Nimue Brown's Blog, page 382

Telling nature stories

How we tell stories about the natural world informs so much of our understanding.

I only started to learn about moths this summer. There are hundreds of different kinds, and I was familiar with a few of the day-fliers, but until recently most moths were just dusty night things and I could not identify any of them. I have a long way to go.

I’ve been to two moth walks, and seen quite a few of them now. They have a subtle beauty – many of them spend their days on tree trunks, cunningly camouflaged. Some have the option of flashing colourful underwings to see off predators. Where there are moths, there are also usually bats feeding on them, and my bat identification skills are not what they could be.

There are different ways of knowing and learning. We can acquire tick-box knowledge, putting names to shapes, but little else. It’s good for showing off, especially if you can do it in Latin. Rather than connecting us to the world, abstract facts can just reinforce a sense of superiority. That which you can name, you have power over, and nature does not get to name itself.

Other kinds of knowing are all about the context – knowing how what you are seeing lives, where it fits with other things, what it feeds on, what its cycles are. The cinnabar moth and the ragwort share a story which in turn has implications for livestock. Some kinds of knowledge help us see the relationships, the interdependence and the fragility. Being able to spot a cinnabar caterpillar is one thing. Knowing the plant it is sat on can make your horse sick, is another.

We’ve constructed ways of learning about nature that reinforce our sense of dominance over it and our belief that we are entitled to exploit. Other stories are available, like the stories of how moths, bats and trees all relate to each other.

Spiritual exposure

We are all our own priests and priestesses as Pagans, which rather suggests we do not need anyone to mediate between us and the divine. You can do that for yourself. What we don’t talk about so much, is what happens if you can’t.

Many Pagans have stories to tell of direct, personal experience when Gods have spoken to them, shown them things, made requests, demands and offers. There are many others who don’t do Gods so much, but have intense relationship with spirit, spirit guides, ancestors and the like. Some part of the universe speaks spiritually to them in a way they are confident about recognising and understanding. This makes it very hard to put up a hand and say ‘that’s not what I get.’ It feels like failure, lack of effort, insufficient worthiness. How can I call myself a Druid if nothing is particularly talking to me? This is what I’ve got, because apart from a handful of odd experiences I am none too confident about, I do not hear the voice of spirit. Gods do not choose me, or talk to me. I have no guides and no totem anything.

It’s not for lack of trying. Years of study, lots of rituals, deep work with meditation and prayer over many years. Dedications, offerings of self, work done. I’m not that good at belief, and perhaps that closes the door on me, but others who do not believe have startling experiences that change them into people who know. That’s not been me. I’ll admit I have all kinds of less than perfectly enlightened responses to the profound and intense experiences others describe. Jealousy, above all else. Frustration, confusion. Why them and not me? What am I doing wrong? What should I be doing more of? I come with a will to serve, give, work and so forth, why are so many others worthy of attention when I am not?

It would be easy to hide this, to lie about it and pass myself off as being just as beloved of the gods as the next Pagan. It would be easy to become wholly disenchanted and settle into comfortable atheism and feel no responsibility for what I am not. I’ve managed to settle on Maybeism, holding the possibility, and accepting this is where I am and that for whatever reasons, a great deal of regular Pagan religious experience just doesn’t happen for me. I can feel inspired, and I can feel wonder, and perhaps I have to just get over the desire to feel a bit special and acceptable to deity, and get on with making the best of what I have.

Writing ‘When a Pagan Prays’ felt very exposed indeed, because it is a confession of what is absent in my life and practice, and exposure of what it means to have no certainty, no confident firsthand experience. Putting it out there left me feeling decidedly naked and vulnerable – now all the people who are proper Druids and Pagans, in relationship with the Gods of their ancestors, will know that I am not one of them, not part of their experience. At times it feels like it is just me; that everyone else can do these profound spiritual things that are beyond me, but perhaps that isn’t so. Perhaps there are others quietly staying silent about what they are not, and what they can’t do. My hope is that if there are, this exposure of experience will at least make that less bitter, less demoralising.

A person can be spiritual without having certainty, can dedicate to the ideas of Gods and religions even if nothing speaks back to them. We can choose ways of living and being because they seem like wise choices, not because we had a vision or a higher being told us to. I’d like to think it is entirely valid to choose a spiritual way of life even if your quest for the numinous never brings you to anything. It is the choice, the quest and how we choose to live as a consequence that matters most, if all we have is a fairly mundane experience of the world.

Gods of the wild yeast

In my kitchen a strange, magical process is taking place. Alchemy, if you will. The wild yeast has found the blackberries I harvested and laced with sugar to attract it, and now there is fermentation. I’ve not made wine this way before – although it is traditional. The same is true of bread – while you can get packets of yeast, yeast is airborne, and it will come to you.

Fermentation is the basis of settled agriculture, which in turn is the source of our civilisation. There are debates as to whether we started planting cereals for the beer or the bread first, but either way, the wild yeast was essential. We have a plethora of grain and grape deities. Wine and bread crop up a startling amount in the Bible as well. I can’t think of any deities of the wild yeast (pile in if you know). It is the transformation into bread that makes the grain easy to digest. Raw grain from the field is not easy to eat or extract energy from.

The easy calories of bread and the intoxication of alcohol both give us a large feel-good effect. If you want to feel that the world is a safe and benevolent place, a belly full of bread and beer will aid this process considerably. Get drunk and you’ll hit the phase of feeling like you love everyone. Obviously if you glut on the bread and the beer, less good things happen in the longer term, especially if you aren’t using those calories for something. But our ancestors were more likely to starve than balloon, this probably wasn’t so much of an issue for them.

Enchanted by the magic of wild yeast in my kitchen, and the wondrous transformation of blackberries into wine, conscious of the role of the yeast in creating our own culture… I have come to the conclusion that Paul Mitchell is onto something serious with Far Better Pagan (play it, it’s a very funny song and then go to his site, http://paul.makingithappen.co.uk)

http://paul.makingithappen.co.uk/mp3/far%20better%20pagan.mp3

(I do love my God and I love my Goddess, but I’m a far better Pagan when I am pissed).

And for a more sober bread-based magic, Talis Kimberly and Wild Yeast:

 

We have created a habitat that is unnaturally lit, with few mysterious shadows in it. Most of aren’t feverish, starving or drunk in the affluent parts of the western world. We’re in the stiff reality of caffeine, worshippers of the bean. If we spent more time with the wild yeast, perhaps the world would look very different to us.

 

 

 

With the Fisher King

I brought my broken heart hidden in a chest. Not my ribs, but metal, locked firm to hide away the shame of it. For fear of how my shattered centre would seem to others. For fear of ridicule and rejection, I placed my pain in that box and shut the lid, and went on through the world until I came at last to the great hall.

There, the Fisher King lay, blood endlessly seeping from wounds that would not close. Staining cloth, smearing floors, a life seep affront with metallic perfume. And yet, a King I would bow to. The horror in me asked ‘how can one rule who is so weakened?’

What could I do but sit with him?

From the locked box in my arms, the tattered wreck of my heart cried out: How can one who bleeds so much be this strong? And so broke all the bonds and bared itself.

How can one bleed and bleed and still hold sovereignty? How can one hold sovereignty in this age, and not bleed?

How can my fragile heart be a hidden shame

When the Fisher King lies wounded

And the land has yet to be healed?

 

 

 

(I should mention that I wrote this having not seen the film, and unaware of the Robin Williams connection. Something in the ether, perhaps.)

Book Review: When a Pagan Prays

Nimue Brown:

An in-depth review from Lorna, particularly useful in that it reflects on who this book would, and would not be likely to suit…

Originally posted on From Peneverdant:

Nimue Brown is a Druid author based in Stroud in Gloucestershire. When a Pagan Prays: Exploring Prayer in Druidry and Beyond charts her personal exploration of prayer within her particular style of Druidry and in other world religions.

Nimue defines Druidry as ‘a spiritual dedication to seeking knowledge and developing skills and creativity for the good of your land and community.’ She describes herself as a ‘nontheist’ and ‘maybeist’. Writing from a position where the existence of deity is in doubt has ensuing implications for the development of the book and the topics it tackles.

Whilst animism and polytheism are mentioned broadly there is no detailed discussion of Pagan paths based on the presupposition of the existence of gods, such as Wicca, Heathenry and Brythonic and Gaelic polytheism. Instead Nimue covers philosophical issues such as to whom we pray, the ethics of prayer and practicalities such as how to craft…

View original 233 more words

My Sadness Tantrum

“All sadness is a tantrum” – I’ve seen this thought on facebook, the author has several hundred thousand page likes, so a lot of people got this message recently. Welcome to my sadness tantrum, feel free to lie on the floor beside me, thrash about and howl if you need to. I’m not ‘enlightened’ enough to have stopped feeling pain, and I’m enough of a blasphemer against this position to think that sadness is a good thing.

I have my personal sadness around loss, setback, frustration and physical pain. Things that scare me make me sad. I see these as aspects of my being human and I am not ashamed of them. Empathy makes me grieve for the suffering of friends and share in their sadness. It makes me cry over the things I cannot fix or undo. I believe that sorrow teaches us compassion. Then there is the place beyond sadness. The rage and anguish caused by images of war, and fracking; the horrors we inflict on each other and on this world. I weep over those. I invite you to weep too, because our salvation may lie in the spur to action that comes from our broken and bleeding hearts. Howling is magic. Grief harnessed begets transformation. This is where powerful, positive change starts – when we can no longer bear things as they are.

I have not achieved enlightenment, I’m not expecting to any decade soon. I’m so far from that state, I haven’t a clue what it means, and whether getting there means you dispense with human emotion. I rather hope not. I think our emotions are often our saving grace as a species; grief and joy are twins that inspire and enable us. If enlightenment means losing that, I guess I’m opting out of the spiritual race. So, I know nothing about this stuff. I do however know a bit about tantrums.

“Tantrum” is the word we use to describe a perception of disproportionate emotional outbreaks – usually from children, or from people we wish to ridicule and undermine by likening them to undisciplined infants. To class something as a ‘tantrum’ is to belittle and dismiss it. If something is “just a tantrum” it lacks worth, and relevance – it can be ignored.

Small children are prone to disproportionate emotional outbreaks, from an adult perspective. I’ve raised a child, I’ve hung out with parents, this territory I do know. Your toddler knows nothing of torture, murder, war and crime. A tiny setback and a minor pain can be the worst horrors they have ever endured. The frustration of being thwarted is unbearable because it is quite literally the worst experience they have ever had and it totally challenges their sense of self and their place in the world. Ideally as a parent you have to do two things with this, and they are equally important. You have to help your child gain enough perspective to cope with life, without traumatising them about the state of the world they have joined. This is a process. It takes years. You have to do this, ideally, whilst not undermining their sense of self. That means not entirely invalidating their emotional responses, not making them feel stupid or worthless because they cried when you thought they shouldn’t. It is a bloody difficult job.

You don’t get to fast track on this one. You don’t get to be an emotionally mature adult without first being a shrieking toddler and doing whatever you do with the chaos of adolescence. There are no shortcuts, so I’m prepared to bet that if enlightenment is available, there are no shortcuts there either. I also suspect that knocking someone back doesn’t help them grow. We are where we are – however flawed that is, however far from where we think we ought to be. You have to start from where you are, but if you start out ashamed of your point of departure, that isn’t a lot of help. More the opposite.

I don’t know what enlightenment looks like, but my gut says it should not be smug and toxic, invalidating the struggles of people who are ‘less advanced’.

Ultimate yarn-bombing

The boy and I set off from Stroud at half eight yesterday. There were two coaches from Stroud, and we knew many of the other people who were going. Plus we had Green MEP Molly Scott Cato on our coach, so we were feeling especially awesome. I spent much of the hour and a half or so of journey sewing. Final pieces of scarf had come in and needed attaching to each other, so many of us were doing just that.

Arriving at Aldermaston was intimidating – the double fences, the barbed wire, the large number of police officers, the large, uneasy-making buildings. Here, they make nuclear weapons, which was a sobering and unsettling thought. And there we were, standing up to nuclear weapons… with wool.

And such wool! Brightly coloured banners and scarf sections, with words of peace and hope worked into them. More than the needed 7 miles of wool, made by hands around the world. Knitting full of love and intention, and expression of our desire for a better, safer world. 5000 people knitted. Jaine (who organised) explained it worked out at 27 years of work. An incredible expression.

Huddled together outside the coaches, with a lot of police around, the fences to one side, traffic whizzing by… I felt very small and nervous. What we were up against seemed so enormous, this terrifying, slaughtering power backed by the state. Then the wool came out, and we started to unravel our first roll. The drumming and cheering started. People sang. Those of us with needles started running around to connect up pieces as required, and the whole atmosphere changed. We were making something, coming together as a community, armed with knitting needles and wool to challenge the most deadly weapons on the planet. As Theo and I were both on sewing up duty, we raced along the lines looking for gaps, needles held high like swords. It felt potent.

By 1pm, we had the seven miles of wool in place. We held it up, we made noise, we held silence, we made more noise, we rolled it up and took it back in pieces. There were speeches. Molly Scott Cato talked about the relationship between the arms industry and the nuclear industry. The relationship between arms manufacture and international slaughter. The need for peace.

The proposed new Trident project we are protesting against will cost somewhere around 100 billion pounds (government estimates 80 billion, other estimates are higher). What would you do with that much money? How many peacekeepers could you fund? How much diplomacy could you enable? How many refugees could you help? How many war criminals could you bring to justice? How many hungry people could you feed?

Trident will give us the means to kill 45 million people.

I think that stands reflecting on. Ask in what circumstances you would feel comfortable with the slaughter of 45 million people, and the consequences of using nuclear arms on that scale. You can find out more about anti-nuclear protest here – http://tridentploughshares.org/

With the protest over, the scarf is being re-worked to become many blankets that can be sent to places of need. Some of them, no doubt will go to refugees from war zones. I’ve brought a segment home and have started the task of undoing and remaking. However, getting those blankets to where they are needed, is going to cost, so if you can help out at all with that, go here, please, and do what you can. http://www.woolagainstweapons.co.uk/?page_id=1104

I’m very glad I was there, proud to have been a part of that, awed by the scale, by the love and labour that went in to making it all work. My parents were protesting against nuclear weapons before I was born. My son is getting involved. Maybe by the time he has children of an age to protest, we won’t be still having to stand up against this madness. I hope, his will be the last generation called upon to resist, and that we will see sense, and stop making insane weapons that cost the earth and that we could never use without damning ourselves in every way.

Wool against Weapons

I have gone off today on a coach from Stroud with other Wool Against Weapons folk, to protest through the medium of wool. So, rather than a usual blog pot, here are some photos – both taken by Chris Hastie at Druid Camp and are re-used here with permission.

This one was taken early on Saturday night, and as Talis Kimberly sang about Eleanor Roosevelt knitting, Sophie and I were sewing segments of scarf together. The scarf went up for a bit of a dance, which was fabulous as it stretched the length of the marquee!

That’s Tom sat next to me, looking serious.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This one shows a section of scarf laid out in a morning meeting. After the protest, the pieces will be reassembled into blankets and sent to projects that need them. I’m hoping to be involved with that stage, too.

I’ve contributed some knitting (not a whole piece, but lots of bits of communal pieces) and a fair bit of sewing, and some emergency crotchet to fill in a narrow bit.

Tiger feet

At the end of September, the 5 Valleys Walk around Stroud happens – an annual event raising money for meningitis charities. 21 miles up and down hills makes it quite a challenge. However, we’re doing it – all three of us – and the boy (he’ll be 12) is fundraising. At time of writing he has over £200 of sponsorship pledged (thank you everyone who has donated so far). We’d set an original target of raising £100 so the support has far exceeded our expectations already.

Meningitis can kill, and leaves many survivors damaged, so the charity – Meningitis Now – is about research and rebuilding lives.

As we do a lot of walking, and a fair amount of going up and down hills, we think we can manage this. I’ve done it before – a long time ago, in the rain. It’s further than we’d normally walk. We thought about doing it last year, but did not feel equal to the challenge. This year I’m a lot fitter and healthier, the boy has radically improved stamina, and as Tom has always had elf-feet, we assume he’ll be fine. We adults are going as support crew for the lad, and donating to participate. All the fundraising is his.

So, if you can spare a pound or two  to support both the boy and the cause, that would be awesome. He’s been really inspired by how people are responding to him and will give the challenge everything he’s got. And otherwise, take a moment to familiarise yourself with the symptoms  because meningitis strikes rapidly and being able to spot it quickly makes worlds of difference.

The photo shows James outside a barrow, on the day we tested out his new walking boots. He’s very proud of the boots, and of what he can do in them.

The day after

So, yesterday was an experiment in fasting, with no caffeine and no solids. Not eating did not present a huge challenge, staying off the caffeine was much harder, although I didn’t get the withdrawal headache until well into the afternoon – I take that as a good sign in terms of addiction level.

In terms of the ‘rest day’ side of things, I did manage to take the day fairly gently – physically speaking, and also resisted the temptation to start painting a wall. But, I finished the current draft of the next Pagan book, finished making a rag rug, worked on a novel, had OBOD students to write to, and a bunch of blog related things to write and sort. A relatively quiet day compared to normal outputs, because I spent more time reading and had an earlier night than I normally do, but still busy.

I slept long and deeply, and I had some of the strangest, and most significant dreams I’ve had in a long while. I have reoccurring anxiety dreams about being back at school. Last night I dreamed about being back in the one space at school that was reliably happy for me, which made me realise that in twenty years of reoccurring school dreams, I had never dreamed about the good bit before. Why? I don’t know. It gives me much to ponder.

This morning I am a little slower and less sparky than I’d expect to be, despite having had the first coffee of the day. So be it. I came to realise yesterday that I need to learn how to be more accepting of tiredness in myself. I need to learn how to slow down, to rest, to stop. Yesterday was my best attempt at a quiet day in a while and I still managed to be really, rather busy. I don’t actually know how to do differently, without the context of a Druid contemplation day, or something else that gives me a framework and takes me away from things I could be working on.

I recognise it’s possible I’m just a bit of a workaholic – I am prone to addiction (see all previous remarks about caffeine). I am careful around any substance I might get hooked on having, for example, managed to become addicted to passive smoking on two separate occasions. Work is not something I’d been looking at that way, but it might be worth considering on those terms.

It’s there in how I frame things, even. I don’t know how to stop, and so I think to myself “I need to work on investing in gentler, frivolous things I enjoy.” I bring the language of work to pretty much everything I do, and I suspect that has consequences. So, clearly, I will be working on that…