Nimue Brown's Blog, page 418

Fracking Insanity

Green MP Caroline Lucas has been arrested whilst protesting against fracking. More here – http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/green-mp-caroline-lucas-arrested-as-antifracking-protests-reach-fever-pitch-8774189.html

It seems, reading the article, that a ‘legal protest’ can now be defined as one that happens somewhere out of the way where no one is in any way inconvenienced by it. Which rather negates the value of protesting. If to be inconveniently in the way is to be illegal, gods help this country because we are in a lot of trouble just now.

There is a video in the newspaper link. You can watch for yourself and judge how dangerous, antisocial and in need of arresting for public order and safety these people are. This is a peaceful protest. It should, therefore be considered a legitimate protest, as I see it, and to send in the police is a travesty.

Of course no one in power wants the general public thinking about fracking. They don’t want us talking about the very real dangers to land and water supply. Or the way in which they’re having to pour money into fracking to make it financially viable. There’s a working definition of ‘not financially viable’ if ever I saw one. Even if money is your god and you care nothing for the state of the planet, it’s hard to see how you’d look at this and think it’s clever.

We only have this one planet. We all need clean water, breathable air, and most of us have no desire to have our lives shattered by earthquakes, which apparently are a possible side-effect of fracking. And for what? To line someone’s pocket, to squeeze out a few last gasps of what we know to be a finite resource.

The smart money, and industry, is in green technology. It is a no brainer. Finite resources are not going to deliver long term results. Harnessing renewable sources of energy should keep us going for as long as we are here, if we get it right. Let’s not poison our children. Let’s not make our land uninhabitable.

In other scenarios, poisoning people is a criminal offence, and yet apparently the politicians are putting their weight behind the poisoners and locking up the protestors. This is not the reality I want to live in. I’d go so far as to suggest anyone who cares about living at all, about their quality of life, personal safety and long term prospects, really should be worried about this.

I salute those people with the courage and determination to put their bodies in the way and inconvenience the frackers. I hope there is justice, and that we as a country condemn poisoning the water, and uphold the rights of our own people to protest against total suicidal lunacy when the idiots in charge lose the plot, as they have so evidently done on this issue.

Virtuous Language

I was impressed and inspired by Jo’s recent blog, Living with right speech http://octopusdance.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/living-with-right-speech/. One of the things that irritates me intensely, is the careless way in which we devalue language. We throw about big words, for trivial reasons, so that when something big comes along, there’s nothing left to wield. If lunch was awful, the traffic a nightmare, the boss evil, what can we say about a child murderer? If we love our car, find drinks bottles sexy, if shiny plastic items are magical and mass produced shoes are beautiful, what words can you offer to the love of your life?

Advertising is in part to blame. In the process of bigging up an item to make people want it, we overstate, over value, and over enthuse. Some of it is pure laziness. We don’t pay attention to the words we speak and write, and so we use them carelessly. I’ve even see professionals do it in situations where that lack of attention to detail has had serious repercussions. Far too often I’ve found that objecting to a precise turn of phrase results in a ‘I never meant that,’ or ‘I didn’t say that’. People confuse what they mean with what they say, and it is easy to forget that we hear and understand in different ways. Words are not perfect tools, but loaded with cultural and historical baggage, which we do not all hold in common.

It does take effort to think about the accuracy of everything you say, and write. It takes constant self-monitoring and awareness, plus on-going consideration for how those words may sound to someone else. Good intentions cannot be relied on to produce good results, even, but there’s a lot to be said for trying.

So, here’s my appeal.

Where possible, speak plainly. Don’t imply and expect people to understand what you mean. Don’t avoid saying it outright to give yourself plausible deniability later. Don’t try to make one thing sound like another.

Use words there’s a fighting chance the other person can understand. The gratuitous use of jargon, archaic, legal and other such language can be a means to intimidate, humiliate and confuse, so let’s not do that thing, and let’s also not accept it. Asking people to clarify and explain is a valid response to this, and the irritation factor of having to do it all twice, if you do not agree to be humiliated, is quite a disincentive for the other person.

Try and find the words that actually convey what you mean. It’s a tricky art, mistakes are inevitable, but the more we try the closer we come to good communication. The biggest areas of difficulty are usually around emotion, and trying to make the stiff upper lip of the English language convey something meaningful about feelings, is not easy. But don’t say ‘love’ when you mean ‘quite like’ and don’t say ‘hate’ when you mean ‘this is mildly irritating.’

Part of what makes good language use possible, is a sense of perspective. Knowing the difference between being bullied, and having been insulted once. Being able to recognise where language is loaded with issues of race, gender, class… There’s the issue of being able to hear something moderate. ‘Yes, I liked your book’ is fine – it is not necessary that we all articulate being madly in love with everything. If we do, it becomes meaningless.

In Druidry we might want to consider how carelessly we often use the word ‘bard’ – I’ve seen some sad misuses of that word from people online who clearly didn’t know what it meant. Is a person who leads a ritual an Archdruid? Do we all need shiny titles? Is it fair to call three people an Order? In the Druid community, ‘ancient’ gets used far too often in ways it probably shouldn’t. None of the ancient orders are the least bit ancient.

Careless language makes for sloppy thinking, and that can just take us in the direction of being inept. It can also, as with advertising, be a tool deliberately used to make us believe that which is false. The ultimate Archdruid only uses Fantastic Superwash Powder to get his magical robes whiter than white.

We forget that there’s not much distance between spelling, and spells.

Druid community (and beyond)

There are a startling number of you reading and following this blog. Some of you, I am delighted to say I know personally, or have at least met in passing. Some of you I’ve spoken with enough online to have a sense of. Many of you remain enigmatic, quiet mysteries…

I thought it would be interesting to invite you all to get in the comments section, and de-mystify a bit. If you are a blogger, put your link in and a few words about your blogging topics. If you do art, or music, or anything else with a shareable link, do the same for that. If you’d like to leave a few words about where in the world you are and what you’re up to, that would be splendid.

I can’t promise I’m going to be able to comment on every comment (if you all pile in there’s going to be lots) but I shall most definitely be interested to read. So, go for it…

A landscape full of stories

When I lived in Dursley, I lived in a landscape full of stories. Every hill had a tale or two associated with it. Places around the town and surrounding countryside were full of stories, too. Some of them were shared tales – the site of the former small pox hospital, apparently the ruins were there when my great grandmother was a child. The mass graves on the hillside, which, despite local legend, were probably ancient rabbit warrens. Rabbits used to be wimpy and needed warrens made for them when first introduced by the Normans. The earth-worked hill fort re-mythed as a place to race chariots.

Folklore is full of stories that root people in the landscape. The invented history of local places, explanations for natural features, and for place names, are common. Many clearly have no proper grounding in reality. Last weekend I went to Cromwell’s Mount in Scarborough, local legend has it, he fired on the castle from there. The most tenuous grasp of cannon capabilities suggests this was impossible. Tales of dancers transformed to standing stones, boulders placed by giants as tombstones, hills made of abandoned boots in a ploy to confuse the devil… There are many such tales around the UK.

These are often not real histories, and probably never were meant to represent a kind of literal truth. Instead, what such storytelling does is give you a map of the landscape. It makes personal each hill and cave. Nature isn’t an entirely strange, dangerous, and unknown place. The land outside the village is where we once fought a battle, its where you can see ghosts from that long forgotten war. It may be creepy, but it’s known. It may be hazardous, but here’s a story about a man who went up that hill and killed the most ferocious wild boar that ever was seen. This is where King Arthur is buried. This is where Granny was drunk on cider whilst riding a horse. Personal stories and bigger myths blend together. Back when stories were most of our entertainment, the idea that a hill looks a little bit like a sleeping dragon could keep you imagining and inventing for a lot of evenings.

Anyone can undertake to bring stories to any landscape. History can be helpful in this regard, furnishing raw material. Tales from our own people are just as relevant. This is the hill Bob tried to cycle down without using his breaks, this is the corner where he unexpectedly met a duck and wound up in the hedge… Making things up is fine. This is the corner where Bob met a dragon, and fell in the hedge. Looking at a place and wondering what would have been and what never was, is just what our ancestors used to do. Making stories about the landscape should not be a dull process, it’s just about rooting tales in a place, so that the people who share the tales also feel rooted in that place, have a sense of belonging. We are story telling creatures, and when tales of the tribe include a keen sense of locality, we know who we are, and where we are.

Tiger day

My tiger child is eleven today. In both clothes sizes and mind, he’s walking that edge now between childhood and teenager status. Just as when he first arrived, I have a keen sense, once again, that every day represents a small shift. He seems to be physically growing all the time as well, although on the plus side, the analogy stops well before we get to night feeding, being unable to talk, and throwing up all over the place. Like I said, we’re not quite at teen stage yet!

Yesterday, walking back from shopping he settled into step with me and took my hand. It doesn’t seem so very long ago that I was having to stoop down in order to hold his much smaller paw, while he learned to walk. For him, that’s pretty much a lifetime ago. I wonder how much longer we’ve got, before he is too cool, too grownup to be wandering around with his hand in mine. There may come a point, somewhere at the far end, when I am old and decrepit, and I am the one who needs to hold a hand for stability and road crossing.

As he goes forth into the wider world, encountering ever more influences, my scope (and willingness) to steer him will both reduce. The odds are, what he hasn’t learned by now in terms of values, he probably won’t learn any time soon. He’s been raised a Pagan child, not to conform to specific standards of behaviour, but to uphold certain virtues – to be honourable, compassionate, and respectful. He takes an interest in the world, and he cares about things. There comes a point, somewhere ahead when he takes a jump, leaves the nest, and holds responsibility for his life and choices. All I can do at that point is make sure there’s a safe space to come back to should he need it, and support, not judge as he gets to learn from his own mistakes. I can’t do it for him, and I don’t want to, his life is his own adventure.

I know a lot of people look at babies and small kids and express a desire that they stay that way forever. I’ve never thought about him in those terms. He was a person from the moment he arrived. He’s always had his own mind, his preferences, his own way of seeing the world and wanting to be in it, and I’ve never expected him to think and feel the way I do. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t, and that’s fine. From that day when he was born 11 years ago, I saw him as someone who would grow up to be an adult, someone who would need the skills, knowledge, insight and virtues to function as an independent person. I don’t think protecting children from what they need to know does them any good at all in the long term.

By the time he goes out into the world, he will be able to fend for himself in all things. He will know how to handle money, how to eat and deal with all the domestic practicalities. He will know to respect those jobs, and the people who do them. He will know how to take responsibility and how to make choices. I can give him a safe space in which to experiment, and take small risks, and hopefully that will be enough.

Looking at him now, he’s a brave, compassionate and thoughtful chap, who engages and delights people who come into contact with him. He knows how to give and how to hold boundaries, and I have every confidence that he will grow up to be a man I shall be exceedingly proud of.

Connecting with the land

For someone who has never been prompted to think about it before, ‘the land’ is such a large, vague thing, that ’connecting with it’ seems like equally vague new age noise. For someone whose primary experience is of tarmac and building interiors, how can connecting with the land even be possible? It is.

Let’s start by refining the idea of ‘the land’ into something a bit more workable. Namely the bit of land around you, right now. It’s there, somewhere, under the building, under the pavement, maybe even visible if you’re lucky. See if you can find an exposed bit, just to say hello to. With a bit of research (or asking a gardener) you can find out what kind of soil there is, which in turn says something about history, and behaviour. You might pick up something about underlying geology, too. The internet can tell you all manner of interesting things about what your soil and rocks mean, how they form, where they come from, what they like, when and why they misbehave. It’s not ‘the land’ now, it’s a soil type and some geology, which in turn holds your bit of land in relationship with the vast geological history that made it this way.

There may be more recent stories to unearth as well. What is the land used for now? What was it before that? Many urban areas used to be something else, and seeking the history of use is a way of building relationship. Some woods are not ancient. Some fields were once landfill sites, or villages. Landscapes change over time. Rivers shift course. Industries come and go. Settlements grow and are abandoned. What you see today is a surface, under which lie many, many stories.

Who lived here, and how did they live? How did they interact with the landscape you now occupy? What did they leave behind and where are they buried? What are you leaving behind?

We can’t make a connection with ‘the land’, only the bit we are on. The hills I have not yet walked are unknown to me. If I travel ten miles down the road, I no longer have the same relationship with the land (depending a bit on direction, that could be more as well as less). If I go to some gorgeous ancient Pagan site, my ‘relationship with the land’ does not magically travel with me. I am a foreigner places like Avebury and Rollright. It is not my land, I have a passing acquaintance, not a deep relationship.

When we play with big concepts, throwing around terms like ‘the land’ and ‘the elements’ we may fool ourselves into thinking that we are doing far bigger things than is the case. If I imagine that my relationship with one river represents, for example, a profound relationship with water in all forms, I’m kidding myself. I also won’t do the work that could take me into deeper, or broader relationship with other manifestations of water. It’s easy to say ‘I know the land’ and far more difficult to actually get out there and know it, up close and personal.

I think Druidry works best when we try not to tangle with those big, vague concepts. Stay away from ‘the land’ and head instead for the bit of land that is familiar to you. Don’t call to vague and impersonal elements, call to the things around you and in your life. Work with the relationships you actually have, not with the idea of relationships. This tree. This hill. This place.

Finding a teacher

There’s an oft repeated saying that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Most of us aren’t patient enough to just sit round waiting, and often a part of that readiness is manifested by going out there and seeing who might be able to help.

When we start out learning Druidry, the idea of a teacher-parent-guru who has all the wisdom and who can make encouraging noises about how well you’re doing, is a really alluring idea. Been there, have several badly tattered t-shirts to testify to the experience. So often what we want from a teacher – a simple way forward, affirmation, reassurance – is not what we get. Druidry is not straight forward and much of what makes us Druids is not the doing of specific things, or the learning of certain facts, but a developing of understanding. That takes time, and no one can do it for us.

Not all people who offer to teach Druidry are wise, kindly, insightful people who will help you on the journey. I’ve been stung, twice now, by ‘teachers’ who turned out to be unfair, demanding, fond of humiliating me, and otherwise no kind of good.

So here’s what I’ve learned.

It is not a good idea to place responsibility for your learning into someone else’s hands. For one, it is your path, not theirs. No matter how good a teacher is, they cannot tell you how to be yourself. The ones who wish you to become a version of themselves, are not good news. Relinquishing authority and responsibility into the hands of another is not a very Druidic thing to be doing, and it pays to start this at the learning stage: Hold responsibility for your own path, do not expect anyone else to have all the answers.

Teachers are flawed humans, the same as everyone else. Capable of error, misjudgement, conflict of interest and anything else you might think of. Put too much power over you into another person’s hands, and you can cause them difficulties. Put too much expectation on another person – to have all the answers, to sort your life out – and you can be asking way too much. Good teachers tend to be busy, and much as we might want them to be able to hold our hands and support us on a challenging journey, they won’t always be able to do that. We might ache for craft parents, but that doesn’t oblige or enable anyone to take on that role.

I think it works better to look at teachers in a more temporary way, as people who help with bits of the journey, not people who will define the whole thing. Go to someone to study a course, a concept, an approach – that works fine. Go to lots of different people. Learn from your peers. We all have different experiences and knowledge to bring to the table. Don’t assume, either, that a person needs a formal teaching relationship with you to be a good teacher. I’ve had some of my best experiences of being mentored with people who may not even have considered that was what they were doing.

Life and nature will teach you even if human teachers are not forthcoming. You can seek out knowledge and develop skills without needing someone else to light the way. It is a good thing to own your own journey. That means, if you do find someone along the way who can guide you for a bit of it, there’s no urge to try and drop everything you have ever needed onto them.

A temple of sky

For two years or so, I lived on the flood plain, down low, barely above sea level. Although I travelled about, mostly I lived on the flat, and most of my best views only gave me a handful of miles in any given direction.

I grew up on a hillside, hills are where I feel most at home. The flat lands were only bearable to me because they were the flat bit between hills, and I could at least see that which I love. It’s amazing though, how much can be forgotten, and how quickly.

This last week I’ve been able to get out and about on the hills around my new home. There are commons here, lovely open spaces that survived enclosure acts and the tendency of wealthy landowners to put fences around things. It may be my inner nomad, or my inner communist speaking, I don’t know, but I find the concept of land ownership difficult. I’ll happily respect living spaces, and crops in the fields, I’m careful with livestock, but fenced off spaces with ‘private keep out signs’ make me cross. The land should belong to everyone, and not be fenced off for the benefit of the few. Access and faming can be compatible so long as people are sensible and respectful. Yes, I know that’s a big ask, but I’m an idealist.

I love common land and the absolute right to wander about. In practice, many spaces owned by ‘the public’ are actually managed by some outfit or another. We see how that works (and doesn’t) around sites like Stonehenge, and national parks, where ownership on behalf of the public turns rapidly into a ‘right’ to charge a lot of money for access. That doesn’t sit well with me, either.

There are hilltops here with commons on them, and on that land are signs of all kinds of old and ancient human activity. There is wildlife – orchids, insects, all manner of things. I’ve found fossils, because this is old sea bed. Most importantly, there are the views. Vast, panoramic stretches of landscape open up before me. I can see the river, and distant mountains in Wales. Depending on where I go, the views carry me in many directions.

On a hill top, the sky is a vast and wholly visible dome, unbroken by manmade or natural intrusions. The wind is almost constantly present. The sense of being on the earth and under the sky is intense. This is my temple to air and space, to freedom and flights of fancy. Here I can open my arms and pretend they are wings, and feel the air rush past my face. Dwarfed by the landscape, and by the enormity of sky, I feel release and relief. All those things that belong to the human domain (down at the bottom of the hills) cease to be relevant for a little while. This is what matters. This is the important bit.

I cannot live in a temple in the sky. I have to come back, eventually. Reluctantly. Here in this space, the immediate and human concerns loom large. They seem increasingly like distractions from that which is truly important.

Barefoot lessons

I had another bout of barefoot wandering at the weekend, along the beach at Scarborough, and onwards. It made me realise a thing. I’ve been tuning out pain for years now. If I let myself be aware of it, there is pretty much constant bodily pain. Far less of it than there used to be, but still enough to be a nuisance. I’ve been learning to balance more between tuning out the pain in order to get stuff done, and letting myself be aware of it in order to manage it better and heal.

If I choose, I can walk on anything. I’ve not tested that, and I’m not interested in broken glass, hot embers or anything of that ilk, but I can go barefoot over any surface that won’t cut or burn me, and that’s plenty good enough. I can do it by choosing to do it.

Then, because walking tends to get my brain pottering along, I started wondering if I could take the same approach to other things. I’m a strong willed person. For years, I used that to keep going normally despite suffering from chronic sleep deprivation. I‘ve used it for the pain. I have also used it to simply not roll over and accept defeat during sorely trying times. Now I sleep enough, my pain levels are down, and I’ve faced down a few allegedly impossible challenges.

Can I choose not to be afraid?

I suffer from anxiety as a medical condition. This goes beyond normal, functional fear, to something less rational that seriously impacts on my quality of life at times. That which has happened to me has left me fearful, and expecting the worst. I jump at shadows and see the potential for disaster in everything around me. If I let it take over, I’d be unable to do anything. The impact on my body is immediate, deeply physical and bloody irritating. I’m tired of being afraid.

I can choose to simply accept that yes, the world probably is going to dish me plenty more shit before it’s done with me. But not all the time. There’s plenty of good stuff, too. Thus far I have managed to endure, overcome, and otherwise not be destroyed by the crap in my life. It may be therefore fair to assume, given just how serious some of that was, that actually I probably can find my way through whatever comes. I have will. I have determination. If I refuse to be defeated by fear then it’s going to have a hard time stopping me.

There is that other trick, the one remembered through walking shoeless. I can choose not to feel it. When my body kicks off with panic responses, I can try treating that the same way I would a dose of sudden pain. I know how to push it away. I just have to use the tools already at my disposal.

I can walk barefoot on gravel.

I can walk through the fear.

Karmic Druid

Karma crops up in a number of traditions. There’s reason to think the ancient Celts believed in reincarnation, and that debts could be repaid in future lives, but we don’t really know if they had the kinds of ideas that crop up in other cultures. We don’t have clear rules about how to feel and behave (maybe our ancestors did). This means that we don’t have a clear collective sense of what actions would constitute good or bad karma for a Druid.

Karma can be seen as a form of justice, repaying us for good work, punishing mistakes. That can be comforting if you get no justice in this life. It can encourage us not to seek justice, and to blame victims (it only happened to you because you have bad karma). I do not like that attitude. If we mistake material success for spiritual reward, we’re on a very slippery slope, with those who have money and power effectively getting some kind of divine endorsement to do as they please, and no responsibility for those less well off. If poverty is proof you were a ‘bad person’ in a former life, there are problems for your whole culture, and there will be no compassion.

I happen to think compassion is a good thing.

I’m troubled by the idea of karma as some sort of points system, a bit like a store loyalty cards, where you save up good karma for a reward. It tends to suppose that someone or something is keeping score, and that there are mechanisms by which this can occur. It seems a rather restrictive way of thinking about existence, and not actually helpful. Especially given we don’t know what the rules are.

Tentative forays into Jainism presented me with some interesting ideas. Jains view karma as being more like a substance, or set of substances, that stick to you as a result of your actions. So, do good things, get good karma sticking to you. No external judgement is required, it’s a simple mechanism akin to eat more chocolate, gain more weight. Interestingly Jains don’t see good karma as an entirely good thing. Any karma ties you into the cycle of death and rebirth, the aim is to escape from karma. So, while good karma is better than bad karma, the idea is to step out of life and not have any karma at all. For a Druid whose path very much affirms being in the world, this is not a perspective I can work with. Nonetheless, it is an interesting idea to consider.

The more science is able to tell us about structures in the body and the way the mind functions, the clearer it becomes that what we do shapes who we are. How we think forms pathways in the brain. What we think forms habits, paths we quickly and easily walk. Our lifestyles shape our bodies, in all kinds of ways. We are what we eat, what we drink, what we breathe. We are how much exercise we get. We are our stress and fear, our hope and delight. It all contributes to us as corporeal beings. Mind, emotion and body are not separate things, but part of the same system.

For me, karma is what we do to ourselves. It is the bodily legacy of our own choices. That doesn’t mean the shit that comes into our lives is deserved and of our making. It means that how we react to the crap, and to the good stuff, is who we are, and that’s our karma. I don’t know if we take that with us beyond death or not, but there’s plenty enough to be going along with in this life.

I perceive the world as fearful, hostile and unkind. Often I find that the word is a scary, hostile, unkind sort of place. How much of this is to do with how I choose to make sense of my experiences, how I choose to live what happens to me? Could I choose differently? I talked recently about choosing innocence. Could I go further and choose not to be afraid, even as alarming things bear down on me? And if I could change that, would I not have changed my karma?

Pagan ethics generally are, as Christine Hoff Kraemer has identified, largely virtue ethics. In cultivating personal virtues, we shape our paths and ourselves. I am increasingly of the opinion that I want courage as a personal virtue. The only way to get it is by cultivating it. Courage fits well with what I know of the Celts, it strikes me as being a good, Druidic virtue to aspire to. I want to believe I can survive and thrive. I want not to be afraid anymore. I do not want to feel that all the bad stuff in my life is somehow of my making.