Contemplative Inquiry

April 8, 2015

ABOUT THE ORAN MOR (GREAT SONG)

In my last post, I presented my Amazon review of Jason Kirkey’s The Salmon in the Spring prefaced by his view of the Oran Mor (Great Song), itself somewhat indebted to earlier work by Frank MacKeown. This followed on from my recent reading of a post involving the Oran Mor by Alison Leigh Lily at Q&A: What is the Song of the World, which I picked up through a reblog on Joanna van der Hoeven’s Down the Forest Path, and reblogged myself on https://contemplativeinquiry.wordpress.com/2015/4/2/ . Kirkey essentially sees the Oran Mor as something like the Divine Ground, or the Tao of Chinese mystical philosophy, something that includes all beings whether they be mountains, salmon, humans, midges, wolfhounds, gods or sidhe.

Soon after I read the book I discussed my take on the Oran Mor in a local radio interview, which can now be found in the OBOD website on http://www.druidry.org/druid-way/other-paths/druidry-dharma/. Those interested can scroll down to AUDIO Druidry & Buddhism Stroud FM 141210.mp3. At that time I was more involved in Buddhism than I am now, but generally I still stand by the things I said.

Concerning the Oran Mor, I focused on implications for the personal spiritual path rather than wider issues of cosmology. I suggested that we are invited to do three things:

Learn to hear the Song. This is another way of talking about re-enchantment, the beginning of the conscious journey in paths like Druidry.
Find our unique note, or sound, and sing it. Whilst each note is meaningless, indeed impossible, without the Song, the Song is itself dependent on our individual contributions.
Learn to hear the silence behind and within the Song. For without that the Song, in our perception can become just a noise, even if a beautiful one. To awakening to a full awareness and appreciation of the Song, we need the dimension of silence and stillness as well as sound.

I have noticed one strange thing. When interviewed for Stroud FM (and about half-way through the piece), I confidently attributed these last sentiments to Jason Kirkey. But I’ve looked through the book again and I can’t find them there. So it seems to have been my way of inwardly digesting his book and in a sense the emergence of my own note in relation to the Oran Mor itself as concept, image and inspiration. Still, a mystery, and quite startling when I listened to the interview and then went through the text again. My self-image is one of being careful with attributions and acknowledgements. Perhaps that’s why I felt such a strong energetic pull when the Oran Mor was brought to my attention again.

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April 5, 2015

BOOK REVIEW: THE SALMON IN THE SPRING

This is the review of Jason Kirkey’s Salmon in the Spring which I wrote for Amazon in 2010 (and for Touchstone, the OBOD in-house journal). It was the book that introduced me to The Great Song/Oran Mor – earlier explored in Frank MacEowen’s The Celtic Way of Seeing and The Mist-Filled Path. MacEowen wrote the foreword for Kirkey’s book. Kirkey revises the traditional sense (in the Christian centuries) of the Oran Mor as a name for God. He says, rather, that “immanent in material processes is the implicate order of the cosmos: spirit, divine ground, Oran Mor (Great Song)”. I will say more about what this has meant both experientially and conceptually for me in future posts.

The review was a 5 star review and I strongly recommend it, as a book that manages both to be clear and to accommodate complexity.

“At the age of 12, Jason Kirkey had one of those ‘light bulb’ moments that can set a direction for life. A relative told him ‘nature does not require our belief. It is right there for us to experience’. Jason is from Massachusetts, of partly Irish ancestry and over time his new found awareness lead him to discover the ‘interplay of nature, story and ancestry’ as a practitioner of ‘Irish Earth-based spirituality and shamanism’.

“Jason presents personal story a thread within a larger, collective story; one in which spiritual traditions are moving through a process of re-imagination – of integration into the new story of the 21st century’. He describes going through a ‘dark night of the soul’ when an over-identified ‘attachment’ to his own tradition became narrow and constraining. He found resolution through the practice of sitting meditation and study at the Naropa University in Colorado. It wasn’t a matter of moving from one tradition to another, but of integrating the qualities of both.

“The Salmon in the Spring explores traditional stories – including the second battle of Maigh Tuireadh, Connla’s Well and the Song of the Silver Branch – in a process of creative revisioning for Celtic spirituality. It is a pioneer’s book and I recommend it to anyone interested in the possible futures of Celtic spirituality, Druidry and other paths in which the old stories are coming alive in new ways.”

Jason Kirkey The Salmon in the Spring: the Ecology of Celtic Spirituality San Francisco, CA, USA: Hiraeth Press, 2009

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April 4, 2015

KABIR: WATER IN THE HOLY POOLS

There is nothing but water in the holy pools.

I know, I have been swimming in them.

All the gods sculpted of wood and ivory can’t say a word.

I know, I have been crying out to them.

The Sacred Books of the East are nothing but words.

I looked through their covers one day sideways.

What Kabir talks of is only what he has lived through.

If you have not lived through something, it is not true.

Kabir Ecstatic poems Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1992 (The English translations are free enough for Robert Bly to call them ‘versions by Robert Bly’. There is an earlier set of translations published by MacMillan in New York in 1915 by Rabindranath Tagore assisted by Evelyn Underhill under the title Songs of Kabir. Whilst I don’t follow Bly in calling the English of the earlier work “useless”, I do find that Bly’s interpretation has more passion and power. The Bly work includes an insightful afterword Kabir and the transcendental Bly by John Stratton Hawley).

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April 2, 2015

REBLOG: Q AND A: WHAT IS THE SONG OF THE WORLD?

This is a reblog of a reblog, with Joanna van der Hoeven’s Down the Forest Path blog as the intermediary. I too find the Oran Mor a very resonant image. Great that’s it’s getting more attention.

Down the Forest Path

A brilliant blog post by Alison Leigh Lily, which has sparked something very special in my path through the forest!

The latest issue of the Alternative Religions Educational Network’s newsletter just came out this past weekend, and I was excited to be included as one of those featured in an interview with the editor, Christopher Blackwell. We chatted about my background being raised in a liberal Catholic tradition flavored by my father’s Irish heritage, and how that shaped my spiritual journey towards Druidry as I live and practice it today. It was great fun! One thing we touched on was the Oran Mór, or the Song of the World. Chris asked me to talk a little bit more about how this cosmological concept is reflected in my Druidry. You can read the excerpt here, or check out the whole interview.

via Q&A: What is the Song of the World?.

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March 30, 2015

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: STEPHEN BATCHELOR

Stephen Batchelor offers some thoughts on immediate experience and concepts of mind, soul and reincarnation.

“I had noticed that when listening to the song of a bird, it was impossible to differentiate the cooing of the wood pigeon, on the one hand, and the hearing of it, on the other. Conceptually the two were different, but, in immediate experience, I could not have one without the other, I could not draw a line between them, I could not say where the bird song stopped and my hearing of it began. There was just a single, primary, undifferentiated me-hearing-the-birdsong.

“Being-in-the-world means that I am inextricably linked into the fabric of this fluid, indivisible, and contingent reality I share with others. There is no room for a disembodied mind or soul, however subtle, to float free of this condition, to contemplate it from a hypothetical Archimedean point outside. Without such a mind or soul, it is hard to conceive of anything that will go into another life once this one comes to an end”.

Stephen Batchelor, 2011, Confession of a Buddhist atheist New York: Spiegel & Grau

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March 27, 2015

HEAR THE STORYTELLER, NOT JUST THE STORY

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March 24, 2015

POEM: THE RAILWAY CHILDREN

When we climbed the slopes of the cutting

We were eye-level with the white cups

Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.

Like lovely freehand they curved for miles

East and miles west beyond us, sagging

Under their burden of swallows.

We were small and thought we knew nothing

Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires

In the shiny pouches of raindrops,

Each one seeded full with the light

Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves

So infinitesimally scaled

We could stream through the eye of a needle.

From Seamus Heaney, Station Island London & Boston: Faber & Faber, 1984

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March 21, 2015

AT TATE LIVERPOOL

I spent time at the Tate Liverpool yesterday. Currently there is an exhibition of work by Leonora Carrington the mystical surrealist and feminist. It was almost too much to take in. For me the work, among other things, aptly illustrated one of her own comments.

“One cannot understand reality. Paradigms are a transitory convention for man. It is to our advantage to believe that we know, but it is obvious that absolute truths that were accepted in the times of Newton and Euclid do not exist.

“Sorcerers and alchemists know about animal, vegetable and mineral bodies. To hack away the crust of what we have forgotten and rediscover things we knew before we were born.

“There are things that are not sayable. That’s why we have art.”

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March 18, 2015

EVENTS UPDATE

The Contemplative Druid residential retreat (17-19 April 2015). at Anybody’s Barn, Birchwood Hall, Storridge, Nr. Malvern, Worcestershire WR13 5EZ. is now fully booked. However anyone interested should still contact us as there is a waiting list and there is the possibility of future residential retreats.

Looking ahead, we will have a presence at Druid Camp (29 July – 2 August 2015) and we will also be holding an open Contemplative Day in Stroud on 3 October 2015, from 10.30 a.m. – 4.30 p.m. at the St. Luke’s Medical Centre, 53 Caincross Road, Stroud Gloucestershire GL5 4EX. This will be facilitated by James Nichol, Nimue Brown and Elaine Knight. We will work with a maximum of twelve other participants, continue to build on the working methods we have developed in our local group over the last three years..

Contact grovelight@hotmail.co.uk for further information or to make a booking.

See http://contemplativedruidevents.tumblr.com for fuller events information, including the Stroud day on 3 October. For Druid Camp information see www.druidcamp.org.uk and www.facebook.com/groups/druidcamp/

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March 16, 2015

POEM: A POSTCARD FROM ICELAND

As I dipped to test the stream some yards away

From a hot spring, I could hear nothing

But the whole mud-slick muttering and boiling.

And then my guide behind me saying,

‘Lukewarm. And I think you’d want to know

That luk was an old Icelandic word for hand.’

And you would want to know (but you know already)

How usual that waft and pressure felt

When the inner palm of water found my palm.

In Seamus Heaney, The Haw Lantern London: Faber & Faber, 1987

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