TREE AT MY WINDOW PICTURES
The cup I talked about in my previous post was made by Jitka Palmer – website http://www.jitkapalmer.co.uk/
Here are some images of the cup:
Contemplative Inquiry
This blog is about contemplative inquiry
December 4, 2014
TREE AT MY WINDOW
Last Saturday I went with my partner Elaine to an art trail in Bristol – a weekend event in which artists open their homes to the public to look at their work, and special street maps are made to help us find our way around. In one of life’s small magic moments, Elaine discovered a tea cup whose imagery really drew her, by a ceramicist (also sculptor and painter) we were visiting, and I bought it for her. It illustrates a poem by Robert Frost – Tree at My Window.
Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But never let there be curtain drawn
Between you and me.
Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all of your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.
But, tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.
That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.
December 3, 2014
ROSA DAVIS: A VISION
Rosa Davis is a member of our local contemplative Druid group and a mentor for Bards and Ovates in OBOD (the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids). She is also an artist who works in felt, and she has agreed to let me post one of her images. For our group, the contemplative path very much includes contemplative arts. For many of us it also includes subtle energetics and its poetry.
December 2, 2014
KABIR & BHAKTI: THE ECSTASY OF DEVOTION
A weaver by trade but a poet-singer by calling, Kabir lived in fifteenth century India. His philosophy incorporated various beliefs of both Muslims and Hindus and later became one of the major influences behind Sikhism. Like Rumi, further to the west and generations earlier, he followed a devotional and ecstatic path, and like Rumi he was a bridge builder between traditions. The poem below expresses the spirit in his spirituality.
Have you heard the music that no fingers enter into?
Far inside the house
Entangled music – what is the sense of leaving your house?
Suppose you scrub your ethical skin until it shines,
But inside there is no music,
Then what?
Mohammed’s son pores over words, and points out this
And that,
But if his chest is not soaked with love,
Then what?
The Yogi comes along in his famous orange.
But if inside he is colourless, then what?
Kabir says: Every instant that the sun us risen,
If I stand in the temple, or on a balcony,
In the hot fields, or in a walled garden,
My own Lord is making love with me.
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 – now republished by in the BiblioBazaar Reproduction Series. 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).
December 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW: THE AWEN ALONE
The Awen Alone, by Joanna van der Hoeven, is an economically and elegantly written introduction to modern Druidry for readers with a serious interest in practising. I like the use of awen, Druidry’s subtle magic, as the key word in the title. In the way that the author uses the term, it gets us straight to the point of why we practice.
The introduction skilfully builds rapport by bringing us into the rhythm of a normal working day. Only it isn’t quite everybody’s normal – it’s a reframed normal for a re-enchanted world and an intentional relationship with it. Joanna starts, in a matter-of-fact way, with a “Hail to the Day and Days Sons; farewell to Night and her Daughters” and ends with “Farewell to Day and Day’s Sons; hail to night and her Daughters”. In between, there are grumbles about the price of ethical toiletries alongside an affirmation of their value; a commitment to emotional intelligence amidst the stresses of working life, a noticing of what is going on in the landscape whilst travelling and in the garden at home, a soft threshold prayer to Nemetona, Lady of the Sanctuary, and a period of formal meditation.
The messages I would get from this as an inquiring reader are the intended ones. Druid life is shown to be the same life as anyone else’s, albeit lived with a distinctive quality of wonder and attention. Moreover, it is entirely possible to live such a life without being part of a Druid community.
The book is carefully structured into three parts.
- The first is about the basics of Druidry. It covers current views of Druid history; looks at what Druidry is; investigates the meaning of the key term awen (more about this below); explores deity in Druidry (some modern Druids are theistic and others not); affirms connection to ancestors (of blood, place and tradition); and describes the eightfold wheel of the year and its celebration.
- The second is about Druidry in practice. This looks at the roles of meditation, prayer, inner pathworking (guided meditation), outer pathworking (walking with awareness outside); altar creation and sacred space; seasonal rituals and other work connected with the seasons; and craft names.
- The third is about creating one’s own path and includes chapters on designing Druid ritual, daily practice and a more general consideration of “walking your own path”.
All of this work is well presented and gives a good overview of the way many Druids today think and practice. For me however, the really distinctive feature of this book is its discussion of awen. Awen is classically thought of as creative inspiration in a sudden, lightning flash form. But Joanna links awen, as inspiration, to the breath. The air we breathe is all around us. We take it in and give it back, a little bit changed. “The inspired Druid exhales the inspiration gained”. Awen is right here, in the web of what is, inherently present in the communication and relationships which make our interdependence work, enabling our creative choices and their results. For Joanna, awen is therefore linked also to our responsibility for personal awakening:
“Awake to our own energy and stretching out towards the energy of nature around us, we begin to see just what awen is. It is the opening of oneself … to see into the nature of all beings and indeed to see into the nature of simply being. … For awen to exist there must be relationship. We cannot be inspired unless we are open and we cannot be open unless we are in relationship, whether that is with the thunder, the blackbird or a god”. Joanna develops this theme further, seeing a cyclical process of giving and receiving at the heart of awen as we release ourselves “into the flow”. Ultimately we can be so attuned to “the threads that connect us all” that we can be inspired all the time – moving into the “bigger picture” of a compassionate and integrated life.
With this view of awen, at least as I understand it from reading the book, Joanna integrates her ‘Zen’ more fully into her Druidry. In the original Zen Druidry book, ground breaking as it was, I still had a sense of their being on parallel tracks. Thus The Awen Alone, although an introductory book, also offers an evolutionary step in the ‘Zen’ iteration of Druidry. For this reason it has importance not only to the inquirer and the newcomer, but to also to any Druid practitioner interested in the questions raised by this valuable work. Highly recommended.
Joanna van der Hoeven (2014) The Awen alone: walking the path of the solitary Druid Winchester: Moon Books
November 28, 2014
OVERNIGHT STAY WITH K’O-KUNG
For me, this poem by Chia Tao is a contrasting twin to Poems Just Dotted Down in my last blog. On the one hand it is more self-conscious and struggling, and on the other more poignant and touching with the human face revealed. I like to read them together.
For ten li
I’ve been searching for the hidden temple
Up branches
Of the cold stream.
Monks sit Ch’an,
One with the snowy night;
Wild geese, approaching Ts’ao-t’ang,
Fly within hearing.
With lamp flames dying,
Our words are subdued;
The rest of our lives
Should be clouds and high peaks.
Up to now,
I’ve been sick a lot,
And the Enlightened Prince
Does not know my name.
From When I find you again, it will be in mountains: selected poems of Chia Tao (2000) Somerville, MA, USA: Wisdom Publications
Chia Tao (779 – 843) an erstwhile Ch’an monk, became a poet during China’s Tang Dynasty. Ch’an was the Chinese predecessor of Japanese Zen.
English translation by Mike O’ Connor.
November 27, 2014
POEM JUST JOTTED DOWN
In the middle of the night,
I suddenly rise;
Draw water
From the deep well.
White dew
Covers the woods;
Morning stars
Dot the clear sky.
From When I find you again, it will be in mountains: selected poems of Chia Tao (2000) Somerville, MA, USA: Wisdom Publications
Chia Tao (779 – 843) an erstwhile Ch’an monk, became a poet during China’s Tang Dynasty. Ch’an was the Chinese predecessor of Japanese Zen.
English translation by Mike O’Connor.
November 24, 2014
A CONTEMPLATIVE DRUID EVENT
Thanks to the interest generated by Contemplative Druidry, members of the Gloucestershire contemplative group have set up an entity called Contemplative Druid Events. So far we have a blog at http://contemplativedruidevents.tumblr.com/ and a forthcoming retreat.
The retreat is being held on the weekend of 17-19 April 2015 at Anybody’s Barn, Birchwood Hall, Storridge, Nr. Malvern, Worcestershire WR13 5EZ. Details of the retreat can be found on the blog.
I am excited by this prospect. It provides the opportunity to work with a larger group of people and to learn from them. Contemplative Druidry doesn’t come with a long specific tradition or an inherited set of practices and teachings. As modern Druids, we are engaged in an exploratory and co-creative enterprise. Events will extend the experience and understanding of participants and facilitators alike.
At the same time we do have a vision of what we are offering, and a sense of how the retreat will work. We will use the Friday evening to enter sacred space and move into introductions and a culture setting process. I consider the way in which we enter into relationship with the space and each other to be a highly significant part of the event and not just a warm up or preamble. It does much to determine the quality of living presence in the space, as important as any practice or activity. As for practices and activities – there will be sitting meditations and an introduction to what our existing local group calls “Awen Space”. Other offerings may include chanting, sacred movement, outside walking meditation and ‘lectio divina’ from the book of nature. We will likely make use of a fire pit on the Saturday evening.
The retreat also gives us the chance simply to be, alone and with fellow travellers, in a beautiful nurturing space. (After the opening process, every activity is an invitation to the participants, rather than a demand on them.) We will work with a maximum of sixteen people, including ourselves – there are five of us with facilitator roles from the Gloucestershire group. This is not the full capacity of the centre we are using, for we wanted a spacious environment on the physical as well as other levels.
I have a strong belief in this way of working and look forward to sharing it with new people.
November 20, 2014
THE FEELING OF TASTE
Juicy apple, pear and banana,
Gooseberry … They all speak of
Death and life in the mouth … I have a presentiment …
Read it from a child’s expression
If she savours them. It comes from far, from far …
Aren’t you slowly becoming aware of something inexpressible in your mouth?
Where a moment ago there were words, a flowing discovery
Is released, startling, from the fruit’s flesh.
Venture to say what your apple is called.
This sweetness, which originally condensed itself,
Spreading out, slowly in being tasted rose up
To achieve a clarity, awake and of transparency,
Resonant of opposites, sunny, earthy, of the here and now – :
Oh the experience of it, the feeling, the joy -, immense!
From Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by Robert Temple
November 17, 2014
NATURE LANGUAGE
Philip Carr-Gomm wrote an essay, Deep Peace of the Quiet Earth: the Nature Mysticism of Druidry, as his foreword to Contemplative Druidry (1). Emma Restall Orr talked about her own nature mysticism in a recent radio interview, published on Joanna Vander Hoeven’s Down the Forest Path blog (2). Last year Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist scholar and teacher who leads the ‘Community of Interbeing’ (and is now perhaps near the end of his journey) wrote a deceptively simple-seeming work called Love Letter to the Earth (3), with chapter headings like: We are the Earth, Practices for Falling in Love with the Earth and Ten Love Letters to the Earth.
These prompts have led me to reflect more deeply on how I use Nature language and what, specifically, I mean by it. Thich Nhat Hanh’s starting point (3) is a helpful one: “at this very moment the Earth is above you, below you, all around you, and even inside you. The Earth is everywhere. … The Earth is not just the environment we live in. We are the Earth and we are always carrying her within us. Realizing this, we can see that the Earth is truly alive … we can begin to transform our relationship to the Earth.” The overall point, familiar enough yet made here with fresh elegance and clarity, is one with which Druids and Buddhists alike can find a ready resonance. But its main effect on me this time round was to get me wondering about the language of Nature.
What do I understand by Nature? For me, the key word is Nature rather than Earth. The Earth is a subset of Nature, larger than you and me who are indeed contained within it, but still a subset. In my understanding, Nature is simply what there is. And ‘what there is’ seems to us, in this culture at this time, to have exploded out of a remarkably fertile emptiness, into the 3D and time-bound reality that our perceptions somewhat mesh with, and of course a great deal more outside our normal range and beyond our range entirely. We humans are wholly natural with all our known and realised potentials – and others too that are but dimly intuited and largely untapped.
We cannot individually encompass the whole of Nature. We must choose, at whatever levels of relative awareness, where to put our efforts and attention. Thich Nhat Hanh is pretty clear about his: he has a strong intent, which involves a mutually sustaining balance of contemplation and action. My key ‘contemplative’ choice, not feeling very accomplished, is to enter more fully into the Heart identity I spoke in my Heart Language post. This seems like a good thing for me, and likely to improve my relationships and connections, particularly with my local world – the Earth and its inhabitants. I could call it extending the human side of human nature, a natural thing for a human to do.
(1) Nichol, James (2014) Contemplative Druidry: People, Practice and Potential Amazon CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing
(2) http://downtheforestpath.wordpress.com/2014/11/07/interview-with-emma-restall-orr/
(3) Thich Nhat Hanh (2013) Love Letter to the Earth Berkeley, California: Parallax Press
