Nimue Brown's Blog, page 397

Tetchy Tuesday

I’m a big fan of Thankful Thursday as an idea, and of practicing gratitude, but I’ve come to the conclusion this isn’t working. We need to stop with the ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ mentality, and we need to put militant ingratitude on the political, and spiritual agenda.

Talk of scroungers and the underserving, alongside talk of hard working families keeps us running on the treadmill. If we dare to say we are unhappy with our lives, we run the risk of being called ungrateful, or unreasonable. We may be accused of feeling entitlement, of not working ahrd enough, we may be told we are scroungers and frauds. This is keeping us quiet. We keep our heads down and our mouths shut, and we soldier on, stoically, trying to maintain some dignity. It isn’t working.

We practice gratitude. We tell ourselves that like attracts like and if we think positive thoughts, good things will come to us. Then, when that doesn’t work, (sooner or later, it mostly doesn’t unless you are independently wealthy) we feel guilt and shame. We weren’t positive enough, or grateful enough, we did not have good enough karma. This keeps us quiet and stops us from protesting about the shit.

I’ve learned a thing during my small meltdown this week. I’ve learned that a lot of people are struggling, hurting, frightened, exhausted, miserable, ill and do not feel able to speak up. My owning these things made it easier to admit, for a lot of other people, that they too were close to having had enough and wondering where to send the resignation form. It’s not easy to resign from being a grownup. Now, if you think you are the only person who is failing to be stoical and hard working enough, you’ll keep calm and carry on and try to fake it. If you know that the vast majority of people around you are feeling the same way, it becomes obvious this is not personal failing, this is a sick and broken system that is grinding people into the dust.

We can change that. All of the problems that exist could be tackled, with enough political will. All of the things that are hurting us could be changed, but to get to that point, we have to stop co-operating and start protesting. We have to stop being grateful that we have jobs, and start being bloody ungrateful for having to work fifty hour weeks and still not being able to afford new clothes. We have to stop being grateful that we’re fit enough to work and start being ungrateful if we spend our Sundays in a morass of misery about the looming Monday hell. We have to start saying no, and enough. If enough of us do this, we can create change.

So what I’m asking for is this – own the problem. Name it. Talk about it. Tell people if you are exhausted, depressed and struggling. Tell people if your financial situation terrifies you, or your work culture is making you sick. Tell people if you see others in the same mess. Talk about it.

There will be bumps. There are a lot of people in denial out there and admitting to the problem may make others angry, resentful and fearful. Try to be patient with them, they are terrified. Some of them of course are making a lot of money out of the suffering of the majority, and those few do not want things to change. They will have to get over that. We need to end exploitation. We need to end the parasitic culture that puts most of the world’s wealth in the hands of less than a hundred people. We have to practice ingratitude, with total spiritual dedication, and we have to be ungrateful about the right things. Don’t blame the disabled person next door, or your partner, or the immigrant family across the road – because when you do that, you support the system and you oil its cogs. Blame the system, and the people who put it there, and start asking how we can change everything.

naming the problem

For me, the spiritual life has to be about finding a viable, sustainable, functional way of life that delivers intrinsic worth. The quest for these things has long been part of what philosophy does, while we often use the methods of religion to create a sense of peace and meaning. I often find I need to poke my life and experience to try and find better ways through things.

I’ve been through some really shitty situations, and there is a pattern. I notice how reluctant I am to name and acknowledge the problem. Part of it comes from a desire not to complain, or blame anyone else. Part of it comes from the insane belief that if I keep slogging away and working hard, I will magically get there.   When there is a problem, naming it has consequence. You have moved from denial to acceptance. That acceptance implies a need for change and may well create the momentum for it. Based on experience, owning and naming the problem is often the most frightening and painful part of the process. Once that’s done, everything gets easier.

The most recent example is a simpler one because it is not tangled up in relationships with other people. It is underpinned by my whole history, though, by how others see me and see my work, by a desire to validate myself through my work and to make a point. It’s underpinned by not wanting to admit defeat or to acknowledge what I’m not. There’s a second strand, too, which was a belief that I wasn’t really good enough for anything else and that I would not be able to get a proper job anyway. Make it as a professional author, or be thrown on the scrapheap. I’d convinced myself this was all I had.

Last week I said ‘enough’. I can’t make a living as an author. It may well be this is because I’m not good enough – not commercially minded enough to be a Dan Brown, not creative genius enough to be an Ursula Le Guinn. Going through that naming process was agony. It took days, in the midst of burnout and exhaustion. I cried a lot, and I felt like my whole life was falling to pieces around me. But rather than reassure myself that somehow it would all magically be ok, I started looking hard at how I was feeling, and why, and what was going on there.

I got to a place of saying ‘this is not ok and something needs to change’. That really helped. Deciding that it is not ok to slog away, striving and exhausted and not earning enough to live comfortably and not having time, energy or resources to do the things I want to do… that was important. Recognising that I don’t deserve to be worked to death in a state of miserable exhaustion. That helped. Maybe the failure is mine. I accept that, so be it. In that acceptance, eventually came peace and relief.

After a while I started feeling able to let go of the dreams and aspirations that had kept me on the treadmill for so long. Realising that I don’t have to achieve anything specifically, was a relief. Realising that maybe I could just spend a while going after things that would make me feel better, and that I could find work that I also find meaningful – that was liberating. Once I got past the pain of naming the problem, the pain reduced. I became able to think. I started making decisions, and choices, and being able to see a way forward.

Change is scary. Owning a problem is scary because it means facing the things, people, arrangements, aspects of self that aren’t working. It can seem easier to deny the issue, and keep going as though it was all right really. Toxic workplaces, dysfunctional relationships, destructive peer groups, depressing homes… we tell ourselves ‘better the devil you know’ and we stay. The comfort and security of staying where it hurts and doesn’t work, is a myth. Sometimes the novelly of a new and unfamiliar devil is at least a bit of respite and a change of scenery, even if ultimately you do end up with the same old shit. And sometimes, the alternative is better.

I don’t default to tearing everything down for the sake of it. Sometimes though, tearing everything down is the only way to go. Then you can see the painted scenery, the strings on the puppets, the fake moonlight, and you can get out of the carefully built illusion and find something else. Maybe a new illusion, but possibly something real and worth having.

A modest business proposal

Tom and I have an idea for a business model and we’d like to run it past you all and see what you think. We’ve been thinking how great it would be to open a restaurant. We’d need to get funding for the venue, and to buy all the eatery gear and set up a kitchen. We’ll need to pay for raw materials, for waiters and bar staff, cleaners, managers, someone to take bookings, maybe some publicity. Where this really gets clever though, is our vision for the chefs.

We think chefs should be paid a percentage of every meal they sell, rather than paying them a wage. It gives them opportunity to earn a great deal more, of course, but if their food doesn’t sell, it reduces our financial risk. We’ll only start paying them that cut when we’ve covered the cost of the food and the waiting staff and taken something towards the rent, too.

If we’re taking on new chefs, who won’t automatically attract eaters, then we think they ought to pay for their own ingredients. We, after all, are taking most of the financial risk here, it’s only fair to ask them to contribute to that. We think it would be helpful if chefs made some effort to promote their food, too. We envisage them going out to people’s houses to cook sample meals now and then in order to attract customers. If a chef already has a TV program, they’ll get a better deal and we might be able to consider paying them up front.

We’ll pay the chef their percentage every six months. Well, we say that, but in practice the six monthly cheque will arrive when we get round to it, and could be a month or two late. However, such will be the contracts that if chefs don’t like this, about their only option will be to take their skills and recipes to another restaurant and try their luck there. To really make this work, we will get all other restaurants onboard, so that these are the only terms available for wannabe chefs.

We realise that with this model, the chef will probably need to work a regular day job in order to make ends meet. However, as being a chef is such great work, and it’s really a hobby job, this seems perfectly fair and reasonable to us. They ought to be happy doing it for love. Given the glamour and reputation of being a chef, we’re also confident that there are so many people who want to do it that we’ll never struggle to find people willing to work for us on these terms. After all, everyone has a meal in them.

If this business model made you a bit uncomfortable (and I really hope it did!), please consider that this is how the publishing of art, words and music tends to work, and that this is standard as a way of treating creatives in those industries. We’re wondering if the idea of ‘fair trade’ could be extended across the creative industries. All creative industries depend on the ‘product’ but usually the people making that product are the last to see any money from it. Editors, managers, in house designers, and the person who cleans the editor’s office will all get paid long before the creator sees a penny, in the vast majority of cases.

Following your true nature

This week brought a reminder (thank you Eve!) of the idea that when we follow our true natures, and work in harmony with them, things generally work a lot better for us. To do that which runs against our natures, can be dysfunctional and damaging. However, the question is, how do you figure out what your true nature is in the first place?

If I considered myself in terms of how I react to stuff, and my default emotional states, my true nature is anxiety and depression. This is because I am anxious and depressed. At the moment, I respond to most things with heady blends of panic and misery, such that this can feel like who I am. If I run based on my innate responses, all I get is more anxiety and depression. To tackle those, I have to find ways to work entirely counter to my own innate responses. I have to challenge my fear and push at its edges to move it. I have to seek things that reduce my distress. This means embracing the idea that anxiety and depression are responses, but not a manifestation of my true nature, and that, despite all short term evidence to the contrary, I might be someone else entirely.

If you aren’t living in tune with your true nature, then the surface of your life is not necessarily able to tell you what your true nature looks like or what you need in order to live well. Everything about us can be distorted by experience and a shoddy environment. Desires, dreams, hopes, aspirations, longings, feelings of need do not exist in a vacuum, but in the social, cultural context of our lives. If what we truly need is entirely at odds with our context, figuring this out can take a lot of effort. Going from the dysfunctional surface to seeing what is underneath, is incredibly difficult. Even believing there is some other ‘true nature’ to find, can be difficult.

The one thing I have learned in the last week or so is that I have to stop with the blame. This has everything to do with my back history, but my default when I am not happy, is to blame myself. I’ve been in a lot of situations where saying ‘this situation sucks’ was not an option. And so it became my lack of patience that was the problem. My inability to make the best of things. My unreasonable expectations. My inability to appreciate. My depressive and anxious tendencies. I spent years trying ever harder to be a more grateful, patient, pragmatic, optimistic, making the best of things person. The result was that I became ever smaller, ever more miserable and unable to function. When things go wrong, I assume I wasn’t trying hard enough, wasn’t grateful enough and so forth.

What I need to do is stop assuming the problem is me, and get a lot more willing to look outside myself for things that could be changed. Some of my situation has been decidedly shitty. That’s not me feeling sorry for myself, or trying to emotionally blackmail someone else, it’s a fair assessment and I am entitled to it. Only by being able to identify external things as sometimes needing to change, can I get out of a place of always feeling change needs to happen inside me. If I change my life, I might well feel better about it, and from there, the whole issue of finding and following my true nature becomes a good deal more viable.

Deep thanks to everyone who has offered kindness and support this week, and to everyone who has shared stories, experiences, insights and perspectives. Particular thanks to those who have been able to come up with actual solutions – in working out which of those might truly serve, I have made some significant headway, and all of those offers were greatly appreciated as options.

Being useful

I need to feel useful. I have been told off a number of times for this, because my saying that I need to feel useful can be taken as meaning that I feel everyone should only be valued in terms of their use. That conflation isn’t helpful, nor is it true. “I need to feel useful” is a personal statement. What anyone else needs to feel is their own business, but I think most people prefer to feel valued on some basis or another, and this is mine.

What happens when I’m told I shouldn’t feel this way? Does it magically enable me to develop a sense of self-esteem that has nothing to do with utility and external validation? No, it does not. I’ve tried. I’ve poked this issue repeatedly. Having taken on board that I *should* have a sense of self worth not dependent on utility, I have done all the things in the books that *should* lead to this, and they do not. It’s a bit like being told your body should be able to do the things an appendix does (storing useful bacteria, apparently) when you do not have an appendix.

So, not only do I get to feel useless when there’s a lack of external validation, I get to feel doubly useless for being the kind of person who needed to feel useful in the first place. I don’t find that terribly helpful, and I’m prepared to bet this isn’t just a ‘me’ thing and that others will have comparable experiences.

One of the most basic things that enables self esteem, and lets us feel like proper people, is being entitled to our own emotional responses. Some of us have emotional responses that do not make much sense to other people or are not, apparently, how we are “supposed” to feel. However, the moment you tell me that my feelings are wrong, or invalid, you take something away from me. You are not helping me build towards a better, healthier state of mind (although I bet you think you are). What you’re doing is crushing me further, undermining what sense of self I have, invalidating my responses and making me feel even more of a person-fail then I did at the start. Please stop doing this!

No emotional response is wrong. It may be problematic, it may be based on faulty thinking, it may be counterproductive, but it is still the emotional response that I’ve got right now, and I need to start from where I am. Being told I should not feel a thing in a certain way is destructive. If I am not entitled to feel how I feel, I am not entitled to be a person. It may be inconvenient for you. It may make you feel uncomfortable. You may not like it. This is fine, and you are entitled to all those responses, and to walk away from me if needs be, but you are not entitled to tell me that my emotions are wrong.

Telling someone they are not entitled to feel a certain way does not lead to healing. It does not open them up to better and happier ways of being. It does not cure, or restore or uplift or inspire. It crushes and demoralises and dehumanises and will make them shut up about how they were feeling. If it’s just that you didn’t like what you were hearing and want to make the problem go away, making the afflicted person shut up may strike you as being a win. From the perspective of the other person, it is a lose, and a big one.

I need to feel useful. I am not going to apologise for this anymore. I need to feel useful in order to function as a person. I have very little need for manifest utility in the people around me, but if you are interested in playing a useful role in my life, the best thing, the most generous thing you could do would be to accept me as I am, and help me find the things that let me function, rather than telling me I should not feel like this in the first place.

Walking a hard path

For as long as I can remember, writing wasn’t simply something I wanted to do. It wasn’t about desires for fame and fortune either. Story and poetry were how I made sense of the world. Books were my friends, and in trying to wrap words around reality, I coped, and tried to understand. I think almost exclusively in words, and my whole conscious life to this point has involved me in the process of turning experience into narrative. It is not simply what I do, it is who I am.

And here I am, utterly lost and in a lot of pain, disenchanted with the process, and giving up on dreams and aspirations. What am I doing? I’m writing about it, because it is the only means I have for coping and functioning. All the way through my life, from the moment I could hold a pencil onwards, I’ve turned pain and confusion, desire and need into stories, with varying degrees of success.

When I was growing up, no one encouraged me to think that writing was the way to go. I was supposed to be going after a teaching qualification, doing something sensible. Somehow, in my late teens, I formulated the belief that it was worth going for, took a degree in English lit, and started trying to find writing related jobs. Along the way I’ve written pub quizzes, and articles, I’ve edited, and worked at the marketing end, I’ve written press releases, and custom fiction. I’ve not been especially proud nor have I taken to the ivory tower. I’ve taken the paying gigs where I could find them and I’ve tried to write things that might have some appeal. I’ve written over a dozen novels, most of them published under some name or another. I couldn’t number the short stories, articles and blog posts. Lots, basically.

The loss of belief is quite a traumatic process, and it’s been going on for some time. The slow erosion of there being any point, or any sense in it. There’s also a curious parallel process of relief going on. I’ve been trying so hard for so long to make something brilliant, beautiful, memorable and significant. I can’t do it. There’s a relief in admitting that. What would it be like to aspire to do something quietly useful passably well? An attainable goal rather than an unreachable one. It might be a good deal more useful to everyone else than this endless striving after the unavailable and irrelevant. I don’t know why I’ve carried this need to try and shine for so long. Ego perhaps. Some kind of narcissistic desire to have enough affirmation flow towards me to make up for the holes in my sense of self. Why should I be special? Why should I stand out? Why should I imagine I am capable of doing something significant? It really all comes down to ego.

That, and a desire to be loved. That’s a very heart on sleeve thing to admit, but there are a lot of things missing on the inside that I try to get round by arranging them from outside – sense of self worth especially. If I can make a good enough thing, perhaps I can overcome that feeling of innate unworthiness. That’s been the theory. The trouble is, I have never been able to make anything good enough to feel sufficient, and I strongly suspect I never could. Every measure of ‘good enough’ I’ve had hasn’t turned out to be enough when I’ve got there. Partly because there were things I didn’t know – for example that being published does not lead to being read.

I’m a bit of a Salieri. I’m good enough to properly appreciate that I fall a long way short of what’s possible and far short of where I want to be. For most of my life I’ve clung to the belief that if I could only work hard enough, push hard enough try for long enough that I’d magically turn into a Mozart. Most people are wiser than me, and figure out their limitations a lot sooner in life and get on with the business of being grown-ups. There might be a lot of relief in letting go, in giving up and walking away, and not being an author, and not aspiring, and not imagining that next year something really good might happen. There might be freedom in that and peace, and I am so very tired that these things are greatly tempting.

An absence of wings

I’ve spent a lot of years working with dreams, and putting a lot of time and energy into trying to make a viable living from inventing stories. In that time, I’ve watched Mark Lawrence go from unknown to best seller – and rightly so, the man is brilliant. I’ve watched Professor Elemental become a huge international phenomenon, and I think he’s set to go a lot further. I’ve watched lovely folk at Moon Books sell vast numbers of books. I’ve watched Natalie Dae emerge from the obscurity of ebook land to a Harper Collins deal, and my own lovely bloke has signed a contract with Penguin.

There is no certain formula for creative success. However, those who truly fly tend to balance the familiar and the original in just the right way, creating something that an audience is both pleasantly surprised by, but readily able to engage with. It is a fine balance to strike. It takes a certain amount of luck to tap in, ahead of the next zeitgeist, and create something which will flow with that. It also takes a great deal of canniness and skill, and there are those who do it consciously and deliberately. All kudos to them.

What most creative people do, if they are to succeed, is believe in their own vision and keep slogging away at it. There are two outcomes available. You might be successful, eventually, and be able to earn enough to live on. You might not and either what you’ve got is a hobby, or a problem, depending on how you relate to it. For many people, creativity as a hobby is a perfectly reasonable place to be. However, if a lot of your motivation for creativity revolves around a need to share with other people, then not having very many people to share it with, can leave it all feeling a bit pointless. What, after all is the point of pouring months of work into a novel nobody reads?

There are some who will hit this wall and decide the problem is everyone else. Publishers aren’t supportive enough, readers aren’t perceptive and appreciative enough, but I don’t buy that at all. Not least because I’ve watched some utterly fantastic people find their audience and I know that great work can and does thrive. So, frequently, does rather more banal work with a spin off movie or TV series, but it is certainly not the case that great creative work can’t get an audience.

One of the hardest things to face in any context, is the possibility of ‘I may be the problem here’. It’s as true in our emotional lives as in our work. When relationships go wrong, when families fall apart, and necessary things fail, the one thing none of us really wants to do is look at whether we actually caused that, with words, or deeds, or insufficiencies. I suspect a certain degree of denial over our shortcomings is only human, and in moderation no great problem. But when the same things keep going wrong, and you are the common factor, there comes a time of having to say “it may be me.”

I’ve got great publishers. I get to work with some brilliant and talented people. In this regard I have been ridiculously lucky. I’m watching people around me fly, and I’m failing to grow wings. There comes a morning when you wake up and realise that the only reason you get to play tambourine in the band is because you are sleeping with the lead guitar player, not because anyone has any actual use for a tambourine. It is a hard thing to get to grips with.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about issues of worth and value – reflected in posts here. I’ve been thinking about it a lot because I’m increasingly questioning my own use and value, and asking if there is any point to the things I do. I know some people value this blog, which is a reason for keeping that going, and I’ve promised Tom I’ll see Hopeless through to the end. There is a book about prayer out there in production, and a novel co-written with Professor Elemental on the way for this summer. And perhaps that should be it. Time to lay down the pen and admit that it was a very nice idea, and that it didn’t work. Time to start looking for a proper job and finding something of more use and value to be doing for the world. Many of us leap towards the stars. A few who leap, will soar. Many of us are destined to land awkwardly and achieve nothing of note. How many times can you throw yourself onto the floor, before it becomes reasonable to admit that you have no wings?

More than anything else, I want to feel useful. I want to apply for some kind of normal job and have someone tell me that I am worth employing, worth paying a living wage to, that I don’t have to work all the hours there are in order to scrape along the bottom. My child deserves better. The people around me deserve better. I am acutely aware of having let down people who believed in me and who imagined I might do something worthwhile. Maybe there is still scope for me to do that by some other means in this life. I can only hope so.

Questions of worth

We live in a culture that values people based on their economic power. It is not the value of how that money was earned, or how it is deployed, but the money itself. This is how we are able to entirely respect people whose wealth came to them by chance – via inheritance, by gambling, by using money to make money out of other people’s money. To make a fortune from share dividends is perfectly socially acceptable. Never mind that the pressure to create dividends pushes down wages and quality in order to cream off a layer, and undermines scope for re-investment. Never mind that the desire to make money at all costs is trashing the planet.

If we valued people in terms of the actual contribution they make to society, we might be able to look at whether the massively rich are as useful as they claim to be. We are told that affluence trickles down (I see Smaug on his pile of gold jealously watching the one coin bounce away). We are told that the wealthy create jobs and affluence for others. Only if we stop assuming this to be a truth and start looking at it will we be able to see whether or not its the case, but I have my suspicions. The gap between richest and poorest is growing all the time. If wealthy people were good for us all, surely we should all be gaining materially at about the same pace, not seeing a widening gap?

Money, as economist Molly Scott Cato has been pointing out a lot recently, is a social contract. It is about trust, and the means to move resources around in a community. Money exists to get things done, and can be very useful indeed in this regard. We can use it to measure how much we value something, and it saves having to get the right number of chickens when you fancy a new rug. Money as an expression of exchange can be a great social enabler on many levels.

On those terms, valuing a person in relation to their money makes sense. They are worth what the people around will pay for the things they make or the things they do. Money could therefore be expected to flow towards a person who is really useful and highly valued. However, what we’ve been able to do as a culture, is manufacture scarcity. When things are hard to get, exclusive, or rare, their value goes up. The person who can control the flow of resources can therefore create extra wealth. Not by adding more value to the world, but by artificially pushing up the cost. Keeping land vacant can be a way of pushing up land prices to make more money off it, for example.

We have the resources to feed, clothe, educate and power everyone, modestly. However, that doesn’t allow a minority to stockpile wealth. The desire for wealth has broken the trust-contract that money was created to represent. We don’t move things around fairly, and we push up the prices to make profits, and squeeze down wages, and that is having the effect of starving cash flows in our economies. We need to look very hard at our system that allows people to make money by moving money about, rather than by doing something useful. If we valued what people contribute a bit more, and valued their bank balances a bit less, we might have a cultural revolution on our hands, quietly and with no bloodshed.

Transition and inspiration

Last night I went to a Transition Stroud showing of a film about the whole transition movement. It’s something I’ve been aware of for a while now, and intend to get more involved with. The gist of Transition is a movement towards community based resilience and sustainability. As individuals we can do quite a bit to be more viable, but by working with those around us a lot more can be achieved.

One of the things I’ve found in Druid communities is that being Green is easier when you’re not on your own. Sustaining an alternative lifestyle in face of a lot of people in love with rampant consumerism can be really hard going. When the people around you think that you are crazy, deluded, irrational, naive and all those other unhelpful labels, sticking to it is not easy. However, once upon a time recycling was considered pretty weird and extreme, and these days it’s becoming ever more normal. Fair Trade was once a bleeding heart liberal thing that was never going to replace the idea that greed is good. And yet real progress has been made. Solar panels and wind turbines were once for the lunatic few only, but are ever more available and their use is growing. What else might be possible?

If the people around you are finding innovative ways to reduce their carbon footprints, re-use things, keep items out of landfill, produce goods locally and engage with each other, it’s much easier as an individual to be doing those things. The sharing of ideas and inspiration is a great help, so is the sense of not being a lone freak. In reminding each other of what this is for and why it matters, we can keep each other going. By celebrating successes, we can affirm our progress. Having a strong counter-culture makes it easier to keep plugging away.

One of the key ideas underpinning the Transition movement is that we need communities. It is through community resilience that we have our best shot at surviving economic crisis, energy crisis, climate change and challenges in supply. A robust community able to provide its own essential resources, is much more ready to deal with any kind of setback, already knows how to pull together as a team, and is ready to go. Transition is about being ready, in flexible ways, for an uncertain future, rather than assuming that government or big business is going to swing in and sort everything out for us.

I find the idea of Transition incredibly inspiring. Last night’s film has already got me wondering about some possible things I might do. There is so much that might be done. All I have to do is show up and contribute what I can, I do not have to single handedly change the world. All I need to do is be moving in the right direction, and joining with other people who want to go that way.

If you’re interested, do have a look at http://www.transitionnetwork.org/ there are groups all over the globe already.

Prayer and Meditation

Last year, publisher Trevor Greenfield asked me if I would tackle the combined subject of prayer and meditation in Pagan practice, for a book he was editing. At that point I had already written Druidry and Meditation, and was wrestling with a book on the subject of prayer. I had about three thousand words in which to say something meaningful about the two subjects.

Paganism 101 has been a fascinating book to get involved with. There are 101 Pagan voices in it. Each area of consideration has an author writing a sizeable essay, and then a number of follow up voices with smaller contributions, offering diversity and counterpoint to the main piece. Today is the first time I’ve read what my supporting authors did in response to my piece on prayer and meditation.

Jo Robson raises the issues of traditional petition prayers, and captures a moment of seeing how to make sense of that. An intense personal experience led Jo to developing a more involved prayer practice. It’s a dramatic journey sketched out, and demonstrates both the reason many Pagans are wary about prayer, and the advantages of moving beyond that.

Rebecca M Taylor draws on experiences of Christianity and Reiki as well as innately Pagan responses to nature to chart another personal journey.

Robyn Stroll talks about taking both prayer and meditation into the world, making them part of life, part of everything. There’s a dash of Buddhism in the mix in this piece, too.

Jenny Watt shares a gloriously circular journey from the Catholic prayers of childhood, through mantras and meditations to a new Pagan awareness that quite magically makes sense of the whole.

I love the contrast. I had to try and pin down the topic in a more intellectual way, and the four supporting pieces are intensely experiential, talking about prayer and meditation as facets of life lived. There’s total individuality and specific-ness here and that’s a powerful contrast to the more abstract thinking.

The whole book has this sort of shape, with more essay-like pieces supported by experiential work. It means there’s both the intellectual, factual rational side of the tradition being played out, whilst the vital importance of turning that into something we live and breathe, is beautifully illustrated. The diverse voices and backgrounds mean there can be no dogma, and the scope for Pagans to truly walk their own path is demonstrated here. We are often criticised as being a ‘pick n mix’ religion, lacking depth because we lack coherence of practice. I think Paganism 101 really demonstrates that to walk your own path is to be a serious and dedicated spiritual person, because when it’s all down to you, inevitably you engage a lot with every facet of your beliefs and practices, which are constantly evolving and being fine tuned based on experience.

I feel greatly honoured to have been part of this book. If you are interested in having a look, it’s here on amazon.co.uk and here on amazon.com