Nimue Brown's Blog, page 100

The unspeakable thing in the night

This is a recent short story written for the Hopeless, Maine setting. By my standards, I haven’t written much fiction this year, but I’m getting back on top of that, I think.

The Hopeless Vendetta

You lie there awake, listening to the sounds on the roof. Something is on the roof, skidding over the slates. Back and forth it goes. They go. There is no sense in this scrabbling about around the chimneys, and yet you cannot be sure that there is nothing intelligent up there.

All you can do is hope that it is a donkey, again. There is no imaginable way that a donkey could be on your roof because there are no means by which it might ascend. You know this. You have checked extensively. But there has been a donkey on the roof before – you saw it with your own eyes in the uncanny half light of an early summer morning. The donkey looked at you and you expected it to speak, giving some pronouncement to justify its position or identity. It said nothing. How it descended remains as mysterious…

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What is a Druid Life?

For me, the key ingredient of a Druid life is that it is a considered life. The processes of contemplation and exploration are really important to me. I think philosophy is something we should do as part of how we live, and that thinking about things is generally a good idea. This is why a lot of the time my blog posts are me poking around in ideas.

That consideration is framed by a number of priorities and values. As someone whose spirituality is centered on the natural world, questions of how to live sustainably and restoratively are important to me. How do we reduce our impact on the planet? How do we protect life? I’m also concerned with social justice, which I think is intrinsic to environmental justice. I try to live my life in accordance with my values, although I’m always learning and always aware that I could do better.

For all of those reasons, I’m anti-capitalist. I think we need as many alternative ideas as we can about ways to work, share, organise and fairly distribute resources. This has me talking about community a lot. I’m also exploring the ways in which focusing on things as individual problems helps perpetuate them when we need community solutions and social change.

I’m exploring the bard path because I think creative sharing is often the better way to engage with people. We’re storytelling creatures and we respond to emotional content. We also need creativity both to enrich our lives and to open us to new and better ways of existing.

The overtly Druidic content is a fairly small part of what I do. Sometimes I write on obviously Pagan and Druid topics, but I find a lot of the time this just doesn’t seem like the best way to do the Druidry. For some years now I’ve felt that Druidry is best served by me doing the day to day things as outlined above, but reading any individual post it might not be obvious why I think the content is relevant. I don’t know how useful it would be to include more explicit notes about why any given thing seems relevant to me – I’m very open to feedback in that regard.

How we live, day to day is more important than the occasional big gestures. What you do as a Druid is what you do at home, at work and in your social circles. It’s there in how you spend your money, how you vote, what you support, what you allow, what you ignore. Druidry is not separate from life, and I’m always suspicious of people who think that their spirituality isn’t political.

If you think you aren’t political it’s because you feel safely in line with the status quo. If you don’t have to be political it can only be because your needs and rights aren’t threatened in any way. You aren’t hungry. You aren’t ill. You aren’t in any danger that you can see – which given the climate crisis may be a serious error of judgement. To be a Druid and to be self aware should include an understanding of those relationships. If you have the privilege not to need to engage, then as a Druid, the issue of justice should matter to you, and looking away only ever supports those who cause harm.

Trying not to be overwhelmed

The downside with doing events, is overload. Events tend to be noisy and full of people and movement, and at best I find this very tiring to deal with. At worst I end up trying to find some small corner to hide in for a weeping meltdown. I’m becoming more aware of the kinds of spaces and events I can manage, and the ones I really can’t afford to deal with. I’m also figuring out things that help me cope.

This bonnet cuts down my peripheral vision. While I can see through the lace on the sides, it will encourage my brain not to pay so much attention to that part of my field of vision. My krampus hat also has this effect, but it’s a bit warm for summer wear, and this bonnet should also give me some helpful face-shade. Hopefully cutting down my peripheral vision will help make events less challenging by reducing the amount of visual input I’m dealing with.

This is an entirely upcycled project made of things that were around while I was ill. The underlying structure comes from an old cricket hat that was in poor condition anyway. The black lace was from my fabric stash, and the pink and purple band was originally bought as a headband but I don’t wear it much and it seems to work better as part of a hat. The little green creatures were made by Tom, and are Hopeless, Maine entities. They were previously part of a glove puppet, but haven’t seen much use in a while so I re-purposed them.

Empty Cauldrons – not quite a review

This is not an objective review. Empty Cauldrons by Terence P Ward is a book about depression and Paganism. For this book, Terence interviewed a number of Pagans about their experiences, and I was one of those people. We knew each other from the period when Terence was reviewing books for The Wild Hunt and I was sending out review books for Moon Books.

Unlike most of the interview-based books I’ve read, this one does not get samey. The interviews were conversations, and each went in its own direction. Rather than publishing the interviews, Terence uses them as source material to explore various aspects of what’s unique about depression for Pagans. This content is woven together with a wealth of ideas about how to navigate depression as a Pagan. Terence brings a lot of deeply explored ideas to the reader, including spells, rituals, prayers and diverse approaches for thinking about and dealing with depression. It’s really innovative work and any Pagan reading it has a decent chance of finding something that might help them. I have never seen content like this before, it’s  highly original and potent.

I found it refreshing to read something that acknowledges this is an issue many of us just have to live with. There are no promises about cures here, or magical ways of never feeling depressed again. These are tools for coping, for surviving, for climbing back out of the hole. It’s realistic and comforting and does not set anyone up to be further crushed. This is not a book that explores the causes of depression much – because the reasons are so individual. Instead, it focuses on how to live with the reality of it – and the symptoms are a lot more commonly shared by people who suffer. That means the odds of it being relevant to anyone with depression are high.

This is a very readable book, the tone has a nice balance of pragmatism and mild optimism. I find that when I’m severely depressed, anything too optimistic seems unrelatable, patronising or irrelevant. It helps to read work from someone who understands what depression is. Presenting it as something that may not ever be entirely overcome but can be managed and lived with offers hope, but not so much hope as to seem unrealistic.

Reading it also put some things in perspective for me. I recognise entirely the kinds of inner landscapes being described here. A significant amount of the book is about dealing with the kinds of things that does to a person – how depression can make you lose control of your life and do things that only make your situation worse. Reading it made me realise that I’ve done a solid job of fighting that, for years. I get up, I do the essentials, I keep moving, no matter how bad things are inside my head. It probably means things don’t look that bad from the outside – that I do manage to keep going may look like evidence that the depression is mild. But I can hold this knowledge for me and I can be a bit kinder to myself in recognising that I have been fighting an epic battle with this for years, and doing all the things I could have done to make a difference.

More on the publisher’s website https://www.llewellyn.com/product.php?ean=9780738763330

If I were king of the forest

Recently I’ve been contemplating courage – the role that quality has played in my life and the degree to which I’m not feeling it at the moment. I’m not feeling a lot of things; depression has me operating on a narrow bandwidth at the moment and I’m trying to find things I could change that would help with that.

Often people think about courage as a response to fear. Courage is what you call upon to square up to threatening situations. I assume I’ve still got it in me to show up for the things that must be done, but I’ve not been tested in a while on that score. I’m really happy not to be tested and am in no hurry to have to be brave about anything.

The courage I’m missing is more of a state of being. I used to have more boldness, and a willingness to go open hearted into the world and throw myself fully into things. I’ve become cautious, wary, mistrustful. It’s not been an irrational or unreasonable process, not even slightly. It might even represent something like wisdom. However, I don’t like this version of me. I liked me better when I was a bit less sensible and a lot more open and available.

It’s not as simple as choosing differently. There’s an emotional exhaustion underpinning all of this. Experiences have taken a toll, and the prospect of pouring from an empty cup is unbearable. But perhaps that means the question is really about how to refill the empty cup. 

Part of the point of living with courage is to be fearless in face of uncertainty. To love without hesitation, unafraid of whatever does or does not result from that. To give, to care, to show up… That was easier to do when I felt that I made a difference and had things to offer. To find my courage again I need to find a sense of purpose and worth. I need to be able to imagine that showing up fearless and wholehearted is worth something in some way, and not just to me.

How many times can a person get this sort of thing wrong before they stop believing in it? I’ve got a lot of things wrong. I’ve messed up really badly with a number of people along the way – perhaps I chose the wrong people, but there’s an exhaustion that comes from having done the wholehearted thing and have everything I was trying to do fall apart in my hands, yet again. Love like you’ve never been hurt is a bloody difficult thing to aspire to, and nobody talks about what happens when the hurt level starts to compromise your underlying ability to love.

I don’t have answers at the moment, but it seems productive to frame the questions. I don’t want to be closed and anxious. I also don’t want to mess things up by being too intense (I got called weird and creepy a few years ago, that one still haunts me). 

I suspect that reclaiming my courage and my former way of being in the world is going to depend on finding spaces where that’s actually wanted and welcome. I may need help with this. I’m exploring that too, albeit cautiously at the moment.

Pagan Pilgrimage

I have a new project under way that might be of interest. I’m going to be writing a small book about Pagan Pilgrimage, taking slightly over a year to write a chapter a month. This will initially be available to anyone who supports me on Patreon at the Bards and Dreamers level, or higher (Steampunk Druids and Glass Herons also get this content).

My Patreon is https://www.patreon.com/NimueB 

When the book is finished I’ll do an ebook version and give it away to anyone who wants a copy. This is part of the whole logic of how and why I use Patreon. Not everyone can afford books, and I believe in gift economy. If the people who can afford to support me chuck in a few dollars here and there, it makes life easier for me. Writing takes time, and it’s difficult doing that alongside other work – which I have done for many years. Writing also doesn’t pay well and success in the writing profession does not usually equate to enough money to live on.

Over on Patreon, I put up content every week. Join as a Small Thing for one pound sterling a month, and get content twice a month. Join as a Pocket Sized Dustcat and you’ll get otherwise unavailable fiction once a month as well. Bards and Dreamers get everything the Small Things get, plus one substantial piece of Druid content a month. To get both the fiction and the Druidry, join as a Steampunk Druid, and to get all of that plus physical books and other goodies four times a year, join as a Glass Heron.

If you’d like to grab one of the free books previously made feasible by Patreon, you can hop over to my ko-fi shop and help yourself. There are poetry collections, three novels and a Druidry book all in ebook form. https://ko-fi.com/O4O3AI4T/shop Pay what you like – which means feel free to pay nothing. If you like what I do with this blog and want to drop some coins in the hat, that’s also an option on Ko-Fi and I do really appreciate it. 

The Pagan Pilgrimage book will be exploring ideas about sacredness in the landscape, and my thinking on what pilgrimage can mean for a Pagan. Walking has been central to my Druidry for many years, but in the last two years assorted illness has really limited me physically and broadened my perspective in other ways. I have the book planned out, but Patreon is an interactive sort of space and it means people who engage with me there can get involved with shaping the content if they so desire.

At some point later in the year I will be releasing Druidry and the Darkness – an ebook made possible by this process of writing for Patreon. I’ll post about that specifically when it’s available and that too will be free in ebook form for anyone who wants it.

BOOK REVIEW: BEYOND SUSTAINABILITY

This is the first full review for my new Pagan book (out next year). Profound gratitude.

contemplativeinquiry

Highly recommended. Beyond Sustainability – Authentic Living at a Time of Climate Crisis – offers an insightful exploration of the changes we need to make at the personal and collective levels. It is part of Moon Books’ Earth Spirit series, and will be released on 28 April 2023.

Author Nimue Brown says that, “as a Druid, I’ve spent my adult life trying to live lightly. There is a great deal to learn about what is possible, and what’s effective, and this is always a work in progress and never as good as I want it to be. I feel very strongly about the need for real change and quietly rage about greenwashing and the ridiculousness of ‘offsetting’. Harm cannot be offset”.

The book is economical with words and rich in content. Its introduction reflects that “humans are increasingly a miserable species, caught in ways of behaving that give us very…

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Hate is always hungry

Hate can be a powerful bonding and motivating force for groups of people. Defining someone as ‘other’ helps to firm up the edges so we know who we are. Coming together to fight the hated other gives us focus, common purpose and identity. We bolster each other’s feelings of self righteousness and remind each other how justified we are in stamping out the hate object.

If we win, we either have to give up on the heady intoxication of hate or we have to identify a new hate object. A new enemy of the people. And then we all have to band together to destroy them. 

In the beginning, the targets are always the most marginal and vulnerable people. It’s easy to garner support for the abuse of people who are already mistrusted for some reason or another. As a violent and oppressive regime rolls on, it has to identify new targets for hate and inevitably when you’ve taken out the marginal folk, a new margin emerges. People who start the violent uprising can find that they’ve become the people at the edges who are the new targets.

I don’t know how many thoroughly committed Nazis were killed by the Nazis, but that number is not zero. I don’t know how many dedicated cultural revolutionaries were killed by Chinese communism, but that number isn’t zero either.

It is amazing to me that anyone could hear the call to hate and violence and assume that’s always going to go well for them. Hate is always hungry and sooner or later it eats its own.

Living Legends

In the UK we have substantial legal protections for historic sites. If you buy a listed building, you have responsibilities to maintain it appropriately. If you buy a piece of land with an ancient tree on it, there will be no such protections in place for that tree.

When it comes to protecting features in the landscape, we tend to protect sites deemed to be of historical significance – which means sites of human activity. The landscapes we protect tend to be both dramatic and apparently pristine – I have a lot of issues around this because our protected landscapes are often dramatic land shapes that have been stripped of life. These are places devoid of trees, undergrowth and wild beings, maintained in a state of visual drama for the human gaze. Anything with an urban aspect gets little protection.

It would help considerably if we had more protection in place for ancient trees. It would be good if we could undertake to value the history in our landscapes without it having to be so human-centric.

The Woodland Trust has a Living Legends campaign under way. Most of our oldest trees have few legal protections so there is petitioning under way to try and persuade the Government to grant our oldest and most important trees more robust protections, in line with heritage sites, buildings and protected species. The campaign seeks to emphasise tree protection through policy and legal measures, as well as enabling those who manage our most important trees to care for them more effectively. More information, and the petition, can be found here. 

Reasons not to help

If you’re in a situation where you can’t help with something because you’re too busy helping with something else – fair enough. If you don’t have the resources to respond to a crisis, because of the other crisis you’re responding to this is certainly an issue. The person fighting for ecocide laws doesn’t necessarily have anything to spare for tackling homelessness right now. The people volunteering for The Samaritans probably don’t have the resources to be raising awareness of domestic abuse. 

It’s also true that if you are in crisis, you can hardly be expected to be trying to pull someone else out of a different burning building.

And these are never the people online saying ‘we should be helping this other group of people instead.’ People doing the work are never, in my experience, the people who want someone else not to get help. They might make a case for why their cause is more urgent right now – and that can be an important thing to do, too. But even so, I don’t see genuine activists minimising other people’s issues.

I’ve come to the conclusion that ‘we should help these other people first’ is a massive red flag. It can mean you’re dealing with someone who is absorbing hate-media in uncritical ways. It definitely means you’re dealing with someone who believes in a hierarchy of worth and that some people are more deserving of help when in crisis, than others are. How this plays out in practice tends to involve no one being deserving enough and no help being offered. No matter what the excuse is, the idea that some people don’t deserve help, or should be made to wait while other, more deserving people are helped, fundamentally rejects the humanity of people who are in need. 

The people who say we should help our own homeless people first, are also (I strongly suspect) the people who won’t want resources ‘wasted’ on the kind of homeless people who ‘do it to themselves’ or have ‘chosen’ this life. The ones with addictions, especially. The people who say we should help our own poor people first will often turn out not to think all of those people deserve help. Not the single mothers who have fecklessly ‘got themselves pregnant’ not the lazy ones, not the ones who have phones. 

People whose first reaction is to think of reasons why a person should not be helped tend to just keep doing that. It’s not about directing help where it might most be needed, but instead is about abdicating responsibility while trying to look like being moral and having values.