Nimue Brown's Blog, page 364

Thinking about shrinking

I���ve lost a lot of weight in recent years. Occasionally I get complimented on this, and while it is pleasing to be complimented, I am also uneasy. I have not worked for this weight loss and I have not sought it. I have improved my quality of life, I sleep more, walk more, but I also eat a lot more cake. I���m aware that sometimes I lose weight because my digestive system packs up (usually stress induced). We praise people for weight loss, but it can so easily be a consequence of illness, while radical weight loss can be a cancer symptom. There is an assumption that thinner equals healthier, but that isn���t always so.

People tend not to ask me if I���m happy about this change, the assumption is that being thinner must mean being happier. Thin is not a magic cure all for life���s troubles, and a lot of people get thin, find nothing else changes, get miserable, and pile the pounds back on. It does not give you social skills, or turn mean partners into nice people, it does not bring true love in any reliable way. Thin is not always happier. I find bouts of weight loss make me especially vulnerable to depression ��� simply a blood sugar issue, and toxins previously stored in fat cells being released into the blood stream.

Eating less can mean having less energy and being able to get less done. That can mean becoming less able to exercise. Thin is not the same as fit. Nor is thin the same as having a healthy diet that provides enough nutrition. Body size and nutrition have no relationship, one can be overweight and malnourished as well.

I had long believed, mostly due to weight loss adverts, that being thinner meant having more energy, being more comfortable in your body and feeling good about yourself. I���ve dropped a number of clothes sizes. I remain uneasy about my bodyshape, and my energy levels depend entirely on how I balance sleep, activity and food. Size has made no discernible difference. I also have trouble walking into clothes shops and finding items that fit me, suit me and appeal to me. I thought that would get easier, but it hasn���t. Apparently my tastes have been a far bigger barrier in this regard than ever my shape has been.

Brains need fats. So does skin. There���s only so much calorie cutting a person can do before this becomes an issue. Refined sugars and carbs may be more of an issue, but these low carb diets are no good if you want to live an active life. I can���t walk the hills without energy in my food.

There���s also the problem of stopping. If thin is good, and more thin is more good, and amount of weight lost is what you post to facebook for your praise fix, when do you stop? When are you thin enough? And what do you do for a praise fix when you���ve not lost another couple of pounds? When being ever thinner becomes a goal, when ���lose five pounds in a week��� is offered as a good thing regardless of your body size and health, we lock ourselves into a treacherous game. Being underweight is not a good thing. Malnutrition and hunger will wreck your quality of life.

Better to comment on people looking well, I think, than to focus on weight loss. Better to be interested in feeling well, than to be trying to get thinner at any cost.

Beyond being a Druid student

Most people who come to Druidry will start out making no claims about themselves. Recognising that ���Druid��� is a weighty word implying a lot of things about your role, knowledge and how you are seen by others, new-to-Druidry folk tend to talk about themselves as being students of Druidry, on the Druid path and the like. At some point, a transition will happen from student of Druidry to Druid. Where and when it falls will vary, but there���s often an external trigger. Completing a course can feel like qualification. Leading your first ritual, or Grove, being asked to act as celebrant or to teach something to someone else are also points of transition. Once people ask you to do the job, they will use the ���Druid��� title in regards to you, and you may as well get used to it!

Many routes to Druidry are self determining. Even in a structured course like OBOD, the responsibility clearly lies with the student, and as they come into their own power there will be a smooth transition from student to practitioner, most often. Where the difficulty often comes is around more personal teaching, where the student submits to the authority of a teacher. That creates a very particular dynamic. It is all too easy for the student to decide their teacher is the all knowing Guru, and refuse to move on from that into responsibility for their own spiritual lives. It is equally easy for the teacher to fall into the ego trap of feeling important because they have all these students following them around being terribly impressed by them, and want to maintain that.

When this happens, the students are not allowed to cross the threshold into their own Druid status. Or won���t let themselves. To move on they will have to break with the teacher ��� something I���ve seen happen repeatedly. As often as not, this process breaks the student and they retreat from what they were doing. It doesn���t do the teacher much good either, leaving a legacy of wounded feelings that doesn���t make it easier to let future students go. At some point, you have to recognise that even though there are always more things you could teach them, they are ready to go it alone.

How does a teacher avoid this? Not setting yourself up as an authority figure in the first place helps. Avoiding terms that imply power over, or submission to, may help. That way there���s less to break at the end. Don���t teach alone, and if you can, teach with someone whose outlook is different, to avoid dogma and create more space for the student to find their own version of Druidry. If you can���t do that, there are plenty of books now, so you can expose proto-Druids to other perspectives and make it clear you aren���t an absolute authority. If the student is drawn in a direction that is not what you teach, let them go. Don’t make yourself��responsible for their spiritual journey. Ideally as teachers we provide tools and ideas from which other people can find out how they want to do things. If we try too hard to make students too much like ourselves we limit them, and take from them the scope to be themselves. If you are taking a formal teacher-student role, have a strategy for how you are going to release them into the wild at the end.

As a student, I would say as a rule the more devotion, acceptance, submission and passivity a teacher asks for (in any context, not just Druidry) the more reason there is to move on. A good teacher will help you be the best you can be, rather than wanting to align you with their own message.

I will always be a student, because there is always more to learn. As a student I have come to value most the fellow travellers who share their experiences without trying to hold authority over me. Where I mentor, I offer myself on those terms as well. One of the things I especially value about OBOD is the emphasis on the responsibility of the student, and the culture of being people sharing a journey. In such company, the transition to self-identifying as a Druid is powerful, but not painful.

Calling Pagan Bloggers

I know a lot of you who read and comment here have blogs ��� I see the links for the wordpress ones whenever you interact with my stuff. (WordPress would like me to stalk all of you.) Others of you are places wordpress prefers to pretend don���t exist, on tumblr and blogspot and the such. And if you aren���t a blogger, I���m prepared to bet you have friends who are, or blogs you like, so, no slinking off just yet, this could still be relevant!

As you may be aware, one of the things I do is write Pagan books for www.moon-books.net . Last year I started looking after the blog http://moon-books.net/blogs/moonbooks/ (and if you have community related content then talk to me, if I can use that space to support the Pagan community, I will). In the last couple of weeks, I also took on doing book promotion for Pagan authors there.

It would be fair to say that the selling of books is an arcane mystery which no one truly understands. You need a good book, but terrible books sell all too well and all too often. Good reviews and endorsements seem like a good idea, but do they sell books? Who knows? Word of mouth advertising sells books, that���s known, but how you achieve grass roots support for a book remains a guessing game. Some kind of magic happens, away on the ether. To be a marketing person is to practice a very obscure kind of magic, most days. Love, will, belief, and influencing the opinions of others are all part of it.

Like many authors, I actually find the language of marketing profoundly uncomfortable. Terms like ���unique selling point��� leave me cold and twitching. I prefer to think in terms of good relationships, good karma, good reputation and having a good piece of work. Mostly, this seems to work. And when it doesn���t quite work, it���s still good, because you come away with good relationships a good reputation, good work and your good actions having created some good will in your favour. It might not sell this book, but perhaps it will sell the next one. I note that many successful pagan authors are also kind and generous people, and support flows back to them as a direct consequence.

Half the challenge is getting things started. You need the first handful of people to fall in love with a book and tell a friend. You need a few intrepid readers willing to have a go at something new and open to being persuaded by it. The question is, might that be you? Might you be open to reading work from unfamiliar authors and posting reviews? Might you post a shoutout on your blog for someone whose work you love? There���s free ebooks in it, and maybe the odd free print book, and a lot of appreciation, and the kind of good karma that gets results in this lifetime.

If this appeals to you, leave your blogsite link in the comments and a word or two about areas of interest if you have a particular focus. I can pick up your email address from that and add you to a mailing list, and every now and then I���ll be in your inbox, waving a thing I really hope you���re going to fall in love with.

Druidry in Discomfort

It���s very easy to uphold your virtues and beliefs when life is comfortable and straightforward. In times of discomfort, it���s harder to get things right, but often also more important. This is a work in progress, so if you can add to it, or develop it, do pile in to the comments. They���re in order of consideration.

Is this a ���shit happens��� situation of random misfortune that I should not take personally and that does not reflect on my character in any way? In which case, deal with it as best I can and recognise everyone gets these.
Am I uncomfortable because I���ve got something wrong? Am I trying to protect myself from having to deal with my shortcomings? Is the reason for discomfort something I need to square up to and deal with?
Am I projecting something onto someone else? Is it something of mine, or am I casting them in a role or seeing similarities with historical patterns? Is that fair? If it is, I need to move away from them. If it isn���t, I either need to figure out how to adapt my responses, or ask them to consider changing so as to make me comfortable, having made clear the problem is me and not them. If they care about me, they will change, if it is too much hassle to be kind to me, they will not.
Was it an honest mistake? Have they owned it as such and apologised? Let it go and move on, unless they keep making the same mistakes, in which case I should consider it might be deliberate malice not incompetence.
Was an otherwise lovely person having an off day? If it���s a one off, consider pain, low blood sugar, illness, sleep deprivation, depression, or some other crap that had nothing to do with me. If I didn���t cause it, maybe I just need to be gentle with it and patient with them and ask about it when they are feeling better. If not taking it personally helps to improve things all round, it wasn���t personal and there is no need to feel hurt by it.
From their perspective, would it all make sense? Is the problem my baggage and sensitivities? If so, consider explaining or consider letting it go. Consider trying to adjust to be more in line with their world if that way looks better.
Could they be acting out of their own wounds and damaged history? Pain and fear can distort thinking and action in ways that don���t make immediate sense as such from the outside. Is this protective in some way? If it is, what are they protecting and what might I need to do to help them be more at ease, and do I need to ask about it?
Are they acting out of a sense of entitlement? Self importance and posturing tend to go with this, along with total unwillingness to flex for anyone else���s comfort or need. Self important people are not compassionate unless trying to look good, all too often, and are too willing to use others to raise themselves. If there is repeated evidence of a sense of entitlement and self importance, walk away. These people are often working in these ways to protect their own fear and damage, but when it manifests this way, experience to date suggests that they won���t change. People willing to own their vulnerability can be supported in changing. People defending themselves through trying to look bigger than everyone else are simply not ready to change and are likely to cause harm.

Affirmation Economics

Money is the primary means by which our current culture expresses value. This means that we tend to think about value in terms of transaction, and ownership. In turn this also means that we ascribe less value to less tangible things, to commons, and to situations where there is no exchange. We don���t tend to pay for the experience of a view and do not get to put it in a bag and take it home. The value of a view is consequently not always considered that important around planning future building.

We are shockingly poor when it comes to valuing air quality. You can���t buy your own little pocket of clean, sweet air. Perhaps if you could we���d think differently. The cost to health and happiness of poor air is hard to measure, so we don���t measure it, but it exists nonetheless. In truth, happiness is something that often doesn���t exist through financial transaction, but we are encouraged to believe that it does. If payment is the only affirmation you get, that can have serious consequences for your sense of self.

Advertising and marketing steals the language of affirmation and tacks it onto products that in truth, we do not love, are not excited about or inspired by. There���s a language inflation around the ludicrous hyperbole attached to products. If you���re professing love for a snack food, and need for a shampoo, what do you have left in terms of words, for the people in your life? Affirmation language should flow from the one who appreciates towards that which is appreciated, but marketing is the shoddy art of telling us how we ought to feel about the thing held up in front of us.

In this transaction culture, there are so many things we don���t want to pay for. Any situation where the seller has less power than the buyer, or the buyer is in a position to steal the seller���s goods, the seller is devalued. Whether its supermarkets refusing to pay what it costs to produce a pint of milk, or taking pirated books online rather than paying the author, the same thing happens, and it is theft. It is the refusal to recognise the true value of something you want, and to put the transaction ahead of what is exchanged.

If we were truly using money as an expression of value, these situations would be unthinkable, but we go after things we want (and therefore value) while telling creators and producers that they should accept not getting paid. Economic power trumps value. If we took affirmation seriously, we just wouldn���t find this acceptable. Once again, affirmation is demonstrably the enemy of power for the sake of power.

If we want things available that have been made for love, or exist for their own sake, like a landscape, we have to move away from an economy that is all about financial transaction. Feed, house and clothe your bard and promise to take care of them when they are old and ill, and it becomes a lot more reasonable to ask them to sing ���for free���. Value the view for its own sake, value the air, and money ceases to be the primary motive. An economy based on money only values that which it can buy and sell. A culture interested in profit cares far too much about how it can exploit either the buyer or the seller to create the profit margin. A community that sees affirmation as being more than money, but also what money is for, a culture that is interested in value, will not find exploitation, waste or destruction to be tolerable.

Affirmation ��� Personal

Being part of an affirmation culture has considerable impact at a personal level. Many of us find that our self-esteem is tied to how others see us (no matter how many self-help books announce this is not the way to go!). Feeling valued, and knowing where you fit creates emotional security, and we are more likely to invest where we feel valued, too. Most people are happier when their lives feature positive reinforcements and encouragement, when they feel respected and taken seriously.

Less obviously, it is a very powerful thing to be a giver of affirmation. To praise and encourage someone else is to be in a position of power. Not power over them ��� more standing within your own power. To praise, you have to take yourself, your opinions, values and insights seriously. Being able to give praise confers dignity.

In a praise-giving culture it���s a lot easier to come forward with whatever you���ve got and openly seek approval for it. It���s much healthier. If you can honestly seek praise, all kinds of strange, often passive aggressive games of influence and leverage become pointless. If praise-seeking is not derided (we currently tend to demonise and discourage it) but if it���s allowed, everyone��can show their best without shame. By this means you start to get a culture more interested in how good something or someone is, not how much power they have.

People who can exchange affirmation have means of connecting with each other and brightening each other���s lives. In lifting each other up, we are all lifted. It encourages co-operation, and more friendly forms of competition where putting the best forward and seeking the best is more important than being declared winner. A habit of praising and valuing each other reduces jealousy and resentment, and makes it easier to be honest about envy. Wishing to achieve the same standards, be as clever, look as good is a way of expressing both affirmation and envy at the same time. It���s a much less poisonous sort of emotion when you can hold it honestly.

Affirmation gets us into the habit of looking for what���s good, or better, or useful. It���s not just about praising the best, but recognising progress and small wins. Undertaking it makes us more aware of what���s good around us, keeps us alert to small acts of kindness and little, ordinary victories. It also allows us to look at ourselves and see the good bits. Our current culture encourages self-judgement, and a sense of failure (should have gone to Specsavers, etc) we are bombarded with daily messages that tell us we���re too fat, unfashionable, not rich enough and not possessed of the new magic product. That wears people down. Being able to look at what you���ve done and pick out the good bits, and comment on them, and get positive encouragement from others over those good bits… that���s life changing.

Of course if we all did that, perhaps we���d all be less focused on material wealth and conspicuous displays thereof. Maybe if we knew we were respected as parents, valued as workers, loved as good neighbours, found amusing, charming, kind, well meaning, insightful… if we had those things, perhaps it would seem less important to have a new car, and the most fashionable shoes, and the right designer labels. And if that were the case, perhaps we���d find it easier to stop trashing the planet for the sake of all those material luxuries that add so little to our emotional and practical wellbeing. Perhaps we could have less, and enjoy life more, and feel totally awesome about ourselves as a consequence. I reckon we���re splendid enough to pull that off.

Affirmation politics

I���m just going to assert this because I believe it to be true: Political systems mostly exist to keep power in the same place. Democracy is usually an illusion. Here in the UK, was can vote between the same suited men with the same beliefs who will do a bit more or a bit less of the same things. We do not have a great deal more genuine choice than a Feudal peasant, Eton sends us a steady supply of new masters, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It seems, looking at the international scene, that you can���t have substantial change without bloodshed, and then people who acquire power work out ways of getting more of it.

I think there���s a relationship between the ways in which money makes more money, and power makes more power. To lead, you do not have to deliver for anyone else. You don���t have to solve real problems, or improve quality of life. You do need the PR skills to convince people that you���re less bad than the other suit. We vote for what we find most bearable, because there is so seldom an option to vote for what we want. Overpaid smug bastards strutting about before the cameras talking about the heroic tough choices they are making for the good of the country while children go hungry.

Tribes tend to deliver very different political systems, because there is a much more direct relationship between the ruler and the ruled. You may quite literally all eat at the same table. You bear the consequences together, and you know exactly where the one in charge lives. The smaller your unit, the more answerable your glorious leader is, perhaps requiring them to be more like the chair of a committee in which everyone gets a say, negotiating a way forward everyone can get behind. Or leading with vision, safe in the knowledge that if the vision doesn���t deliver, they���re out of a job. I���m not a bloodthirsty person, anything but… however I can see how the idea of sacrifice kings in times of crisis would keep a ruler on their toes. Tough, heroic hard choices for the good of the tribe do not, in that context, mean letting children go hungry. It will fall to leadership to take the brunt ��� and that���s a much better system.

Yesterday I talked about affirmation community. The natural extension of that is a small scale politics dependent on affirmation. People have to approve, agree and be willing for the politics of an affirmation culture to work. In an affirmation culture, everyone has their place, it is known, recognised and commented on. People who have a value are not pawns to sacrifice for the greater good ��� because at that point, the people are the good. There may be times when someone has to step forward and take the risks, put life and wellbeing on the line, but to do that by choice is very different than to be forced into it by a smiling tyrant���s ���tough choices���.

Affirmation creates a social currency of valuing. If we have that, we will not demonise the vulnerable, or think it acceptable to leave the struggling to die. If we learn to see the best in each other, we won���t find it acceptable to have far more than others. We will want to express value through sharing, and we will want to be valued as someone who possesses virtues like compassion and generosity. In an affirmation culture there is every incentive to want to be seen as a valuable contributor to your society, doing the best you can with what you have. And so a culture that was based on affirmation would have no place for the kinds of parasites who give nothing, but draw wealth towards them and ask other people to do all the work, whilst at the same time devaluing the bent backs on which they stand. Separate ideas of value from stashes of money, and everything changes.

Affirmation ��� Community

The exchange of affirmation is one of the core features of a viable and self-sustaining community. Without affirmation exchange, you probably have a group defined either by necessity or leadership, which will not survive the loss of either. To make a tribe, I firmly believe that you need to create an affirmation culture.

Affirmation can mean a number of things. Without getting bogged down in detail, here���s a quick list. Respect, gratitude, appreciation, encouragement, praise, compliments. Gestures that convey liking, enjoying, valuing and affection. Recognition that the person is needed, liked, valued, understood, accepted. Some or all of these things need to be expressed to take effect, and everyone must be to some degree involved in the process of affirming everyone else.

If affirmation primarily flows from one person to everyone else, you maybe have a benevolent tyrant, or a guru. Anyone excluded from affirmation will not get to feel like they are part of the tribe. In loose collections of people this can be a reasonable way of removing people who don���t fit. In families, is tends to be emotionally damaging for the unacceptable one. Equally, anyone who is not allowed to give affirmation is automatically afforded second class status. There is power in being able to distribute praise and implications for authority when praise is a common form of social currency.

I���ve started, led, and participated in a great many groups over the years. Groups with clear self awareness but permeable borders, I don���t like cliques and cults. I���ve watched what makes a group work, and what doesn���t. I have run as a benevolent dictator enough times. To be giver of praise and encouragement is a very easy way of making that role comfortable and useful, more an act of service than one of imposition. Benevolent dictatorships are good ways of getting things done, but they are not communities.

As Pagans we form into tribes of all kinds. Moot, grove, coven, learning circle, order and organisation. Sometimes for logistical reasons these have to have people running aspects of them, but that can be one role amongst many. Shared labour goes more naturally with free flowing affirmation, and people who freely exchange positivity are more likely to share responsibility and work. An affirmation culture makes you a good deal more aware of how other people see your input, and that can be a good counterbalance to those folk who make a lot of noise but otherwise contribute very little. In an affirmation culture, everyone has the right to judge you, and that in turn gives everyone a reason to be co-operative.

One person can define the nature of any group, if they���ve the will to do it. One person can shape the tribe they are in, and inform the society around them. Affirmation gets some really interesting results, some quickly, many over time. If you want a tribe, and a place to belong, affirmation might be the best way forwards. This is how we get cohesion and belonging.

Action adventure Druid

I don���t watch that many films, and I see very little television. I���m not immersed in contemporary norms for entertainment. I think this may be why I���m not engaging with certain things. Generally, calling a book a ���page turner��� is deemed a compliment, but I get annoyed with books that tie me into racing plots and never give me time to think or breathe. Watching films at home, I notice that it���s during the fight scenes that I���m most likely to turn my attention towards a craft project.

Give me big explosions, fast moving fights, rapid chases through revolving scenery with pointy bits, lots of big things bashing into each other, be they machines or vast armies, and I get bored. Almost instantly. Yet this description sums up the majority of the film trailers I���ve been seeing. This, apparently is what I should be excited by, and instead I find it utterly tedious. You���ve seen one almost indestructible thing punching another nearly unbreakable thing and trust me, you���ve seen them all.

It���s not an issue with violence. Ok, I���m not inherently excited by death, gore and things killing things. I worry about the impact we have by continually telling ourselves stories in which violence is the answer to every problem. I like a stylish fight. Not too many participants so you can see the moves. Hand to hand weapons that require skills. I like fight scenes that have a bit of choreography about them ��� blame the swashbuckling films of my childhood, but if you���re going to kill someone, please dance them to death. Then, I can admire the skill and the staging.

In films, I pay attention to panoramic shots, silence, good dialogue, thoughtful narrative and well developed characters. I care less about the visual effects and more about whether the acting and story add up to something emotionally plausible. I like a slower pace with time to think. I am similar in my reading habits, preferring depth to speed every time.

Entertainment of recent years seems to have been led by the idea that people skim over the ���dull bits��� ��� description, introspection, storytelling. Cut to the chase, we���re told. Show us some action. Throw in more explosions. But for me, what we���re doing is cutting the good bits, (landscape, conversation, storytelling, emotional plausibility)in favour of more dullness (things hitting things). I am not an adrenaline junkie, I do not want films that resemble a roller coaster ride.

It came as a pleasant surprise to find that I rather liked the second Hellboy film. There was a good swordfight, and some pace dropping for dramatic effect, and some lingering lovingly over the settings. And for the lack of those things, and too much hitting, I did not enjoy the Hobbit trilogy anything like as much as I wanted to.

Reading the landscape

The history of a land is often very present in its shapes, surfaces and in remaining structures. That which is beneath the soil ��� remnants of builds for example, will change the vigour of plants and create a visible indicator of what went before. Ghosts of old hedges and paths, remnants of mediaeval field systems can all be in a UK landscape. ��There are roads and field layouts in this country that are 4000 years old, and more.

It is not an easy thing, learning to read a landscape. As an avid walker, I���ve invested a lot of time in trying to make sense of what���s around me. Old sheep tracks, wood boundaries, new woods that indicate a different history, yet have ancient forest flora on the ground… I found the shell of a cottage once that had a tale to tell. Outside the cottage walls, was a field. Inside, were plants more normally associated with woodland cover. Certainly the shade must have helped, but it inclined me to think that the cottage had been built in a wood, or a recently cleared wood, and the field had come after. When the cottage fell to ruin, the woodland plants grew and reproduced themselves. Seeds can lie dormant in the soil for a very long time.

Hedges tell stories of enclosure ��� if you���ve got hawthorn, blackthorn and elder it���s probably an enclosure hedge. More species suggest older planting. The enclosure act limited access to the land for ordinary people, so these hedges are remains of a key historical moment.

Paths tell of lost settlements sometimes, of working routs and livelihoods now disappeared. Woodlands hide the cuts and bumps of old quarries. On the higher ground, earthworks speak of ancient ancestry, their world hard to imagine.

The land is full of history, full of stories. Little myths and anecdotes are part of a landscape, and knowing those tales and the locations they relate to roots us in the places we occupy.

I would recommend Oliver Rackham���s work for anyone in the UK, and for fellow Gloucestershire folk, hunt out Alan Pilbeam. Wherever you are, there will be local history groups, and you may luck out and find landscape historians already working. If not, then the means to learn about reading yor own particular landscape can be found.