Druidry

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Nemetona: Goddess of Boundaries and Edges, Sanctuary and Freedom Presentation

I had a wonderful time yesterday at the Leaping Hare Pagan Conference in Colchester, Essex.  I was honoured to be asked by the organisers at the end of last year to present, give a talk on the goddess Nemetona after having received requests throughout the year following the release of my second book, Dancing With Nemetona: A Druid’s Exploration of Sanctuary and Sacred Space.

It was a really enjoyable experience. I have been going to Leaping Hare for many, many years now and there is a real community spirit, a real sense of well-being and support. Thank you to everyone for your kind words, messages and emails following the talk – may we be the awen!

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Peace in Druidry

The word peace means many different things to many different people. Some see peace as simply the cessation of aggression or violence. Others see it as a way of life, a philosophy. Still again others see it as a mere dream, while others see it as the ultimate goal. But just what is peace, and what does it mean in a Druid context?

In our society, we strive for so much. Some things are worth working for, putting all our heart and soul into, such as equality, environmentalism and a better way of life for all beings. Some things we strive for are not so worthy – material wealth, social, economic and political power, fame or authority. For many in today’s society, it’s a dog eat dog world, and to get ahead you have to step over others in the race for the top. In reality, there is no top rung on that ladder – there isn’t even a ladder to begin with. All these notions of power are entirely illusionary, when looked at from a basic ultimate view that we are all just beings co-existing with each other on this little planet. Allow me explain.

The illusion of separateness has caused our world so much pain. When we see ourselves as separate, we begin to lose the notion of the sacredness in everything. There is absolutely no possible way for anyone or anything to be separate from anything else. We human beings are made up of minerals and atoms, of genetic information from all our ancestors (human and non-human), of sunlight and wind and rain. We are all star-stuff. We have not come out of nowhere, to suddenly exist and then just as suddenly depart when our earthly lives are snuffed out. The clouds in the sky have always been, and always will be. They may change their form, becoming humid wisps of cloud and ice, to larger clouds that then change into rain. That rain falls onto the earth, to be drunk by human and non-human animals alike, by the garden plants and the trees, by the birds and the bees. This water is released once more into the atmosphere through a myriad of ways – sweat, piss, moist exhalation, dewdrops. Back into the sky it goes, to once again form a cloud. We have clouds within our bodies, in the food that we eat, in the water that we drink, in our genetic makeup. We are clouds and the clouds are us.

Once we see the interconnectedness of all things, we realise that to strive for power or control over anything is as fleeting as the life of a cloud. All things are connected, and all things are impermanent. This is an essential tenet of Eastern philosophies, which is strongly reflected in a Druid’s perspective when viewed as part of the natural cycle. Nothing ever stays the same, not the river, not the sky, not the grass, not the tadpole. Everything is in constant change and flux. The key to finding peace within this constant change is acceptance of the impermanence, allowing our hearts to find ease from the fears and insecurities that arise when we fight against change.

A wave does not stress out about dying when it crashes upon the shoreline. It knows that it is water. The wave is simply the form that it took for however long a time. It knows that it is connected with everything else on this planet – there is nothing that exists outside it in a separate context. The web of life, the threads of connections are all around us. When we see those threads we lose the fear of death, instead seeing the cycles that allow us to really come to terms with the concept of changing forms. Death is not annihilation – it is simply becoming a new form, a new way of being.

The basic fact of life is that we will all die. So what is this struggle, what is this constant striving towards ideas of ownership, of power and rule, of games played with lives? To what purpose does it serve when we will all return to the earth in some form or another, when we come to an understanding that we are not separate from anything else? When can we move from concepts such as birth and death?

As humans we have developed a sense of self-awareness that actually hinders the possibility of finding a true and real sense of peace. We are often so self-focused that we are blinkered to everything else, to the entirety of existence. When we are only in tune with ourselves, how can we ever find harmony without? Stuck within the whirls and eddies of the mind, we will never notice the birdsong, or the rain upon our shoulders, the cry of a hungry child or the yowl of a cat in heat. When we look beyond ourselves is when we will be able to find peace. When we are able to work for the benefit of others instead of just ourselves, the world will know harmony. As we are all co-existing on this planet, it just makes sense to work together. However, the illusion of separateness is strong.

Peace is not just something for stoned hippies to think about and discuss – it is a very real and powerful way of being in the world. Through sensing our connection to the world we find a place of true power, power that comes from within that allows us to work for the benefit of all. This power cannot and will never be a “power over” anyone or anything else, as writer and activist Starhawk expresses often in her work. This power from within is the deep core of true expression, of a sustainable relationship working in tune with the entirety of existence.

Peace is not just a cessation to war and violence. Peace comes from a very real and deep understanding of our selves, of our behaviour and our way of being in the world. Many people within the pagan community seek to find a better way of being in the world. They focus on working on the self, through years of self-discovery, journeys, pilgrimages, workshops, training and the like. For many, the journey stops there, at the betterment of the self. What I would posit in this essay is that in order to bring about true peace in the world, we then have to let go of ideas of the self, in order to focus on the wider world. It is a letting go of the blinkers that hinder our ability to work with others compassionately, in real empathy and attunement to the natural cycles.

This is deep integration, of immersion in the world to allow for true peace to flow. Where there are no barriers of you and me, no sense of the “other”, then we can truly work together to bring balance and harmony to our world. It is often said in historical and academic accounts that Druids were the peacemakers of their world and their society. Did they have a deep understanding of the connectedness of all life, did they allow their sense of self to fall away in order to bring about peace between warring tribes, between the workings of the human race and other species, in their work with the gods? We will never know, but it is something that I think is perhaps lost in today’s Druidry.

Peace is often not the main focus for those who come to Druidry. They often seek a spiritual path that allows them to explore the true nature of their self, to affirm their beliefs in a like-minded community. This is brilliant, and of course very useful for all, however it cannot end there. In my opinion, there must be a return for the lessons that we learn, an exchange, a flow from one to the other that allows for true and sustainable relationship. When we step beyond our selves and begin to truly understand what it means as a Druid to live a life in service to the gods, the community and the land then we are really coming to terms with the concept of peace within a Druid context.

Too many are living a reactionary life, caught within the trapping of their minds and unwilling or unable to see the world around them and their part in the weave that is the tapestry of life. They cannot sense all the other threads around them, or if they do sometimes they feel competition, or aggressiveness towards them. It is a sickness in our culture and society that we are brought up in such an environment. Instead of supporting each other and rooting for each other, if we have an issue with someone we do the exact opposite, for whatever reason. In sacred relationship, especially within a Druid context, we don’t have to like everyone we meet or interact with. However, we can see them for what they are: a part of the sacredness in all life. As Bobcat once wrote many years ago, it’s all about sacred relationship – when we walk through the woods we avoid the nettles. We don’t have to cut them all down in order to continue, yet we can still honour their existence and their place in the web of life. Essentially, we don’t have to hurt others who may even have hurt us – if we do that, we are simply living reactionary lives. Let’s live active lives instead, claiming full responsibility for our actions and in doing so achieve peace. Even if others hurt us, we don’t have to continue the cycle of hurt – we can walk around the nettles.

Peace must first come from within. If we are hurt or angry, we are not at peace. We must take some time to look at our hurt and our anger, and see where they really stem from. As Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh states, we must take care of our anger in order to transform it. When we finally sit with our emotions, we open the doors to empathy and compassion. Compassion is as mis-interpreted as the concept of peace is: compassion is simply looking at the bigger picture, attempting to understand the whole. It doesn’t necessarily mean unconditional love for all beings, though if we are truly and utterly open in our hearts that will ultimately be the outcome. It’s a tough call for most to make – in fact, only the Buddha himself has done it so far. However, we can take the wisdom of wider learning to help us understand others and thereby finding peace. If someone hurts us, we can sit with our anger and hurt, looking at it relating to our self. We can then extend that investigation – this is where most contemplation ends in day to day life. However, working through an entirely self-focused view, we can then begin to look at the person who hurt us, seeing that they too suffer. It’s not pleasant to cause suffering – not unless there is something severely wrong with the brain and a mental fissure stops that basic understanding and empathy. Have you ever betrayed anyone or said anything unkind? Did it make you feel better? Have you ever intentionally said something to hurt someone? Did you ever believe in the illusion that to being someone down raises you up? We all have. What we can do now is stop that cycle and truly live a life filled with intention, instead of reactionary living.

The Druid looks to nature for inspiration on how to live a live immersed and integrated with the whole. When we see the complex web of existence, when we bring our focus to an ecosystem, we see how everything works with the other in some shape or form to bring about the continuation of existence. We can look to ideas from permaculture, from biology, from ecology in order to grasp that sense of working together to create a beneficent environment. As Druids we don’t look to humanity for authority – we seek that from nature instead.

In gaining the wider perspective we can allow room in our hearts for a deep and abiding peace. We can still work actively in the world to bring about peace – we needn’t suddenly find peace and sit back while the world struggles on around us, our environment is destroyed and people are attacking each other. It means that from a very deep well we can work to nourish our communities, bringing a much-needed draught of inspiration or awen. In doing so, we are Druid.

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The centre

At the centre of the circle is where we find peace. We walk and work the edges, sometimes moving inwards towards the centre, sometimes finding ourselves on the outskirts. Walking a beautiful turf labyrinth today, and doing ritual in a wonderful tree henge, the lessons of finding the centre have been deep and utterly soul-awakening. May we be peace, may we find the stillness of the centre. xoxo

circle centre

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Extract from “Nemetona: Boundaries and Edges”

Here is an extract from the talk that I will be presenting on 28 March at Leaping Hare in Colchester, Essex.  It further explores the goddess Nemetona in her aspect of Lady of Boundaries and Edges as described in my second book, Dancing With Nemetona, and which goes deeper into how we work with edges and where we find the greatest potential.

When we are rooted in our selves, finding our place in the environment, working with our edges we understand where we came from. With that understanding, we can reach out to others, where soul meets soul, when boundaries and edges touch. In that touch there is relationship and inspiration. In Druidry we call that awen, where soul touches soul and the spark of inspiration occurs. Where the seeds lands on the soil, where those edges meet, something wonderful happens and new life occurs. When we meet another human being with honesty and compassion, utterly awake and aware to the connection around us we are inspired. If we are aware of where we come from, aware of our ancestors, the land upon which we live, we can work from a place of deep connection. As the Tao Te Ching states, “Stay at the centre of the circle and let all things take their course”.

But it doesn’t stop at the self. Self-improvement is not the goal in Druidry. Nemetona teaches us to root and find our edges in the sacred grove, but then nudges us to go and seek out those edges in the wider world, where we can truly be inspired. Self-focused creativity is not as inspiring as that which is connected to the whole. Getting the self out of the way is key in this learning, of learning to live in service. We need to find out how and what we can give in order to have sustainable relationship.

Giving is essential in a culture and lifestyle that takes so much. We live in a consumer culture. We need to balance consumerism with the inspiration we receive from nature, where if we take too much it dies. If one creature starts to take too much the whole ecosystem is affected, and is at risk. As homo sapiens, the beings that are supposedly aware, we still take too much. We can look to nature to find out how to work better in and with the world. The curse of self-awareness means that we are often so focused on our selves that we do not see the wider world. We are so busy looking inwards that we forget to look outwards. We forget that what benefits us may not benefit the whole, and we are a part of that whole, therefore selfishness can be so detrimental – if only we are able to look beyond the self (and we are). Relationships require a give and take. We cannot always give nor can we always take. We are honour bound to give back for what we have received if we are working from a place of deep connection. Nature shows us how. Otherwise it is simply not sustainable. A forest is able to sustain itself without any human interaction. The sacred grove in the forest, where the edges of woodland meet open space are filled with potential, able to sustain itself with integrity…

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News and events roundup February

February was a particularly busy month – with the opening of Druid College UK being a huge success!  We are now already halfway full in our bookings to begin Year 1 in October this year, and the response has just been amazing.  Social media posts engagement has numbered over 100,000 views, with thousands of shares and likes.  A big thank you to everyone who has supported this project! There are still spaces left on the course, so if you’re interested please email me for further details.

Lots of support has also been received since the interview I had with OBOD’s chosen chief, Philip Carr-Gomm last year at the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids‘ 50th anniversary gala. The Druidcast interview went out in January, and there has been lots of interest since then, certainly keeping me busy! At the end of February I also did an interview for Upon a Pagan Path, which aired early this month – Tommy the interviewer was such a lovely chap.

February also saw all three of my books, Zen Druidry, Dancing With Nemetona and The Awen Alone reach the Number 1, 2 & 3 spot on Amazon!  What a day that was – I was and still am flabbergasted.

The next couple of months are going to be equally busy. On Saturday 28 March I will be giving a talk at Leaping Hare in Colchester on the goddess Nemetona. I’ve been going to Leaping Hare for many, many years now and it is an absolute honour to be asked to present at this year’s gathering. I’m looking forward to seeing many familiar faces from the Eastern Region!

But before Leaping Hare I’m heading over to Glastonbury, to enjoy a little break and celebrate the Spring Equinox with some lovely friends.  We’ll also be seeing our friends Serpentyne who are doing a gig on Sat 21st – a medieval ball! Don’t miss it – it’s going to be great. We’re very much looking forward to performing with Serpentyne this summer at the Corn Lammas Gathering 21-23 August as Gypsy Dreams Belly Dance.  (I’ll also be sharing  a stall with my lovely, arty, crafty sisters and selling books – do pop by for a chat!).

The Beltane Picnic hosted by the Pagan Federation will take place this year on 24 May at The Roundhouse in Essex.  I’ll be there with my belly sisters performing again, and also doing book signing – I love this event so much, and have been going for a few years now – it’s such a warm, friendly, welcoming atmosphere of celebration!

If you’re in the Suffolk area on 18th & 19th April, check out the Woodbridge Mind Body Spirit Festival. It’s a lovely gathering of really cool folk who have created a wonderful two day festival celebrating alternative therapies, lifestyles and just sharing the love. I’ll be doing a chakra cleansing workshop on the Saturday, as well as performing with my dance troupe.  Shimmy shimmy shimmy!

And lastly, big thank you to everyone who has supported this blog and who continues to do so. Since the beginning of January we have had over 10,000 views on here alone, with many new people subscribing. Virtual hugs all around!

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The food debate

local greensThe ethics of food and diet is such a diverse and difficult topic to cover. For every ethical answer to a question, there are other equally valid ethical answers dependent upon differing circumstances, considerations and priorities. I have been a vegan for over a year now, and in the last month have been seriously reconsidering the ethical implications of my diet regarding the impact that I am having on the whole.

It’s easy to find statistics to back up pretty much any argument. It really depends on who is funding the research, for the most part. However, it is up to us personally to make out own choices, and to educate ourselves as best we can so that we make informed choices about our lives and the way we live them. I chose to be vegan because I thought that it was the most ethically environmentally sound option. However, now I’m not so sure.

The first thing to consider is food miles. Much of the vegan’s diet comes from lands thousands of miles away. The carbon footprint of air travel to bring these foods to the UK is considerable. The second thing to think about is what the growing of these crops is doing to these faraway lands and their people. Quinoa and rice are traditional crops for South America and China respectively, however, now that the West’s desire for these foods has grown the demand for growing them has increased drastically. This has caused the prices of these foods to soar, a lot of time to a level that the farmers themselves cannot afford to put what they grow onto their families’ plates. The third thing to think about is what effect these crops are having on the native land. As crops such as soy, rice, quinoa, lentils, etc are all grown “far away” we don’t really have an understanding of what it is doing to the land itself, as we don’t see it. Out of sight, out of mind. Soy is a great factor in the destruction of rainforest, whether through legal or illegal logging to create new monoculture crops. The monoculture crop itself has a great impact on the land as well – the earth loves and needs diversity. Monoculture is not sustainable, and susceptible to a great many attacks that a bio-diverse ecology would be able to fend off. There are hundreds of other factors to consider – these are just a few.

I’ve been studying permaculture these last few months, learning more about it and how it works. Working with the principles, it seems to me personally that the most ethical way that I can sustain myself it to eat local and organic, either growing my own or supporting those who do. I can check on what they claim, how they go about it as they are just down the road from me. What is happening is not happening thousands of miles away. I know that there are laws in place to protect people, land and animals. I feel like I have a little more control over my diet, knowing where it comes from, how it was grown, etc.

It’s not an easy choice. It requires a lot of research and investigation. It would be easier just to be vegan. I have to read food labels for everything. I have to check farms. I have to talk to neighbours and others in the village if I want to eat their surplus food. It requires an actual positive relationship with not only my food, but my environment.

We grow some of our own food, and will have a small vegetable garden this year. However, our garden is mostly a wildlife garden, dedicated to supporting birds, bees and other pollinating insects, hedgehogs, badgers and the occasional deer that come scrounging through. We decided not to grow the majority of our food, as there is an organic farm down the road that we would like to support instead. It’s their livelihood, and we want to ensure that it is as successful as can be. They grow organic crops, but also raise meat for livestock. It is an ethical consideration that must be taken into account.

Studying more and more about permaculture, I’ve found that I was quite ignorant about the keeping of livestock in small, organic flocks. Large scale industrial farming and monoculture crops are seriously threatening the earth, however, small scale flocks that are organic and actually benefit certain ecosystems, especially where crop growing isn’t a viable alternative. There are also ways to raise livestock alongside different crops that are beneficial to all involved – the very essence of permaculture.

While it’s beyond the scope of this blog to go into the details of permaculture, there are many good resources out there to find out more about the subject (see below).

So, after weighing the pros and cons of being vegan, I’ve decided to go local and organic, with a little dairy in the form of cheese from local farms and eggs from neighbours who keep and love their hens. It’s easy to just say that being vegan is the best thing for the planet, but it leaves out a lot of considerations for the planet that are perhaps “outside the box” in the usual arguments for making the switch.

As with everything, there is no black and white answer, no single answer to such a debate. All we can do is to enlighten ourselves with all the arguments, the pros and cons of each side, and make our own choices based upon what we know.

We also have to know that the choices we make are the choices WE make. We cannot make these choices for others. We cannot push our lifestyle on others. We can inform them of why we make the choices we do, but we cannot condemn them for the choice they make – we are not “better” for the choices we make. It is a trap that is easy to fall into, a sense of self-righteousness that we are definitely doing the right thing. No one really knows that the right thing is, really, or even if there is a right thing at all.

I remember being disappointed when my friend (and now Druid College colleague) Kevin made the switch to eating local meat that he had killed himself. I saw no need from my vegan perspective for the killing of another animal. Having spent time further researching the various implications of western diets on the rest of the world, I’ve changed my mind about his choice, and while I wouldn’t eat meat myself I applaud the well-researched and informed choice he made about Conscious Killing .

We all have to take responsibility for our lives. We have to walk our talk and work to make this world a better place for all, in any way that we can. We have to inform ourselves of the issues that our living has upon the rest of the planet. If like me you follow an earth-based religious or spiritual path, that is a major consideration and part of your path – otherwise why follow it at all?

I can say that after I made the switch two weeks ago (while still using up old foodstuffs like soy in the freezer) I feel a lot better physically. I feel like I have more energy. Whether this is because I’m eating food that hasn’t been treated for long world-wide journeys, eating food in season, eating local and organic I’m not sure – although I think that has a large part. I feel more connected to this land, its rhythms and cycles. So this will be the last month that I eat apples until end of August or beginning of September, providing that local UK apples will not be available in April (dependent upon quantities). There are even further issues that I need to look into, such as the amount of energy required to refrigerate apples throughout the winter from the various local farms. Spring greens in the form of soups are a staple this month. The nettles are growing in my garden – the perfect spring tonic. The sheep and goats are lactating – a new vintage of cheese will soon be available. Purple sprouting broccoli and artichokes will soon be out. Rhubarb is growing outside my conservatory, which will replace the apples in my baking and sauces. It makes the next variety of food available a real event, a real marker of the season.

Whatever your path, whatever your decision, I support you in making honourable choices for the benefit of the whole based on intelligent research and empathy for the land upon which you live. Talk to the gods, the ancestors and discuss these issues with them. Walk the land in reverence and find out how you can fit within that landscape with the least amount of impact. An earth-based tradition is all about relationship, whatever the path it is that we take. Let us take it right back to the earth in every shape and form, in every choice that we make.

What’s in season in the UK

The quinoa debate

Local and organic veg box scheme UK

The Earth Care Manual: A Permaculture Handbook for Britain and Other Temperate Climates

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Interview by Upon A Pagan Path March 2015

Here is an interview I had with Tommy from Upon a Pagan Path podcast, where we discuss my books, meditation, prayer and more!

Listen HERE.

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Permaculture: The Growing Edge

A good introduction to permaculture, what it’s all about, and hopefully inspire and bring hope back into the world.

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Dousing the Fire

Brighid is often known as the goddess of the sacred flame and of the sacred well. It is often said in religions throughout the world that where fire and water meet there is the greatest potential. Exploring her aspects of fire and water are extremely beneficial and here I shall talk a bit about fire; however, perhaps not in its most usual aspect.

We are all familiar with fire as flame, as external energy whether that be a fire in the hearth, the combustion that allows us mechanised transportation or the heat of the sun. What I’ve also been exploring is the fire within, that flame or spark of energy that ignites us to do things, say things, create things. I often think of inspiration in the Druidical “fire in the head” sense, but I also feel fire in the belly and fire in the heart. The fire in the belly is intuitive, instinctive. The fire in the heart is our passion, our love, our capacity for compassion and understanding.

The fire of the heart can take a long time to come into being. In our society, we often feel isolated from each other, even when we are literally living on top of each other in urban high-rise complexes. We learn coping techniques of shutting ourselves off from one another in order to function. We may have been hurt by others in the past and that causes us to dampen our flame of love for the rest of the world.

We also live in a society wherein it seems perfectly acceptable to douse someone’s fire. Think of reality shows, especially those that have “judges” critiquing the participants. Last year I gave up watching Strictly Come Dancing because I was tired of one particular judge being an outright bully, thinking his comments were humorous when they were in reality just plain mean. Putting down, making fun of someone who is simply trying their best to participate in a dance show to raise money for Children in Need is not something I wanted to be a part of. I can donate money directly instead of supporting that kind of behaviour.

We are so influenced by what we watch on television – we cannot deny that we are not. And it frightens me, especially with the amount of television that children are often exposed to these days. It is a rare occurrence, even where I live, to actually see children playing outside despite there being the most gorgeous countryside at their disposal. Whether that is due to parents’ control or other factors I cannot know – all I know is that when I was growing up the streets would be filled with neighbourhood children riding bikes or playing street hockey among other games. Are children nowadays being raised by television and computer games instead?

We live in an extremely competitive society, or so we are told. We feel that we always need the upper hand, the edge on a situation. We are now programmed to work against each other as opposed to with each other. We are trying to beat that other person out in promotion, or to be the best as everyone knows that the top dog is the happiest. We live in a put-down culture where co-operation simply doesn’t exist. We do not know our neighbours.

Living like this provides a perfect divide and conquer technique for those who want to keep us under their control. What we need to do is to reclaim our own power, and that of our own community. Instead of dousing the fire in other people, we need to cheer them on, to work together to make our lives better. It’s happening in small grassroots ways here and there, but not on a massive scale. In my own village, we have a village allotment where people can get together to work on group projects as well as their own. The village shop often acts as a hub for people to interact with each other.

What we need to do is to stop trying to take each other down and instead build each other up. We need to realise that life is not about competition. As a social species, we thrive better when we work together. When we douse the fire in other people’s hearts we are also dousing the fire within our own hearts. Every word, every deed with the intention of dousing another’s fire reduces our own capacity for love and compassion, to make the world a better place. Why on earth would we want to do that?

In her book, The Earth Path author and activist Starhawk talks about this very subject, exploring it at various Witchcamps. A proud supporter of community effort and achievement, of bringing power back to the people, she has worked with the various elements. She tells us of the results of working with fire and dousing another’s energy.

“Throughout that week, we went on to reflect on the ways in which we put out each other’s fire. When we recognise subtle energies, we become responsible for the kind of energy we are putting forth in our community. The things we do and say about each other create subtle energetic fields that either support our work and our relationships, or undermine them.

Malicious gossip, backbiting, unsupportive criticism, and mean-spiritedness douse even the stoutest of fire. And because a fire takes energy to build and maintain, such negativity is wasteful of the community’s resources; it’s like use electricity not just to keep the radio on all the time, but to keep it tuned to an irritating and distracting station… when anger festers, when we chew over our grievances like old bones without expressing them directly, when we meet others with sullenness or resentment, we douse not only their fire but our own.”

We need to judge situations in our lives all the time – they key to doing so lies in not being judgemental. We also need to support each other. If you don’t like what someone is doing, if you think it is detrimental to the community, you need to speak to that person directly. If you just don’t like them, then leave them well enough alone. All too often it is easy to attack or undermine someone through subtle means – Facebook and blogs are often used as tools for such behaviour. We can so easily dowse another’s fire through incessant comments or insidious ways online without anyone else apart from the target being the wiser. Let’s stop this behaviour right now. It is within our power.

Let’s cheer each other on, and where we simply cannot let us walk away with respect. Let’s stand up for what we believe in without resorting to maliciousness. Let’s put some good fuel onto the fire of our hearts and that of others and in doing so everything will burn with a cleaner, better focused energy.

Brighid has taught me to look deeply into what is feeding my fire, and how I can feed the fire within others. For that I am utterly thankful.

 

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Reblog: The Nature of Blessing

What does it mean to bless something? To honour your blessings? How can we feel truly blessed?

Most of us only come across the term “blessing” after someone has sneezed, but for me as a Druid it is an integral part of my religion. Alongside “prayer” however, the word can evoke memories of perhaps anti-pagan establishment. If we can set aside these connotations and simply see the word for what it is, we can fill our lives with a wonder and enchantment, or perhaps re-enchantment that can otherwise escape us in today’s modern, secularised world.

So what is a blessing? A blessing is when we awaken, when we fully come to the here and now and see the wonder of life. It is to be absolutely awake and aware of who we are, where we are, and how we work in the flows, rhythms and cycles of life. It is being aware of the gods and ancestors, of how each part is played. When we have awoken to this reality, life may flow easier, we may move through our days with more grace and compassion.

Being aware of our many blessings goes hand in hand with gratitude. If we give thanks for the blessing of lengthening sunlight, we awaken ourselves to the solar cycle of spring and the light half of the year. The sun gives freely of her gift, and this gift is a true blessing. When we give freely, when we are true to our selves and working for the greater good of the world, we too are blessing the world. The rain that brings the flowers is a blessing. The person who helped us out of a dark place is a blessing. A piece of music that sings to our soul is a blessing.

Being aware of these blessings takes us outside of ourselves, allowing room for a greater perspective that our narrow perception of the world can override. We have to shut off the internal monologue to be able to be aware of a blessing, to give and receive blessings with an open heart…

To read the full article, click HERE.