Druidry | Contemplative Inquiry

June 22, 2014

BOOK REVIEW: ELEN OF THE WAYS (SHAMAN PATHWAYS)

Highly recommended both to a core readership interested in British indigenous Shamanism and to anyone uneasy with a world where loss of connection with nature (and thus spirit) is so prevalent. Author Elen Sentier describes herself as “awenydd, a spirit weaver and tale keeper from a long family lineage”. The word is from British Celtic tradition, but it is being used to name a quality of being extending back much further in time, and of universal application. “Walking the deer trods is to learn how close we are to nature … how we are connected to anything whether or not it appears inanimate and this is what the awenydd knows”. The presiding spirit of this path is the elusive deer goddess Elen of the Ways, who the author encountered as a young adult, thereby entering a lifetime of service to her. This book is about both context and story of this service, an invitation to “open yourself to Elen’s complex, multiple and beautiful ways”.

Elen Sentier takes us back to an archaic northern world in which most people lived by following herds of reindeer on their migrations – following rather than leading or managing: the deer decided when and where to go. She evokes the culture and spirituality of this relationship, describing a hunter gatherer society that once lived well without private property or long hours of work. She talks about communities that understood reciprocity and interdependence and lived by a practice of gift-giving and receiving both in the everyday world and that of spirit – themselves seen as hardly separated from each other. She sees this as a culture of sensitivity to all life, including the interconnectedness of “what you eat and what eats you”, and alive to the energies of the land itself.

The book traces this history through iconography and myth – with the figure of the antlered reindeer goddess standing for the Sovereignty of the land. It also describes “journeying” as a here-and-now practice for being in natural settings, tuning in with respect, entering relationship, preferably with a minimal reliance on satnavs, compasses and maps. Here is nourishment for spirit, available if we are.

1 Comment

June 12, 2014

CONTEMPLATION AND ACTION

I’ve been thinking about action and contemplation – and their relationship. I think they belong together. Both modes are engaged. Neither is passive or indifferent. I am coming to see them as qualities that arise together and remain interdependent, rather like the paired opposites described in the Tao Te Ching:

For being and non-being arise together

Hard and easy complete each other

Long and short shape each other

High and low depend on each other

Note and voice make the music together

In progressive Christian circles, this kind of relationship is demonstrated in organisations such as Richard Rohr’s Centre for Action and Contemplation. Andrew Harvey would be another example. In my ‘contemplative Druidry’ home group, I’ve noticed that a high proportion of the members are politically and socially engaged (mostly in the kind of causes currently packaged as ‘Green’). And I’ve also noticed that these different commitments support each other, rather than getting in each other’s way. On the one side it’s something about self-care, time for refreshment and renewal , and remembering to pause a little, able to maintain a spacious rather than frantic or tunnel-visioned awareness. On the other side it’s about enacting our interconnectedness and service, our commitment to the life of the world. Right now it’s nudging me in the direction of activity.

June 1, 2014

BOOK REVIEW: DANCING WITH NEMETONA

This is my Amazon book review for Joanna van der Hoeven’s latest book.

Highly recommended. With an ease and lightness of touch, this book reflects on the sacred in relation to physical and subtle space, relationships and boundaries, safety and risk, liminality and letting go. Sacred time too – I liked the author’s definition of ritual as “taking a moment, taking time out, to celebrate or honour a specific moment of time”.

A modern Druid, Joanna van der Hoeven uses her personal journey to illustrate her themes and suggests practices to explore them – within the home, within the forest and within the inner world. These practices, and the book as a whole, are accessible to beginners or non-aligned seekers as well as those already grounded in Druid and Pagan tradition. This is helped by the careful arrangement of the book in six chapters: Lady of Boundaries and Edges; Lady of Hearth and Home; Lady of the Sacred Grove; Lady of sanctuary; Lady of Ritual: Lady of Everything and Nothing.

The last chapter opens the way to reflections on personal identity and the no self/true self paradox of Zen and other non-dual traditions. To enter into “immersion into the entirety of being … to be at one with existence, to truly experience life”, there seems to be a necessary letting go of our customary self-sense and a finding of true self through being in the moment, returning to the core. In this way the book continues the journey of the author’s earlier and well-received Zen Druidry.

1 Comment

January 15, 2014

A BRIEF AND LUMINOUS TEA TIME

Last March I talked about a Druid contemplative day in Gloucestershire, England, and the way in which “our meeting grew out of the still simplicity of the space and our shared contemplative intent”. We now have a regular group, which meets for two hours in the afternoon on the second Tuesday of every month, except for May and November. In those months we meet for a full Saturday, sometime after the festivals of Beltane and Samhain. These days offer an introduction to new members, and also attract people from outside our local catchment area. Sixteen people are now at least provisionally involved, about half of whom attend our Tuesday sessions.

I feel very blessed to have a group of ‘like intent’ for contemplative practice. It supports and extends my solo practice, without simply replicating it at a collective level. I feel recognised and nurtured by the presence of fellow travellers and the strength of a commonly held intent. I also feel more confident in my note and in the value of sounding it

Our Tuesday pm gatherings – which do include a slot for tea and cake as a very English soul food – have so far had a very simple structure. We have a personal check in, make an unfussy entry into sacred space and sit in meditation together for about 20 minutes. After that (and this is the Druid bit) we tune into our individual and relational presence within awen. Traditionally awen has connotations of divine inspiration, especially in the fields of poetry, music and prophecy. For modern Druids awen can be also seen as the manifestation of the immanent divine, the breath of the Goddess (Shakti, Shekinah), the enlivening presence of spirit or more simply the way in which space can be palpably and numinously enlivened by people of like intent.

In terms of the practice, we discover ourselves, touched or inspired by awen, in an enlivened relational field with each other, as well as in the space and within ourselves. Sometimes we share it in silence and sometimes we are moved to speak, finding an authentic here-and-now language for our felt sense of connection. I can see a possibility of moving on to other expressions of this connection – chanting, toning and movement as the group develops. The practice is open-ended, but tends to go on for 35-40 minutes.

We then exit sacred space, celebrating and also grounding ourselves with tea and cake. These meetings have prompted me into a greater intentionality about my wider inquiry, which includes sharing it through this blog.

March 17, 2013

CONTEMPLATIVE DAY

A small group in Gloucestershire, England, mostly with Druid backgrounds, held a contemplative day yesterday, on Saturday 16 March. Most of us were local, but we also had members from further afield including (for the first time) London.

Once gathered, we spent some of our time together indoors and part of it alone, walking in neighbouring woods and fields. For this outside time we caught a beautiful sunlit spring interlude in the later morning. We had periods of silence, periods of chanting, periods of talking and periods of eating. (The day included a magical shared lunch).

I loved it when, early on, JJ talked of our connection as based on ‘like intent’ rather than ‘like mindedness’. It felt to me very much as if our meeting grew out of the still simplicity of the space and our shared contemplative intent.

I think that this approach to a contemplative day, together with our previous one which had more focus on weaving our stories, are good ways to go in developing these events. I look forward to more of them.

1 Comment

January 31, 2013

WILLOW

Some systems of training – R.J. Stewart in ‘The Way of Merlin’ and the OBOD Ovate Course for example – ask us to develop a long term relationship with a specific tree. In my case it was a willow. At that time I had already made a willow wand from wood that had fallen off another tree, and though I don’t use wands or other tools much in circle casting, I do use this wand occasionally. It’s a wood that I find it easy to connect with.

My willow stands on the banks of the Avon at Bristol, in sight of the Clifton suspension bridge and the gorge. I was living within walking distance of it at the time. In terms of ‘head knowledge’ I wasn’t quite sure whether it was technically a weeping willow or a hybrid and decided it didn’t matter. Its branches certainly bowed to the flowing Avon water and to the ground. Through dedicated tree hugging practice I discovered a strong Nwyfre or life force, running up and down the tree. This was about the time of the Spring Equinox in a prematurely warm and burgeoning year. I had the pleasure of watching catkins and early leaves growing and of active bees. So I created an energetic bond with the physical tree, at the edge of a public park, greeting it and fare-welling it at each encounter without developing a detailed botanical knowledge.

I also did inner work with the tree, through visualization. Usually the visualization was an idealized version of the physical reality, prompting a slightly different set of feelings and reflections. There was one major difference. During a gale, the wind broke one of the major branches from the tree. I was very distressed to see that branch partly on the ground and partly hanging on to the rest of the tree by thin strands of bark. Then the branch got chopped off. I was in mourning. Yet my visualization didn’t change. At that level, the tree was still there and whole. And in fact the physical changed and grew new branches, not in quite the same place, to fill the gap of the big one that had gone. I supplied the distress and mourning. The tree simply adapted. Throughout the physical process, I felt little difference in its energy.

In the back of my mind I was also aware of traditional knowledge, both specific to Ogam lore and the more diffuse inheritance of popular tradition. I tended to hold this lightly, feeling imaginatively enriched whilst putting personal lived experience first. I do know that leaning against the tree whilst looking across the water to the bridge and the gorge were (and are) good for refreshment, reverie and lazy, half conscious forms of reflection. Out of this can come a creativity that doesn’t come from the willed marshaling of correspondences. And to be fair, the traditional willow correspondences say as much, when they talk of openness and receptivity to Otherworld and the inspiration of the Goddess. When I first knew the willow, it was at a time of fecundity – I’ve already mentioned the vibrancy of catkins and new leaves, the early appearance of bees. So I’m not surprised that William Anderson’s green man poem says, for the period running from 13 April to 10 May:

In and out of the yellowing wands of the willow

The pollen-bright bees are plundering the catkins;

‘I am honey of love’, says the Green Man

‘I am honey of love’, says he.

It doesn’t surprise me at all that in the Romanian Gypsy Festival of Green George (needless to say on 23 April) a young and leafy willow, already felled, is erected and decorated with streamers and ribbons. The community’s pregnant women gather around the tree, each laying out one piece of clothing. If, overnight a leaf falls from the tree on to the clothing, it is said that the goddess of the tree promises both an easy delivery and a gifted child.”

Such associations are in the background of my relationship to Willow if not the foreground. They touch my imagination, especially the parts that are nurtured by a sense of place and of history. They amplify my direct here-and-now experience, adding emotional texture to sensory immediacy. They extend what’s already there, in the tree, the setting, my presence, and our connection.

1 Comment

January 21, 2013

ENTERING SILENCE

Sometimes, as over the turn of the year, I feel like blogging fairly frequently. At other times, like now, I don’t. I’m still integrating my work with the Ceile De paidirean (beads) and fuinn (chants). It takes a while. I suspect that I’m entering a quiet period.

Yet as I do so I want to say a little bit about what contemplative practice means to me now. Centring in silence is the essence of the practice. In sitting meditation I enter silence with a contemplative intent. The process is one of self-emptying, but not in a self-wounding spirit of renunciation, of holy war on ‘ego’, of pushing away the immature self-sense like an unwanted child.

Self-emptying is simply the will to let things come and go without grabbing on, making room for something else to be. Warmly spacious, it invites a more expansive way of being. We do not let go in order to get something better. The letting go is itself the something better, freeing us from our habitual self-protectiveness and contracted activities like taking, defending, hoarding, and clinging. For this reason Cynthia Bourgeault talks of ‘kenosis’ (self-emptying) as “primarily a visionary tool rather than a moral one; its primary purpose is to cleanse the lens of perception”*.

Having said that, I am finding that the contemplative shift into self-emptying does tend to open up states of acceptance (including self-acceptance), gratitude, peace, joy and love. They come in and are present, just naturally there, not in any way willed or dutiful, some of the time. They come and go, while contemplation remains centred in stillness and silence, and “looks at the world through a single lens of wholeness”*.

* The meaning of Mary Magdalene: the woman at the heart of Christianity. Cynthia Bourgeault. Shambhala: Boston & London, 2010

1 Comment

January 10, 2013

NOTE AND SONG

I have continued to experiment with the forms of contemplative prayer and mantra work I use in connection to my Ceile De paidirean. Having worked some time now with the heart prayer, I have started to engage with other expressions of this tradition. These are drawn from the wider range of Ceile De fuinn (chants).

My overall morning practice is customarily held within a circle cast in “the Sacred Grove of Sophia, the luminous spirit of wisdom”. I have found a fonn (chant) for my walking meditation that links back, for me, to her. The words are:

Gun tigeadh solas nan solas air mo chridhe; gun tigeadh ais an spiorad air mo chridhe

Goon tee-guch solus nan solus air mo chree; goon tee-guch aysh an speer-utch air mo chridhe

Come light of lights to my heart; come wisdom of spirit to my heart

When I use this fonn (chant) in walking meditation, I use Sireadh Thall (Sheer-ich Hall) as a mantra, for periods of time, when sitting. It means “seek beyond” and according to the Ceile De, Sireadh Thall is “one of the many poetic names for the Great Goddess of the Gael, Brighide or Bridget”. She has sometimes been called the northern Sophia (as in Caitlin Matthews’ book, ‘Sophia’). Sireadh Thall, as a divine name, gives me a sense of the Goddess pointing beyond herself to a place where names, forms and images of the divine dissolve.

Gun tigeadh solas nan solas air mo chridhe; gun tigeadh ais an spiorad air mo chridhe is the fifth fonn on the first Ceile De fonn CD. Sireadh Thall is the tenth. I find this latter especially moving. For me it is presented here in a perfect weaving of voices. There is no soloist, yet the loss of any one voice – each with its unique integrity – would diminish the piece. So collectively this fonn gives voice to the Oran Mor, the great song of what is.

In working with different fuinn in this way, I can listen in to them, feel them, taste them – their resonance, their energy, and their inspiration. I get closer to finding my note within that song.

(Sireadh Thall can be accessed and downloaded on http://www.ceilede.co.uk/company/the-fonn.)

3 Comments

January 4, 2013

PAIDIREAN (PAHJ-URINN) II

I started wearing my Paidirean – the Ceile De prayer beads – for my morning practice on 19 December. In the Ceile De Order they are used in conjunction with what in this tradition is called the Heart Prayer:

A Thighearna … Solus an domhain … Chriost mo chridhe … dean trocair oirnn

Ah hee-earn-ah … Solus on dowain … Chree-ost mo chree … Jaun trok-ir orn

O Lord … Light of the world … Christ my heart … show mercy/compassion/grace

I don’t follow the practice as prescribed, but I notice that I soon started saying this prayer aloud (having listened carefully to the Ceile De CD) when doing walking meditation – initially drawn in by the sound of the old language. In walking meditation I am mindful to each footfall and so in working the Heart Prayer I have become mindful to each footfall and a syllable of the Heart Prayer as well (except of course when I am not). As time has gone on I have increased the use of the prayer, sometimes said aloud, sometimes not. I intersperse this with times of complete silence within as well as without to make the practice more spacious. Likewise in sitting meditation, essentially a plain breath meditation, I have introduced the key phrase “Chriost mo chridhe”, as an intermittent mantra within the practice. These words in particular anchor in my sense that ‘Christ’ stands for an interior awakening rather than an external or historical being.

Why has this prayer become resonant to me? I am reminded again of the summer of 2007. At midsummer I went to Melrose and had the experiences I described in my previous blog post. On a weekend late in July I was scheduled to go to a conference with my partner Elaine. The plan involved getting from Bristol, where I lived, to Stroud, where she lived. But we were cut off from each other by floods: roads closed, railway in chaos. So we both stayed put. I was following the OBOD Ovate course at the time and decided to have a day of ritual derived from the course followed by a day of reflection and recovery. The main result of all this, the one image that fully imprinted itself and which I took away, was that of a dove feather falling gently down beside me It felt initiatic and it gave me my felt sense of connection with Sophia the Holy Wisdom. It changed the course of my work. My centre of gravity had shifted and I realised that I had quite a bit of work to do to make this breakthrough good. How was I going to use the altered state of the ritual experience to create a more lasting change? Although not fully recognized at the time, this was the beginning of my ‘contemplative’ turn.

Sophia brings a gnostic understanding to Christ consciousness, awakening the practitioner to a non-dual awareness where knower, known and knowledge, lover, love and beloved, are one. Except that this last sentence is also a formula of sorts and formulas – even if authentic messages from those who have gone before us – are necessarily suspect. This, at least, is what I take away from the gnostic Gospel of Thomas:

“Jesus said to his followers, ‘compare me to something and tell me what I am like. Simon Peter said to him, ‘you are like a just messenger’. Matthew said to him, ‘you are like a wise philosopher’. Thomas said to him, ‘Teacher my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like’. Jesus said, ‘I am not your Teacher. Because you have drunk, you have been intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have measured out.’ Two followers have personal and cultural presuppositions so strong that their availability for direct experience is compromised. Only one is sufficiently open and unknowing to make the connection and the shift that goes with it.

Thich Nhat Hanh puts it another way. “In Buddhist circles, we are careful to avoid getting stuck in concepts, even concepts like ‘Buddhism’ and ‘Buddha’. If you think of the Buddha as someone separate from the rest of the world, you will never recognize a Buddha even if you see him on the street. That is why one Zen Master said to his student, ‘When you meet the Buddha, kill him’. He meant that the student should kill the Buddha-concept in order for him to experience the real Buddha directly.” (From Living Buddha, Living Christ.)

Following my experience in late July 2007, I wrote a blackberry Lughnasadh verse for my wheel of the year tree poem.

I am Blackberry

The bramble and the fruit and the wine

And the spirit.

Intoxication as from a bubbling spring,

Freely measured out.

It alluded to the words in St. Thomas and reflected my realization, such as it was. It was not particularly mature or fully integrated, but it did push me into seeking and developing a more rigorous and systematic personal practice. My hope is that the new shift inspired by the paidirean will deepen and extend it.

2 Comments

December 30, 2012

PAIDIREAN (PAHJ-URINN)

The Paidirean are the prayer beads of the Ceile De. Some believe that they have a Druid origin. They have always been part of the Ceile De tradition are known to have been used in the days of Columcille (St. Columba).

I got mine from the Ceile De shop a little before Christmas. There are 150 beads, each about 5 mm wide. They are made of unstained rosewood and were left immersed in rose damask oil for a month. As well as scenting the beads, the oil gives the beads a pinkish colour. An equal armed and circled silver cross hangs from the beads – at heart level when worn as a necklace. This form of cross – Celtic, Gnostic and universal – is an ancient symbol, found in pre-Christian and Christian carvings, and sacred to many people from many cultures.

Each Paidirean is ceremonially strung in Scotland by a Ceile De Order member. The process takes two hours and involves prayer, meditation and continuous chanting during the stringing. Then a blessing is spoken over the completed Paidirean which is anointed with water and with oil from a local holy well, used for at least 1500 years. Sister Fionn strung my Paidirean. Many blessings to you, Sister Fionn, at the turning of the year.

The Paidirean is an object of power as well as beauty. I wear it as a necklace when practicing, as well as an OBOD Awen necklace which ends just below the throat. Wearing the two feels like a kind of completion, and I am reminded of a visit I made to Scotland at Midsummer 2007. I was in Melrose in the Scottish border region, an area with strong family connections. And I seemed to be in business with three locations. One was the semi-ruined Abbey, and in particular its orchard and garden. One was the Eildon Hills, looming up into low clouds. One was a path by the River Tweed.

I was wondering where I felt most spiritually attuned and where I wanted to spend most of my time. In its gardens the Abbey felt like a place of peace and tradition, though clearly also compromised by conflicts between nations and orthodoxies. The hollow hills of Thomas the Rhymer fame held challenge, glamour – the heroic spirituality of the vision quest in its local form. But I turned to the river, and had a small epiphany whilst contemplating a wild rose on the riverbanks. And I later wrote this verse, which became part of a longer poem.

I am Rose. I am wild Rose.

I am Rose at Midsummer.

The river flows by me.

Fragile, I shiver in the wind.

And I am the heart’s core, mover of mountains.

In a sense, that experience, and the verse that recorded it, established the direction for my subsequent spiritual life and practice. The Paidirean sets the seal on it.

5 Comments

Tag: Druidry