Earth spirituality | Contemplative Inquiry

Tag: Earth spirituality

October 12, 2014

CONTEMPLATIVE DRUIDRY: PEOPLE PRACTICE AND POTENTIAL

Since last February I have been working with others on a book about contemplative Druidry. It has now been published and it is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in paperback and on Kindle.

‘Contemplative Druidry: People Practice and Potential’ was written to show that contemplative approaches are growing in modern Druidry, and to look at ways in which they might be fostered. Practices discussed include solo and group meditation, contemplation in natural settings and contemplative arts.

In my approach to this project, I decided to take a snapshot of contemplative Druidry in a particular place and time. The place is England, with a particular (though not exclusive) focus on a Druid contemplative group meeting in Gloucestershire. The time is March-July 2014, where 15 Druids responded to a questionnaire either through face-to-face interviews or in writing.

The questionnaire was designed to let respondents talk freely about their understanding of ‘contemplative Druidry’ and its value in their lives. They first discuss relevant aspects of their early lives, such as love of the outdoors, the literatures that fed them, and forms of numinous and psychic experience that they had but could not language or contextualise. They talk about their spiritual questing, often in the arenas of Paganism, Shamanism and Earth spirituality more widely, as well as their specific attraction to Druidry. Then they discuss their contemplative practice and influences on it, in some cases, from other traditions such as Buddhism, neo-Gnosticism and mystical Christianity. Overall there is the sense of an identifiable contemplative thread within Druidry (or Druid thread within contemplative spirituality). There is a sense of a form of spiritual expression to nurture and develop.

The idea of a book offering a variety of voices was further strengthened by Philip Carr-Gomm, who has led the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids (OBOD) since 1988. His foreword ‘Deep Peace of the Quiet Earth: the Nature Mysticism of Druidry’ is a significant contribution in its own right, speaking of a contemplative turn in Druidry as “an idea whose time has come”.

With the permission of the posters and commenters, the book includes two threads from the Contemplative Druidry Facebook Group – ‘Contemplation and Mysticism’ and ‘Pilgrimage’ as Appendices. These are more international in flavour, and date from August 2012.

The people who joined me in responding to the questionnaire were: David Popely, Elaine Knight, Eve Adams, JJ Middleway, Joanna Vander Hoeven, Julie Bond, Karen Webb, Katy Jordan, Mark Rosher, Nimue Brown, Penny Billington, Robert Kyle, Rosa Davis and Tom Brown. My heartfelt thanks to all of them and everyone else who has supported this book and the work that stands behind it.

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July 1, 2014

ELDERS AND MEMORY

A Guatemalan story illustrates the traditional role of elders. The Goddess of Water has been dismembered and her heart captured by the Lords and Ladies of Death. Her (non-divine) partner collects her bones together and descends into the infernal realm to recover her heart. He succeeds at a price, returning to the earth’s surface with only a toe bone and a tooth to go with the recovered heart of the Goddess, himself do badly wounded that he dies.

Four elders – Grandmother Growth, the Father of the Mountain, the Old Woman and the Old Man – now intervene. Covering the body of the man and the toe bone, tooth and heart of the Goddess with a blanket, they sing their wisdom. ‘The world wept and whimpered in the ground while the two gods and two old humans sang the ancient life-giving songs’ (1). After the old ones have nearly exhausted their repertoire of 200 songs, the blanket is lifted. Man and Goddess (now a mortal woman) have revived and are whole. The elders comment, ‘it’s the same every year’.

The story contrasts the distinctive roles of the younger and older generations. For the former the action presents a vivid and dramatic trial. The old ones participate through their knowledge of the ‘ancient live-giving songs’ and with the relative detachment of those who’ve seen it all before. They have not ‘retired’ but they have progressed to a different and more reflective way of making an impact on their world, using their resources as culture bearers.

Martin Pretchel, who recorded this story, spent his life ‘married to the meaning’ of such stories. In the Guatemalan Highlands of the 1980’s the indigenous Mayan community was under enormous pressure and threat. Martin, a mixed ancestry outsider from New Mexico, joined several hundred old Mayan men and women and ‘like a friar I became another of their wool-blanket-wearing order, dedicated to remembering back to life She who had been dismembered and therefore do what we could to keep Holy Nature dancing’.

The story telling activities of the elders are not simply forms of reminiscence. They can a front-line in the defence of land, life and culture. (Martin Pretchel eventually took refuge from threatened assassination in an unfriendly US embassy and was promptly deported.) It seems that deep Bardistry, maintaining the long cycles of cultural memory, and current political witness go hand in hand.

Martin Pretchel The toe bone and the tooth London: Thorsons, 2002

Contemplative Inquiry

Tag: Earth spirituality

October 12, 2014

CONTEMPLATIVE DRUIDRY: PEOPLE PRACTICE AND POTENTIAL

July 1, 2014

ELDERS AND MEMORY