Nimue Brown's Blog, page 417
August 30, 2013
Peace for Syria
Let’s pause for a moment, amidst all the noise and political posturing, and ask what it would take to achieve lasting peace in Syria. Tricky, isn’t it? As soon as you step away from the rhetoric of ‘let’s rush in there and bomb some stuff’ and actually think about what it would take to fix Syria, the horrendous scale of the problems become apparent. I have a most tenuous grasp on the politics, but let’s abridge it and say ‘there’s a lot of it’. Lots of different factions, ideologies, interests from other countries, no doubt lots of history as well. All other issues aside, when there has been this much bloodshed, there are no quick fix options.
Peace is not something you readily achieve by fighting. Sure, there are times when going in to forcibly disarm may be the best way to reduce violence, but why on earth are we even getting to that stage? The answer, is that for politicians and people who want power, the ends justify the means, and the intended end is more power for them. Human life, and human suffering are valued less highly than power, control, and status. When you start from the premise that lives are expendable and the important thing is winning at any cost, violence is inevitable, and peace is impossible.
It does not help that a small number of people make a great deal on money out of war. The arms trade is a lucrative one. I would bet that’s not the only way of turning a profit during times of conflict. It does not help that history books are full of battles and politicians with a desire to be remembered will all too often see a big, ‘heroic’ war as an opportunity to have a legacy. To be the next Henry the fifth, the next Winston Churchill, or for that matter, the next Adolf Hitler does seem to be attractive.
With all due reference to Henry the fifth, there’s nothing like a war abroad to distract public attention away from troubles at home. You can get all patriotic, sing songs, all pull together, it’ll be like the 1940s all over again. Roll out the nostalgia, forget the welfare cuts, the unemployment, the economic crisis, a war will distract us. All those opportunities for big speeches and dramatic photo opportunities. Oh yes, our politicians love a good war. Not least because they will stay at home, near the bunkers, while other people are sent forth to kill and be killed.
I think we lost something when starting a war no longer meant you would be expected to ride out at the head of your army. I think if David Cameron and his cronies knew they would be expected to put their own bodies in the front line, they would take these life and death issues a bit more seriously. They wouldn’t last five minutes.
Peace is a facet of culture. It is a state of mind and an attitude. You can’t force it on people, although you can make individuals, and countries behave. A peace based on someone else having a lot of guns and missiles, is not a very dependable sort of peace at all. To mean anything, peace needs to be based on a fundamental respect for life. When we start to value life more than we do power, peace will be possible. We have a long way to go.


August 29, 2013
Honourable relationship
There is a certain irony to the fact that the people who taught me most about the theory of honourable relationship were not able to live it when the crunch time came. To be human is to be flawed, and the ideals we hold up are not always the things that drive us in our choices. I tend to feel that what we do in crisis is the best measure of who we really are. It’s easy to walk your talk when life is simple and straightforward. When there is pain and fear, when we are hurt, lost, threatened, walking the talk is harder. It’s easy to treat honourably those people who are nice to be around, but what does it take to act honourably in the face of something more challenging?
I kick this sort of issue around a lot. I feel very strongly the need to try and act as well as I can in all things, but I find myself questioning what that even means in the first place. Let’s take honesty as an issue. Outright lies we can put to one side, but most lies are lies of omission. Exactly how much honesty does another person need from me? The truth about a number of things – my history and mental state especially, are not comfortable to have to deal with, so for the greater part I’m not honest about that. I hide it, take it away, or handle it indirectly in less alarming ways. For casual acquaintances, that seems appropriate, fair and workable, sparing them a lot of needless hassle and me the shame and distress of baring that which hurts most.
Then there are the small number of people who I spend enough time with to make it difficult to fake functionality. People who are going to see what happens when body, mind or both cease to be fully operational. Then what? Better, perhaps to have warned them in advance so that it isn’t surprising. Part of me still wants to hide it, to simply not have those closer friendships in the first place so that I do not have to deal with the things I feel uncomfortable about. Which is a bloody awful way to feel. I have a very close, open and trusting relationship with my bloke, and for the greater part that gives me what I need. But, to cut myself off from others, to hold a protective line rather than face the things I am embarrassed by and uneasy about… that doesn’t feel honourable or good to me. Then of course, exposure to me as I am, intense, complicated, still carrying too much pain and fear… that isn’t easy to take and I know not everyone will feel they can cope with that or want it in their lives, so every exposure is a risk of rejection, and leaves me feeling vulnerable. But it is fairer to let people choose, rather than letting them get dependent on me or fond of me only to find that I am, in practice, unbearable.
One of the things I struggle with is that I am not responsible for how other people feel or what they do. I am not obliged to be convenient and comfortable, and I have to keep reminding myself of that. No sane person is going to expect me to magically know what the best thing I could do for everyone, all of the time, is, and expect me to also do it. I’ve removed from my life the people who seemed to hold such expectations, because it’s impossible. I’d have to be superhuman, and I most assuredly am not. All I can do is the best I can come up with, given the realities of who and how I am, and what I have to deal with. What I need to learn to do, I suspect, is to apologise for that less, and to accept that some people will indeed walk away if I am too difficult. It is ok to let them go. I do not owe them anything.
I have come to a point of recognising that my energy is finite, and often not sufficient for the things I want to achieve. I cannot afford to spend more time trying to pretend to be things I am not in the hopes of not inconveniencing people. That often exhausts me, and means I push beyond safe limits, leaving me vulnerable to depression. Not a clever move. So, I’ll accept the trade off, I’ll do what I have to do, and try to be more honest about when I’m not functioning. Other people are responsible for how they respond to that. I would not shame someone else for being ill, tired or damaged, I will not allow myself to be shamed on those terms either. Well, it’s a theory at any rate. I can but try.


August 28, 2013
Sons and Daughters of Robin Hood
Robin Hood is one of archetypal British English myth figures. Outlawed by an unjust system, he and his men hung out in Sherwood Forest practicing wealth redistribution, by stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Let’s not get bogged down in any actual historical complexities here, of which there are many, or any of that ‘men in tights’ malarkey, either. Robin Hood is an icon of taking the law into your own hands to fight injustice.
Part of the point with Robin Hood, is that you only need to invoke him when the system is broken. When tyrants rule, when everything is bent to serve the few at the expense of the many, then you need to invoke Robin Hood. There comes a time when working with the system becomes impossible, and leaping out of the undergrowth in the kit of your choice for a bit of direct action is the only option left. Well, that or lie down in the mud and wait to be trampled over.
So here we are, warming up to cull badgers in spite of the total absence of scientific evidence to back it up as a solution to bovine TB. We’re getting ready to frack, despite all the science that suggests it could be dangerous, and assures us that a lot of harmful chemicals will be going into the atmosphere and a lot of water will be required. The economists who gave us the theory that austerity is the only answer to our problems, came back and acknowledged the maths was wrong. All around the world, economists are pointing out that austerity doesn’t actually do the job it is supposed to do. Our government puts its hands over its ears and carries on. We’re sending terminally ill people back to work because… no actually, I don’t even know what the justification is for this, and we’ve instituted a bedroom tax that further cripples the poor while manifestly costing the public purse even more money.
What?
I have no problem with politics that are about differences of opinion and reasonable differences of interpretation. There are places where science isn’t clear (one glass of red wine a day? Or not?) There are times when preference, taste and ideals have a very important role to play in politics. But for all the stuff that is about the numbers, the bottom line, scientific realities and other such non-squishy, not-soft data, there is only one way to go in a reasonable society, and that is to be led by the evidence.
The evidence all goes one way, the government goes another.
I would like to live in a society where tolerance and reason predominate. I would like to live in a country that pays attention to evidence, basis policy on available information, and where politicians have the guts to deal with it when the best advise available, changes. Not a world in which we pay scientists to tell us what we wanted to hear. I also quite fancy living in a democracy. I’ve heard about them, and the idea looks really good on paper. You vote for people, and then you can communicate with them to express your views, and they represent you and a bunch of other people. Sounds really good. So, if, to pluck an example out of the air, a country was up in arms demanding that its wildlife not be slaughtered based on an irrational ignoring of all the science… in a democracy, that would be taken seriously. We should try that thing some time.
In the meantime, fighting trousers, or green tights, or whatever else it is you put on when there’s nothing sensible left to do. Here’s a link to Damh the Bard’s awesome anthem to non-cooperation, have a listen, and do not undertake to lie down in the mud to be trampled over just yet…
https://soundcloud.com/#damhthebard/sons-and-daughters-of-robin
Then go and read the party political broadcast on behalf of the Bard party… http://www.paganmusic.co.uk/a-party-political-broadcast-on-behalf-of-the-bard-party/?fb_source=pubv1
It is, increasingly, a revolting situation.


August 27, 2013
The Power of Sleep
Sleep has a huge effect on both mental and physical health. Sleeping in darkness is profoundly good for you, while shift patterns that mess about with your sleep are seldom good for a person. Sleep facilitates healing, learning and general bodily functioning. And yet… we have invasive street lighting so many houses are not dark unless you get blackout curtains. We have a noisy culture that makes sleep difficult in urban environments. There is pressure to work ever longer hours, and we create over stimulated environments that make it harder for us to settle and sleep. Many people do not get the recommended eight hours a night. I find it shocking that hospitals expose patients to light and noise at night in a way that makes sleeping there very difficult. I’m not going to go through and diligently source all of this, forgive me, but there’s nothing obscure here and google is your friend…
Not enough sleep can mean some or all of the following effects: Poorer metabolism function leading to weight gain. A few nights of poor sleep is enough to have a discernible impact. Tired people are also more likely to snack to try and maintain energy, which doesn’t help. Reduced learning ability. Particularly an issue for students, but we are all learning all the time, or we could be. Much sorting of information and consolidating of learning happens during sleep. The more sleep deprived you are, the less able to reason you become and the more unstable your emotions are likely to be, leading to higher risk of depression and other mental health problems. Impaired judgement and impact on decision making skills also a likely outcome. Not getting enough sleep puts stress on the body, so if you have higher blood pressure, that adds to the problem, and also makes it harder to get over illness.
There are specific ailments underpinned by poor sleep. Insomnia in and of itself counts as a medical condition, and turns up alongside depression and anxiety – often in a circular relationship, rather than linear cause and effect. I find there’s a direct correlation between how much sleep I get, and how much physical pain I experience. I notice that I am less emotionally functional when sleep deprived. My brain becomes so dysfunctional without sleep that after a while I start to hallucinate – which is not unusual, but dangerous for people who are driving, working heavy machinery and the like. People die on the roads all the time because sleep deprivation slows reflexes and impairs judgement.
Here we are, with an obesity epidemic, and with depression and anxiety such common ailments as to be becoming part of normal life experience. Yet no one seems to be talking about the simplest, cheapest, most available intervention capable of helping a lot of people. It won’t solve all problems, but a culture of good sleeping would make a lot of difference. But we don’t do that, we dish out pills, and adverts for yet more bleepy apps to put on your phone, and we play more games, and crawl into our beds too wired to sleep, only occasionally wondering what went wrong with our lives. I’ve lived with chronic sleep deprivation, with late night computer games and pressure to work all hours. It did hideous things to me, and yet we are showing each other images, all the time, of people living as normal in over stimulated environments, and we keep piling on the noise.
Seek now your blanket, and your feather bed… and let me point you at one of my favourite songs… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D_fJr12MYs with the lovely Emily Smith singing Bill Caddick’s classic song about sleep and dreaming.


August 26, 2013
Nature in vibrant abundance
I’ve been walking most of the afternoon. I saw buzzards, heard an owl, saw countless butterflies of many different species and numerous grasshoppers. There were several different species of wild mint, and the tiniest frog I’ve ever seen. I also found a couple of good fossils and one of those caterpillars that dangle from trees. Aside from the duration, this was in many ways a normal sort of walk. Even in urban landscapes, when I go out, I tend to see things. On occasion I’ve interrupted other people’s rituals to point out the visitors – falcons, rodents… I figure when nature shows up to a Druid gathering, Druids ought to care about that.
I have no idea what I’m like to walk with – possibly a little challenging because a big part of my brain is always alert to what’s around me. As a consequence, I’ll break conversations to point at things. The plus side is getting to see all manner of things that might otherwise have been missed, but I find it unspeakably difficult to give anyone my undivided attention for long. As the facebook meme goes, I’m on a highway to… oh look! A Squirrel! Put me in a large city with a lot of noise and movement, and after a couple of days my mind starts to crumble. I’m quite aware that, had I not been a fairly bright child in a not excessively stimulating environment, I’d have probably got some kind of attention deficit diagnosis along the way, and drugged into not doing this stuff.
The thing is that I like being able to spot rodents in the grass by hearing them, I like noticing beetles and grasshoppers. I see a lot of birds, I spot unusual wildflowers precisely because I’m not tuning most of it out. What in many situations would be treated as a problematic medical condition, to me is a wonder and a joy, and part of the way in which I engage with the natural world. I’m also aware that for much of human history, this would be life or death stuff – this kind of awareness is essential for being either a hunter or a gatherer. Which makes treating it as wrong feel a bit uncomfortable to me. It is the habitats we have created that are wrong, not the people in them.
This is just one of the many ways in which being closer to nature, more aware, more involved, more intuitive, more perceptive, is pathologised and treated as unhealthy by wider culture. The things we are, as Pagans are so often at odds with the things we are told we should want. Why watch a television when you can gaze at the amazing structure of a flower, or watch the birds? The details of life fascinate me. The small beauties and wonders take my breath away. I keep looking out of the window as I type this, watching the way light is falling on the horse chestnut leaves. So far no squirrel, but it’s probably just a matter of time…


August 25, 2013
Druid News for September
In no kind of chronological order at all!
Peace One Day is the 21st of September – that’s a Saturday this year. It being so close to the autumn equinox, it’s very easy to simply include a contemplation of and dedication to peace in any autumn equinox ritual you were undertaking anyway. Have a look at http://www.peaceoneday.org and consider the scope of all these many gestures and efforts combining. I shall be out locally on the 21st. If there isn’t a local event you can support, consider starting something. Peace One Day is an excellent opportunity for working with other communities and faith groups, too.
We also have the autumn equinox pending, which some groups may choose to celebrate as well as Peace One Day. I find the equinoxes tricksy things to celebrate, as they have less historical underpinning and it’s never quite so obvious what to do with them. However, that balance of light and dark, and whole the notion of balance are well worth pondering. Are we in balance because we’re got it just perfectly right, or because the many different tensions and pressures equal out to give an illusion of stability?
On the local front, there’s a really exciting event coming up in September, so if you can make it to Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, do consider coming along. I think this is an event worth travelling for if you are a bit further afield.
Awen Forum, Sunday 8th September at 7.30pm, Stroud Subscription Room for the third in a series of inspiring talks, poetry, story & song. Q&A, and discussion, prompted by author talk/performances.
SACRED ACTIVISM: For the finalé of the first series of Soul Food Sundays, something special. Stroud-based Awen Publications presents a feast of friends gathering in the Ballroom to explore the theme of ‘Sacred Activism’. From the USA, inspirational speaker and author Andrew Harvey (Radical Passion: Sacred Love and Wisdom in Action) is joined by the Poet of King’s Cross, Aidan Andrew Dun (Unholyland) and the exquisite piano of Lucie Rejchrtova, who together conjure hypnotic soundscapes; the soul-full poetry of Jay Ramsay (Places of Truth) and Herewood Gabriel on ballophon; the shamanic songsmith James Hollingsworth (guitar wizard The Independent); and the powerful words of Philip Wells, The Fire Poet. Through radical poetry, music and beautiful speech, they will be exploring the evening’s theme in their own unique, creative way. A discussion will follow, in a Conversation Cafe chaired by Trish Dickinson. Hosted by Jay Ramsay and Kevan Manwaring.
Tickets £15.00 (£12.00 concs) from Stroud Tourist Information Centre on 01453 760900 or online from http://www.subscriptionrooms.org.uk
Also Saturday the 14th September, Druid Con, Arena Theatre Wolverhampton, 10am -7pm, with Emma Restall Orr, Ronald Hutton, Philip Shallcrass, Loraine Munn, Phil Ryder and Paul Mitchell, http://www.druid2013.weebly.com for ticket information, online ticket purchases (cheaper in advance than on the day) venue information and all good stuff of that ilk. Being a huge fan of Ronald Hutton myself, and very much liking Paul Mitchell’s music I can definitely recommend it as an event.
If you’ve got something going on that you’d like me to do a shout out for, drop me a line. If you have a Peace One Day event, an autumn equinox muster or anything else going on in the foreseeable future that you want to share, pile into the comments section please!


August 24, 2013
A brief history of egrets
There were no egrets in Gloucestershire when I was a child. They are not part of the traditional or ancient fauna of the UK, although people do get them a bit muddled up with herons, storks and cranes. The egrets have simply extended their range, and have arrived of their own volition, claiming a niche along our waterways. They aren’t that numerous nor do they breed prolifically, so it’s not appeared to cause much trouble.
When I originally wrote Hunting the Egret, I had not actually seen an egret in person. I’d seen images online, and fallen entirely in love with them. My first egret encounter was on the Somerset coast, and made me cry. Moving back to Gloucestershire, I found the egrets had made it this far, as I had envisaged in the novel, so I came to the redraft able to add details from experience. Although it turned out I didn’t need to change much – I had them pretty much figured out.
White creatures tend to feature in myth and legend as guides to the otherworld. White stags and white hares are probably the most common, white horses, and white dogs also have definite faerie associations. There are lots of stories linking swans to magic as well. In nature, very few things are pristine white. There’s snow and milk, and naturally white creatures and birds. Before humans invented bleach and white paint, mostly we lived with earth shades. Brilliant whiteness didn’t feature much, your white robed Druid (imagining they did exist) would probably have been somewhat off-white, dependant on sun bleaching, and not able to access the kinds of chemicals we now soak our clothes in regularly. Whiteness was unusual, and therefore all the more startling.
Seeing an egret fly out of the mist in the strange light of early morning, is a magical experience. They have the brilliant, pristine whiteness that suggests they may be harbingers of the otherworld. The slow flap of their wings has a stately quality, and, like cranes and herons, they are very good at standing still; poised and majestic. Being water birds, they tend to live along the margins, in the places that are neither quite land, nor water, making them powerful personifications of liminal places. Seeing one perched in a tree is a tad surreal, but like herons, they do favour tree perches and nest on branches.
Being relative newcomers, there is no British mythology around egrets, and no stories to tap into. No Mrs Tiggywinkle or Fantastic Mr Fox equivalents. As a child I loved the tales that shamelessly personified animals and made them accessible to me – Wind in the Willows, Duncton Wood, Farthing Wood, Brambly Hedge, Beatrix Potter… No doubt in other countries there are stories about egrets, but I have none, and that adds to their mystery rather. They have come from another world (France, not Faerie as I understand it) and we have not characterised them with tales, as yet.


August 23, 2013
Love songs for a landscape
It was only after I moved away from the land I grew up in, that I started to realise how much a part of my soul it had been. It would have only taken an hour or so to get back by car, but I didn’t have a car, and there were other complications. For years, I lived as an exile from the landscape of my heart, and it hurt. There were times aplenty when I cried for the grief of not being in my landscape and cursed myself for being too stupid to realise how much it mattered, until after I had left. It was during this period, that I wrote Hunting the Egret.
I’ve described the book as a love story, but it is also a love letter, from me to the places my heart yearned for; forest, vale and high blue hill, winding River Severn, Cotswold edge, mysterious Forest of Dean. While I lived in Gloucestershire, I’d hardly written about it at all. After leaving, my stories, poems and songs were full of the place I came from. I learned other people’s songs about the area, too, drawing especially on Johnny Copin’s settings of various local poets. I read Laurie Lee’s work for the first time, and Winifred Foleys A Child in the Forest.
During that period of absence, Gloucestershire took on almost mythic proportions in my mind. I shared images of favourite places with Tom, and the influence crept into Hopeless Maine. This is why one of the ruins in the first book looks a good deal like Tintern Abbey. I knew it wasn’t wholly original. Local musician and poet, Ivor Gurney, was sent off to foreign fields for the First World War and spent his time writing about Gloucestershire. That makes perfect sense to me.
The Welsh have a word for the anguish a Welsh person feels when away from their native landscape: Hiraeth. The Welsh diaspora is nothing like as large as Scottish and Irish communities around the world. The Welsh as a people experienced a lot of similar economic pressures, but, I have been told, Wales is much harder to leave, and much more likely to draw you back. Of course the location of the Welsh border has varied a good deal through history, and my Forest of Dean ancestry was probably Welsh ancestry a bit further back in time. That’s my excuse. The idea of hiraeth makes a lot of sense to me.
I had to go somewhere else before I learned how to be a Druid and came to understand how sacred this landscape is to me. Coming back, I feel more inspired than ever to write about this place, these hills, and to sing the songs of the land that was always my home. With shades of Dorothy, I had to go away in order to appreciate what I had left behind, not to a mystical land, but to the Midlands, where the witches were charming but there was a notable absence of glorious Technicolor.
I’ll sneak an excerpt…
“Resting her arms on her knees, and her chin upon the backs of her arms, Verity considered the view. The tide was in on the river, and the Severn filled her banks with silvery water. From here, she looked beautiful. Closer too, she was all mud and treachery, but Verity had been used to this for as long as she could remember. Down and slightly to her left nestled the greater part of Arlode – the eighteenth century church with its neat graveyard, the main street with its handful of shops, the cottages and more recent developments. It hadn’t changed much in a century, aside from the cars and their ever-present hum. The little school was just how it had been when she spent her days there. Her own small cottage, a little outside the village, was a crouching shambles that looked as though it had grown out of the land itself.”
Hunting the Egret now on kindle… http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EKJCPY6


August 22, 2013
Hunting the Egret
One of the things I’ve been able to do as a consequence of having more internet and electricity, is look into a bit of self-publishing. I’ve written far more books and short stories than are currently available, and I thought it would be fun to put some of it out there. Ebook land is a shifting and unpredictable place, in which publishing houses come and go, so much of the work I have lying around has been published by someone at some point, and then reverted back to me as houses fell by the wayside. Not to imply that I am some kind of publishing kiss of death…
For the last few weeks, while clearing my head between drafts of the next Druid book, I’ve been working on revising Hunting the Egret, which previously went out into the world under my old name. This was the first book cover Tom ever did for me, so it was a bit of a nostalgia trip for me. However, Tom hadn’t had chance to read the story, so I tested it on him during the revision process. It’s a gothic love story, full of Pagan magic and messed up people. It comes from what I now think of as my messed up romance period. The basic premise that even the most weird and troubled person might be able to find a soul mate motivated me to write a great many stories, often for the erotica market. Many of them do not strike me as worth dusting off. However, having gone back to Hunting the Egret, there’s a lot of things going on in it about how the characters see the world.
I’ve managed to rework it so that it remains very much about the dynamics of power exchange in relationships, without being excessively adult. 50 Shades it most certainly isn’t, and there’s a kind of irony in toning down what could have been a BDSM erotica novel, now that sort of thing is really popular, to bring out the gothic lovestory aspect instead. When it was first published, BDSM erotica was niche and hardly discussed. Yeah, I’m clever like that.
However, I felt the original version was unbalanced, with too much time spent on the sex lives of the characters and not enough else explored in detail, so I’ve redressed that in a number of ways, and I feel better about it. I think when you’re putting content into a book in order to make it sell, you’re on a losing streak already, more often than not. I figure, the vast majority of books do not sell in the thousands anyway, so I might as well do the work I love, put that out and see if I can find a few people who like what I do. I’ll save the trying to do it for money for projects where someone offers to pay me upfront, because the rest is just gambling anyway. And who knows, maybe gothic romance with a dash of Paganism is poised to be the next big thing. I sincerely doubt it, but it would be a great deal of fun if that happened to be the case.
I’m going to blog a few excerpts and some wider reflections on the project over the coming days, but in the meantime if you are curious, Hunting the Egret is on kindle – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EKJCPY6 with a createspace version one day, and there is a print version over at Lulu – http://www.lulu.com/shop/nimue-brown/hunting-the-egret/paperback/product-21147485.html It could show up other places too, but there’s no knowing how long that might take.
I like feeling in control of my work some of the time, and I like how it feels to be sharing a story that really matters to me. Only when I came back to rework this tale did I realise how much it was about my own desire to find a soul mate, someone who would accept me as I am. That he created the cover for me, and I did not know that I had already found the person I needed, is a strange thing to look back at.
In regular fairy tales, beautiful princesses live happily ever after with the elegant prince of their choice. In my fairy stories, poverty stricken freaks with outlandish backgrounds and serious hang-ups manage to connect with each other and heal their wounds, and overcome their demons a bit. Looking across the table at the lovely man drawing on the far side of it, I know that kind of story is actually possible. Oddly ever after…


August 21, 2013
Talking about love
I’m currently reading Tiziana Stupia’s breathtaking spiritual autobiography, Meeting Shiva. It is a book very much about the interplay between spirituality and love, and it raised a really important issue for me: We don’t talk about relationships much. As a culture, we talk a bit about sex and attraction, usually through the medium of glossy magazines aimed at women. We have romance and erotica genres that are for the greater part, total fantasy, selling us ideas of love and relationship that cannot be lived up to in practice. We also get dramas and soap operas, which give us images of shouty, dysfunctional relationships in a way that tends to normalise unhealthy behaviour.
Much of what we learn about love, we learn in the contexts of our own families. This means that we can absorb all manner of odd and unhelpful things as normal. Hangovers from Victorian ideals about the stiff upper lip, religious impacts on gender relations… habits of control, battles of the sexes, and on it goes. We learn how to be in relationships with other people only by doing it, and often we mess up, which causes a lot of pain.
If I had talked about my experiences during my first marriage, there is every chance someone could have helped me challenge what was happening. One of my big problems was the belief that I deserved how I was being treated. The experience of being treated as a useless, difficult, unreasonable, demanding person eroded my self-esteem. Only when I dared to take that shamed and humiliated sense of self to someone else, did I get the opportunity to hear a different story. I haven’t felt like an unreasonable nuisance for years now.
In the heat of a relationship, working out what is fair and reasonable isn’t always easy. Emotions colour interpretation, the desire to please and to be loved can warp our thinking. Been there, done that. Talking to other people helps improve perspective. Often its easier to think clearly about the less immediate issues of someone else’s love life.
We’re taught to expect happily ever after, to believe that true love is easy and requires no work, and to assume, when things are tricky, that maybe they just weren’t ‘the one’. Some of us are taught that love is owed to us, while others learn that we have to jump through hoops just to be tolerated. We learn a lot of crap, then we take it to each new relationship and wonder why there seems to be a lot of crap in the mix. We learn passive aggressive tricks and ways to manipulate, we keep score, we make contracts, and all of these pretty normal things are destructive.
There are things love needs in order to thrive. These are not the things suggested by rom coms or commercials. Trust. Honesty. Care. Respect. If you don’t have those, you don’t have anything. They won’t fall into place over night, all of them. They have to be earned, built and developed. We have to be willing to be vulnerable with each other, to share the bits of us we are less fond of, and acknowledge they exist. We have to accept that our significant other won’t be perfect, and also that our loving them will not magically change them, or put right everything wrong in their lives. We have to know that they cannot save us, heal us, or wave any other kind of magic wand. The love and support of another person can be tremendously helpful, nurturing and healing, but it won’t do the job for you. No one should expect their partner to change for them or because of them. No one should expect their partner to stay the same forever, either. And yet both expectations are held by many people.
I’m convinced a lot of the problem is that we just don’t air this stuff enough. We need to get away from fantasy stories about love affairs where, once the ridiculous setback is overcome, it all falls neatly into place. We need to stop believing in magical princes destined to kiss all traces of frog out of us, and find some new kinds of stories, or possibly old kinds of stories, that have a bit more reality in them. Happily Ever After is not just a lie, it stops us exploring all the other stories about what happens along the way, how you cope with it, and how to build the good stuff and nurture a relationship.
How we love can be a profound facet of our spiritual lives. Equally, messed up love affairs can be spiritually crushing. So many religions focus on who you are allowed to love and on what terms. Druidry should be much more about doing it well, with soul and integrity.

