Nimue Brown's Blog, page 307

The Energy of Anger

Anger gets things done. It gives us the drive to rise up, making noise and change. If someone can tap into our anger, we can be persuaded to act in all kinds of unsavoury ways, feeling justified by the force of our emotions. As we live in a culture where anger itself is seen as a reason for violence, if we get angry, any physical or psychological violence we undertake as a consequence can seem justified. We may even be proud of it, our anger having told us that we have the moral high ground, and that the ends justify the means.

I think it’s always worth being wary about what we can be manipulated into doing. So much of what is nasty in politics right now comes from feeding the anger of people who feel squeezed and then telling them who to blame. And so the anger that should more rightly have been directed towards power and money is instead used to hate the poor, refugees and other powerless, vulnerable people who make easy targets.

The energy of anger feels powerful, but the trouble is that on its own, all we can use it for is to knock down. Sometimes a bit of knocking down is necessary, but it’s never a whole solution. If all we have to work with was anger then we are not prepared for dealing with the aftermath – again modern politics is littered with unfortunate examples. We go to war, we have no idea how to build peace.

In the short term, the rush of anger energy may seem productive, but it tends to emotionally exhaust people. It won’t feed or inspire you, and to stay angry you have to deliberately keep stoking the fires of hate, and this seldom does anyone much good. Groups whose unity depends on anger have to keep finding new things to hate in order to keep moving. When anger is your energy there has to be a bad guy, an enemy, and something to fight against. You can’t make anything better when your whole way of being relies on having someone to fight. You can’t smash patriarchy, you have to build an alternative.

It’s really important not to get caught up in anger, but instead to keep an eye on what we are fighting for. What’s the real goal? What are we building? How are we going to make things better? Anger used alongside this, for short term necessary bursts of action, can serve a cause well. Anger on its own can only lock us into more fighting and destruction.

Jackdaw charms

Smaller, and not as mythologized as crows and ravens, jackdaws are nonetheless charming birds. They are clever opportunists, profoundly sociable and I can’t help but feel they have something of a sense of humour.

I once lived in an old cottage where jackdaws had nested in the chimney. As I wanted to use said chimney, I had a long, filthy job of extracting their wood. They didn’t give up, and all that winter would throw odd twigs down, or just get on the top and make jackdaw noises. I moved out, and they reclaimed their space. It felt like a friendly sort of a battle.

I’ve noticed over the years that jackdaws are so sociable, they’ll attach themselves to other corvid groups. I used to moor up under a rookery sometimes, and there would always be a few jackdaws knocking around as well. Locally, they have an enormous roost in the park. At sunset you can watch them flying back from the hills and fields, in groups of half a dozen or so, to form a giant roost of hundreds of birds. I often see them heading out in the mornings as well. As the roost settles for the night, the sound of them chatting and getting comfortable is so loud, that we had to wait for them to finish before anything bardic could begin in their space.

What can jackdaws teach us? That nature doesn’t always take itself too seriously. That noise, squabbling, and messing about are not exclusively human characteristics. That we aren’t the only creatures to actively seek the company of beings from a different species.

Alternatives to forgiveness

Forgiveness is often held as a spiritual value, and doing it is supposed to make us better people. There are times when I’d cheerfully go along with that – when what I’m dealing with is just human mess, and the kind of innocent failing that comes from being alive. To learn, we have to risk messing up. To try new things, or engage with new people, we have to risk mistakes. As I commented on recently, second chances are good, and precious things, in the right context.

There are people I won’t forgive. People who crossed lines into deliberate harm, and repeat offenders. Second chances are gifts, but once it’s third, fourth, fifth chances, I stop being cooperative. Sometimes not forgiving people is essential to holding boundaries and maintaining personal safety. Sometimes, there is no excuse, no explanation and no apology that can fix what has been done.

So, what to do when forgiveness isn’t an acceptable way forward? Hanging on to anger with someone can mean hurting yourself. It can mean becoming defined by the story of what they did – and the main effect of that is to give the person you can’t forgive even more power over your life. Squashing anger is a recipe for trouble. Denying it, even if we think that anger isn’t the sort of thing we should feel, is of no great help. First, there has to be a process. If may be rage, or grief, it may be like the stages of bereavement. Whatever you have to go through, do it. Deal with what happened and how you feel about it. This will take exactly as long as it takes.

Get to a point where you can put it down. This is not the same as forgiveness, because it in no way lets the other person off the hook or creates peace. If someone has, for example, tried to destroy your life, why would you want peace with them? What I need in that context – what I think most of us need – is safety and distance. In terms of the inner self, it means processing it so that I can get them out of my head, and not be occupied or troubled by what happened. In more extreme circumstances, counselling is appropriate for this.

There are people I will never forgive. But I very seldom think about them. I don’t engage with them, in life or in my head unless something triggers it. I don’t lug the rage and resentment round with me. I do still have my scars, which I will not do anything to negate or diminish. It’s the scars that we have to make peace with – learning to see them as things done to us, and not defining features of who we are. Forgive the body that carries the scars. Forgive the heart that was broken and the too trusting nature that let this happen. Forgive the naivety, the hope, the desperation, the gullibility, the not running away fast enough. The not knowing it was wrong, or how to defend your boundaries, or whatever it was. Forgive where you need to. Forgive the honest, well meant human mistakes – yours and other people’s.

Honest mistakes, and human failing deserve forgiveness. Deliberate cruelty, does not.

 

Citizen of Nowhere, or, the Ranty One.

This is a great post, guaranteed to cheer up anyone who has been left feeling a bit queasy by Tory rhetoric. Which is probably anyone in the UK reading this blog, at a guess, unless you’ve already found a decent antidote …

What would William Morris say?

Wouldn’t it be great to wake up and find yourself somewhere else? To discover that the cares of the past have all dissolved into a glorious new future where, if you don’t feel at home, you can at least know that all you were fighting for back in your day finally came to pass? That’s what happened to a certain Mr Guest back in 1890 … and at the moment I can’t help wishing it would happen to me.

Yes, it’s a utopian idea. Utopia – good place? Or no place? Certainly no place like home at the moment. My jaw dropped when I saw Teresa May’s comments about those claiming to be a citizen the world – indeed, the whole Tory Party Conference has seen my jaw on the floor. But it’s that comment “if you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of…

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A shifting daily practice

The idea of having a daily practice is widespread and popular. It’s an obvious difference between being a holidays and high days kind of Pagan, and a series full time Pagan. What does it mean to have a daily practice in the context of a nature based spirituality?

I admit it’s an idea I’ve struggled with. I’ve been consciously Pagan for something like twenty years now. I do something deliberately Pagan most days – some kind of spiritual expression. There are often stretches of doing the same thing daily for a while – that might be prayer, or meditation, it might be a daily divination session to tune in to the cosmos, or deep working with creativity, or walking to commune with some specific thing… But it seldom stays as the same daily practice for long.

The walking gives a case in point. I had a long stretch last year of going out at twilight to commune with the bats, and then the winter came and the bats hibernated. I had a few weeks this spring of going out to commune with young owls, but the owls became adults and went hunting by themselves in early summer. I go up onto the hills to commune with the orchids, but they aren’t there for most of the year. Where I might go and what I might do is inherently seasonal. The day length and temperatures change, and it just doesn’t make sense to do the same things always. Or if I do the same things the consequences will be different. I can’t get up at 7 and celebrate the dawn in the middle of winter.

There’s something in the idea of a fixed daily practice that appeals. It suggests discipline and dedication, and seriousness. In practice, it doesn’t work for me, and I like what I do a good deal better when it’s more responsive, and thus constantly shifting.

Deep or shallow spirituality?

This was inspired by Tommy Elf’s recent post – https://tommyelf22.wordpress.com/2016/10/10/going-deep-or-swimming-shallow/

What makes a spiritual practice deep or shallow? It’s no doubt easier to judge others from the outside than it is to make a fair assessment of our own spiritual paths. On reflection, what I have is odd, to say the least…

When I was trying hardest to be ‘deep’ I was at my most obsessed with surface and appearance.

When I tried to be important, I was at my least spiritual.

When I tried to teach others, I did a great deal of learning.

When I stopped striving and started seeing what happened, more happened.

When I was kinder to myself, I found more reasons to practice gratitude.

When I went to the woods for the sake of the woods, and not in search of anything sacred, I found something sacred.

When I let myself enjoy the surfaces of things, it stopped feeling like something shallow.

When I stopped trying so hard to seem deep, I learned how sacred mirth can be.

I suspect I could go on with this almost indefinitely. Spirituality is paradox. It’s the learning that teaches you how little you know.  It’s the wisdom to realise you are an idiot, and the devotion to be able to handle things with a light touch. But beyond that, it’s whatever makes sense to us, regardless of what sense, if any, that makes to anyone else.

Becoming a Bard

How do you go from being a person who does not perform, to being a fabulous bard with a song or poem up their sleeve for every occasion and who can give a dazzling performance in any space? It may seem like an impossible leap. I’m going to start running a thread about techniques and tactics for becoming a bard. I’ve been a performer for a good twenty years, but I’ve also run spaces where I’ve been able to help people cross this threshold. I’ve got a fair amount of experience to draw on, and a desire to help as many people as I can realise that even though yes, it is a big, intimidating looking step, it is also an entirely feasible step to take.

You probably weren’t one of the kids cast in lead roles for school productions. You probably weren’t chosen for solos in the choir – if you joined it. Most of us get signals – more and less explicit – from early on that when it comes to music and drama, we don’t make the grade. We stop singing, we don’t act, we don’t declaim poetry, we don’t improvise tunes in the middle of woods, but probably we always wanted to. Then we find out way home to Paganism, and the shining promise of the bard path, and all the things we wanted and were afraid to do because some numpty told us as children that we couldn’t.

Where do you even start?

I recommend starting by training your memory. Commit some things to memory – small poems, chants, songs that aren’t too tricky, a tune, a prayer – pick things you like and that seem easy. Learn them so that you can recite them by heart. Learn them so that they become part of you. (Methods for learning is something I’ll cover at some point later). Get a dozen pieces you know you can do well before you think about performing. It’s tempting to get one thing and take it straight out, but this isn’t the best way. It may go well, and then they ask for a second, and you aren’t ready…

There is a confidence that comes from really, really knowing a set of pieces. The time you devote to learning them, you will also learn about your relationship with said pieces – what each means to you, what’s important in it, and from that, how to put it across well. If you explore a number of forms, you’ll find out what comes most readily to you, what appeals, and what doesn’t suit you so well. Be prepared to keep revisiting this, to broaden what you do, but at the same time, know your strengths.

We don’t use our memories as much as our ancestors did, you find this is a muscle that lacks for tone, and it will take time and effort to strengthen it. That’s ok, just put in the time. The vast majority of us can remember stuff – and can learn and remember far more than we think we can. Unless you have a brain injury or similar level of damage, do not imagine that you can’t remember things. Keep pushing. Work on it every day if needs be. Repeat, and repeat and repeat. Get used to working at it.

One of the mistakes people who aren’t performing make, is that they look at the apparently effortless work of a skilled bard, and assume that what the bard is doing is effortless. To be able to seem like you’re telling a story off the cuff, or to be so easy for a song that you can re-write bits of it to suit the occasion, is not proof of lack of effort. To get to that stage has taken the person years of dedication and graft. Hours and hours of practice. To a significant degree, it is the willingness to do the work that will divide the bards from the non-bards.

Second chances

Life cannot be depend upon to deliver us second chances. Moments pass. Things that we allow to slip through our fingers swim away, never to be seen again. People die, and we never said ‘I love you’. Sometimes an earthquake means there is no going back to the much loved place. Sometimes technology means the job no longer exists. Best to jump now, I always think. While you can, while it’s there to be jumped for. Tomorrow may be too late.

Sometimes life does deliver second chances, and these are rare and precious gifts. If you know you got it horribly wrong the first time, if you know what the mistake was, or why you hesitated, if there is regret… A second chance is a miracle.

To give a second chance is to practice benevolence and generosity. It is to forgive, and to hope for better, to trust, and to create opportunity. Get it wrong, and of course everything can go awry that went wrong before. But there are only so many opportunities to give second chances, as well. How much your own heart can endure will be one of the variables. How much the need for the second chance comes for the kind of human mess we’re all so perfectly capable of. Questions of need, of ability, of courage. Not to be snatched from you by those with a heady sense of entitlement, but to be given carefully.

Turn with the Year

I’ve done a lot of chanting along the way. It can be a beautiful, powerful thing that forges connections and inspires participants. It can also be drab and tedious. For me, the key thing with a chant if you want to sing it more than a couple of times, is to mess with it. Add harmonies. Drop voices in and out, do bits as a round. Play!

So, this is a video of House Brown playing about with my ‘turn with the year’ chant. It isn’t a perfect, polished sort of performance because we’re mostly improvising. In order to play, it’s really important to give yourself permission to not be perfect, because it’s the space created by imperfection that also allows for real magic.

 

Turn, turn, turn with the year, turn with the seasons, turn with the earth. Turn, turn, turn with the tide, light into darkness, death to rebirth.

Houdinis of Bewilderland

This post is the beginning of a much longer adventure, so do have a look and if looking liking, keep reading. There’s a lot here I found resonant, and that echoes a lot of my own feelings and intentions, although I don’t really have my thoughts about creativity and society in anything like this coherent an array, as yet. In face of all the things out there that are difficult, painful, and just plain wrong, we need hope. This is a series of blogs that are all about how we find and develop hopeful, viable ways of being. Enjoy.

The Bardic Academic

Creative Escapology in the Age of Austerity

by Kevan Manwaring

This article was written as a commission for the Doggerland journal –  to make it more web-friendly, I will serialize it here in digestible extracts. It’s initial title was ‘Prepping for the Art-apocalypse: creative survival in the Age of Austerity’ but I decided that just fed into the current Neoliberalist, survival-of-the-fittest, paradigm and its predilection for ‘disaster-porn’. I want to offer a more  positive approach, although the question I started it with still stands:

In an era of philistine-funding cuts in the arts, corporate-controlled channels of consumerism, and a fear-fuelled conservatism in commissioning and programming, what strategies are available to us to foster artistic survival?

Part One

Welcome to the Smeuse-House

The whole is made up of holes. We stitch together our rags and tatters and make something out of nothing. Slowly the picture emerges. Metonymically, to the arrhythmia of…

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