boy, thankfully... it's Anxiety, with a big A. With a name and a code we'll have an easier time addressing it; additionally, the new gluten-free diet is beginning to reap wonders. Hope has returned to our little household, and hope is good!
But now it's time for me, for turning inward a bit for some reflection. I've been reading quite a lot this summer about the history of England, in an attempt to really understand something of how the islands of Britain and Ireland unfolded from the receding of the ice to their present configuration. This has included a selection of fairy-lore from England, Ireland and Cornwall; a rather good book on 1066; a book on the genetic background of the Saxons, Vikings and Celts by Brian Sykes; "Daily Life of the Pagan Celts" by Joan Alcock and various documentaries about the English monarchy. But by far my most joyous read this summer has been Berresford-Ellis' "The Druids".
I think I avoided the Ellis for a long while because, well, I didn't want to read more fluff and conjecture about Teh Druidz... but this is definitely *not* that fluff, and actually it's opened an unexpected doorway for me.
I recall this time two years ago standing at a Northern California hilltop with freshly picked blackberries struggling with my offering to Teh Godz. I knew I was having such trouble because, in spite of my relations with Brigid and my history with her, I still felt a psychological distance because I didn't understand fully who she *is* or what my relationship with her *should* be, in the context of my life. All I knew was there was a calling between us, and with others, and desperately wanting to honor that by making offerings and building relationships.
But anything out of my mouth felt more like a mumbled guess than a real communion... the words didn't feel right, the mood felt "off" and it was terribly awkward. It's sat with me like that for a while now in not a very comfortable way but, aha! Finally, something struck me about the nature of the gods in general. As Berresford-Ellis writes it, the gods were/are not understood so much as the creators of life or the origin of it; rather they are simply THE ancestors, the super-natural heroes and heroines of creation itself.
In other words, I've finally had a moment where my upbringing nurtured by the concept of "and then there was the Word', of inherent separateness, tweaked itself into something resembling a more "codependent arising", an inseparable connection between the birth of Place and of Us, together.
Creation is life, after all; and it is continuously rising, resting and falling in all its guises. And I've always understood it thus, since I was small. And it fits in the Zen understanding, the Buddhist understanding, certainly the 'Pagan' understanding of How Things Are. Yet oddly enough, the One True Father God mythos has remained steady enough in my mind as to influence how I have understood It (*Existence*) intellectually, even though my actual experiences have informed me differently. And its influence in my life surprised me, that it could affect me still to such a degree that I could not even approach Brigid on a hilltop and make an offering to her without feeling something of a silly imitation of Father O'Reilly offering Mass in the church of my youth.
So now I eye the black-and-white photos on my ancestor altar, and my little icon of Brigid (hee, actually it's a Princess Leia action-figure circa 1982 that my son gave me in a serious moment), and my heart sings a new understanding of familiarity:
Beloved.