Nimue Brown's Blog, page 425

Cradle to Grave

I met Kerry online through a story sharing project. Cradle To Grave stories approached me because they felt (rightly) that their work in recording and sharing stories would appeal to my bardic inclinations. Furthermore, they had a Druidy story, and would I be interested? I was, and after listening, I asked Kerry, whose story I had heard, if she would be willing to share her thoughts here. She kindly agreed, and an email interview followed…

Nimue: Having listened to your recording for cradle to grave, I had a strong impression that for you, Paganism is an intrinsic thing, and that you are reaching for something innate. Would you like to talk a bit about how that works for you?

Kerry: The answer to your question is both yes and no.

Yes, in that I need something to ring true inside me. I’m pretty honest with myself and have always found it impossible to play along with any belief system that I could rationalise – as I can rationalise many of them – but did not sound a resonant chord inside me as being ultimately truthful. I know myself well enough to trust my own instincts, and I trust myself well enough to examine those instincts and separate the ones that come from an important place from those that come from an unimportant place! I like the concept of faith – but, for me, it has to come from a position of ‘I feel this to be true at a profound level’ rather than ‘I can abandon my instincts and go with this belief because I’d like it to be true’. That’s why that process I describe in my Cradle to Grave story, of reading that druid book and feeling that dawn of deep recognition was so significant to me. It wasn’t even as if I was actively reaching for anything at the time – I was busy with other things and not thinking about this sort of thing at all.

Yes, in that I feel it is important to have, at the heart of one’s connection with the divine, a personal relationship at a level that can never be taken away, because it is an intrinsic part of me. I have friends who went through phases of adhering to a religious faith in a fit of enthusiasm and conviction, only to examine its dogma in the cold light of day and question its veracity – and ultimately abandon that faith. And I think losing that light once you have experienced it is a dreadful thing. Whereas I know, at a deep root level, that my response to nature is not going to be something I ever lose. And that, as my connection to the divine is through the medium of nature, a secure relationship with nature means a secure connection with the divine. I don’t think I will ever be able to sit quietly in a forest and not feel the divine mystery which lies behind the forest.

No, in that I believe in the divine being something that is not just innate. I am not someone who believes that the divine is just an aspect of ourselves that lies within us, waiting for us to discover it in ourselves. I believe it has a real, separate existence as a deity. My experience of it is that there is a spark of it that lies in each of us, a spark which flares up and expands when it comes into contact with its original source. I do not worship or communicate with the spark of that deity that I sense lies within me – it’s the deity that exists beyond me that I worship and pray to. Sometimes I think that this deity might work through me when it requires something to be done – but I am not the deity and the deity is not me. The deity can be in me and work through me, but is also beside and beyond me – and universal and beyond universal. So in that sense, it is a great deal more than innate!

Nimue: Thank you, this is beautifully expressed stuff. Nature is real, after all, it doesn’t require belief. Is there anything that particularly inspires you?

Kerry: Metaphors. Messages that we see written in nature that speak of a great underlying truth. The apparent death that takes place at Samhain, without which new life would not be possible the following spring. Planting bulbs in the soil – and what they represent in terms of our trust that they will have their green awakening at the appointed time. The fulfilment of that promise that comes with the optimistic green shoots and buds the following spring.

I respond far better to metaphors than to dogma! Metaphors have, for me, a humility about them. They are a poetic inkling of what it’s all about, rather than an arrogant assertion. My feeling is that the great mystery which lies behind everything is so far beyond us to describe and contain in language that any attempts to capture it in absolutes can have dangerous results. I have seen too many cases of people taking the dogma of their faith at too literal a level, and mis-applying it as a result. I also feel that dogma runs the risk of being man-made, rather than deity-made – and, if we start setting too much store by man-made interpretations, we end up having a relationship with the dogma rather than the deity. Of course, I enjoy finding the common ground between the dogma of different faiths – so I do believe they have some value. But not at the expense of a direct, personal and essentially mystic interaction with what the deity is trying to communicate to us!

Nimue: Is there anything you have going on that people might want to follow up on?

Kerry: Actually, I don’t. I just tend to invite various friends over for dinner on the festival days and we have a ritual in the garden. They seem to like it, and no-one has ever found anything to quibble with!

Nimue: Fair enough! Thank you Kerry for sharing. If you want to listen to Kerry on Cradle to Grave, she’s here… http://soundcloud.com/cradle2gravestories/kerry I believe Cradle to Grave are looking for more stories all the time.

Fiddling druid

I’ve played the violin for something disturbingly like 25 years now, which rather makes me feel I should be better at it than I am. I’m a folk fiddler, my double jointed hands not able to hold anything the ‘right’ way, and I play a lot of O’Carolan. If you’ve not heard of him, he was the last great Irish bard, a blind harper and writer of many amazing tunes. He should be required encountering for bards, I think.

My current violin was bought years ago at a folk festival. I knew, the moment I put my hand on it, that this was mine. It spoke. It also did wonders for the quality of my playing. Mine is not the prettiest fiddle, the wood is grainy and on the back has a knot in it, the scroll is unevenly carved, its a bit worn in places. There’s a lot of character though. It’s a fiddle with soul. Sometimes, when I am very low, I’ll just sit and hold the case against my chest. The case saved me once, I fell down a flight of concrete stairs, and the fiddle case (different instrument inside it) got under my neck and head, and protected me. I could easily have broken my neck otherwise. As I’d fainted, it wasn’t a conscious choice to protect myself.

I’ve played over the years, with some lovely people, mostly in folk clubs. I’ve done a lot of jamming. I’ve busked in the street and caused children to dance. Last winter I was so sick, so deep in depression with the backlash from everything I’d been though, that I simply couldn’t play. I didn’t get the fiddle out for months. The cold conditions and a lack of checking meant that an old problem kicked off again, and the back started to peel off my violin. I felt just as guilty as I would have done if I had injured a person that badly through neglect. The violin is like a person to me. A friend. A co-creator. It’s taken months of love and care to put it all right again, and today I stood in a shop, trying out new bows, and playing. My fingers are rusty, the tunes no longer fall easily and I’ve got work to do, to regain the ground I‘ve lost. The violin is well, and appears to hold no grudges.

There’s something of the human voice in a violin played well. They can cry and mourn, dance and sing in ways that call to my heart. Making music with the fiddle is time out of time, it’s a whole other way of being. I need to refind that.

This has been a roller coaster of a week, emotionally, practically. Fights to take on, practical things to sort, progress towards becoming an OBOD tutor, acceptance into The Society of Authors, the closing of a publishing house I’ve worked with for 8 years, an invitation to make an epic journey… my head is spinning. Tomorrow we are at Saul Church and people are welcome to come and draw monsters with us.

Despite the mayhem, this evening it will just be me, and that glorious melding of wood, metal and horsehair with a little nylon in the strings… the magic that is a musical instrument, and melodies handed down from my ancestors of tradition. Time to be on the fiddle…

Peaceful protest

There’s a lot of talk on various Druid groups at the moment about both the warrior path, and the peace path. There are Druids who subscribe to both approaches. The Ancient Celts after all were not averse to a punch up, but the Druids could, it is said, step out between two armies and instruct them to stop.

I don’t think a modern Druid has much scope for stepping in front of the EDL, or other angry people, and making much progress by asking them to stop, but perhaps it would be worth a go anyway. Part of me suspects that’s a one way ticket to getting shouted at, if not thumped, but as I’ve not dealt directly with anyone from the EDL, I’m hardly in a position to comment.

I’m a rural Druid at the moment. About the closest we get to conflict within the community round here is when two tractors are trying to go in opposite directions down the same lane. This is a quiet place. No one is going to riot, or march, or do anything else. That has let me off the hook a bit, and not having a car I’m not well placed to travel to where there are problems.

What would I do if there was unrest on my doorstep? I think it would depend a lot on the nature of the unrest. There are plenty of things I think need protesting about and that I would march over, were there anyone around to influence. The sheep are pretty disinterested on this subject, although my local badgers are developing an unfortunately large degree of political awareness, I suspect.

I would not take arms, or go out expecting to fight. Partly because I am woefully out of practice, partly because a quarterstaff would draw all the wrong sort of attention in the first place, partly because I have no desire to hit anyone. I would like to think that if it came down to it, if people where I lived were marching with hatred and an intention to do violence, I would find in myself the courage to take my body into that space and simply put my flesh in their way. Not aggressively, but accepting the likelihood of violence in order to slow down, protect, discourage.

It’s one of those things. Until we are tested, all the ideas about what we *might* do are hypothetical. Would I have the courage to face being arrested if honour demanded that I put myself in opposition to the police? I think about activists who have gone to court, and sometimes won, standing up for the idea that powerful entities do not have the right to run roughshod over individuals. Would I be brave enough to do that? I think of the three women in Woolwich who tackled the psychos still holding weapons, who had killed Lee Rigby. Do I have what it takes to walk forward in such a situation?

I do not know.

We only find out whether we can truly walk our talk when we are tested to our limits and beyond. What I do know, is how grateful I am for the times when I am not being tested, when I am not overwhelmed by impossible choices or being asked to put my life on the line for honour or justice. Some people do that every day in their normal line of work, and I am deeply grateful to them for shouldering that weight for the sake of the rest of us.

Accountability and the zombie apocalypse

The hardest thing about speaking out is the fear of reprisal. When there is a significant power imbalance, this is a genuine source of anxiety. For the protestor who takes on the police, the person who goes whistleblowing about dangerous workplaces, the people who take on governments… you stand up to a system that might well give itself the power to stamp on you and pat itself on the back for doing so. Tyrants in the home will operate in much the same way.

This is one of the reasons why international human rights laws are so important, and why the Conservatives wanting to pull out of European agreements troubles me. I like to think that if I end up bleeding to death in the street, someone else will have the power to call my government out over what happened to me. We all need to be answerable to someone. We all need something that can challenge us, and the more power a person or group have, the more counterweight there needs to be.

In my soul I am an anarchist, wanting freedom from stifling legislation and a community that depends on honour and does the right things for the right reasons. Between the ears I am a pragmatist, all too aware that you only need a couple of really evil bastards to corrupt that kind of fluffy ideal. It’s no good saying we are answerable to our own consciences, because not everybody has one of those. It’s not enough to be answerable to the Gods, because frankly their track record on smiting people for acting out is not what it could be.

There is a flip side to accountability – namely that we have to enact it. There’s no point having a system if people will not, or dare not use it. Calling out is a part of the accountability process. Voicing dissent and manifesting protest is essential to make the system we have, work. And yet for the greater part we just shut up and put up. We accept infringements of our rights, we accept environmental degradation and species loss. How much of that is down to fear and how much is about apathy?

I do not want to shuffle slowly towards certain doom. I’ll go down fighting, not randomly falling apart as one more non entity in a zombie apocalypse. Every day though I am overwhelmed by the sheer number of causes that need supporting and wars that need waging. I am horrified by the numbers of vulnerable people continually being pushed to the edge. I am furious about the many abuses of power at all levels and that there are just not enough hours in the day to campaign on all of this. I want to be an army.

And at the same time, fighting a legacy of anxiety, fighting myself every bit as much as I fight those external battles. I have to keep reminding myself that I have rights, and that there are no systems in existence that are actually entitled to crush me for the sheer hell of it. But they do try and crush us all the same, and those day to day battles of survival are grinding lot of people down right now. I hear a lot, especially on facebook, about ‘you can’t get there from here’ philosophy and other people being forced into situations where the only options seem to be variations on a theme of lose. Keeping fighting in face of that is not easy, but fight we must because quite simply the alternative is to sink and go under, accepting being crushed.

I have fought battles I was told were unwinnable. I have fought them and won. They were costly, painful victories, but I do not regret them. When you are faced with living death, a fight that calls for your blood and pain, your tears and terror is a fight you might not even see the point in fighting. I am here to tell you to fight. Stand up, again, and again. Do not allow anyone to tell you that there is no hope and no way because this is usually A LIE and there are ALWAYS alternatives. Fight the impossible wars and believe they can be won. Fight your own despair. Come and tell me your tales from the trenches and I will tell you mine, and maybe we can all keep each other going.

The zombie apocalypse is here already, and you are fighting for your life.

In self defence

The most dangerous time is when you say ‘no’. When you try to get out, or run away, or resist the pressure to do as you are told. The time when you call them out for breaking the law. I’ve done it, and I’ve watched others do it. It doesn’t matter if you’re thinking about abusive partners, malevolent companies, bullying bosses, irresponsible landlords… the time they are most likely to seriously hurt you is the point at which you stop going along with their bullshit.

I’ve heard the other stories too, the people who keep their heads down and do as they are told. The ones who accept a change to the rules, and another, and another, until there’s nowhere left to go. The trouble with bullies, in every walk of life, is that the more you acquiesce, the more able they feel to keep doing it to you. Stand up to them and you will incur their wrath, but sometimes, it is possible to win through, get out, get justice.

It’s a pretty terrifying sort of process though. The more we do it, the more we refuse to accept those who would walk over us, the less it happens to other people, too. I keep telling myself this every time I get into one of these fights… it’s not just about me. It’s for the rights of those people who are not able to fight, who are too beaten down already, too abused to realise that what is happening to them is not acceptable.

Here we go again, to the theme music of Professor Elemental’s Fighting Trousers and Talis Kimberly’s Belling the Cat. Anthems for a hard day. Raw, exhausted, running on empty, too tired to work, needing to work. Too tired to fight and having to fight. Forgive the shortness of blog.

Living on the land

The school run takes me through the same village every day. Over the few years I’ve been doing this, I’ve got to know a lot of people on sight. The many dog walkers who have their routes and times. Others with routines that put them in certain places at certain moments in the day. I’m on hailing and greeting terms with many, some of them I know by name. There are people who have lived in the village all their lives. People whose families have been there back as far as knowledge goes. Perhaps there are some whose people have always lived on this land. Their bones and flesh are part of the landscape, they belong here, the rhythms of this land are the rhythms of their daily lives.

I’m not good at routines, or at staying still for long. Most of the routine in my life comes from the boy being at school, but as he grows more independent, I shall be less bound by that. I have short periods of habit over where I go, when and where I work… as soon as the patterns settle, I get uncomfortable and something changes. The boat has been great for this, answering my need for change and movement, a bunch of different school runs, different neighbours, a different view… it suits me. I expect I’m going to miss that, when the time comes.

I have ancestral ties to this area. My people come from all over, though. My Nan was from the Forest of Dean. My Grandfather on that side moved to work. I have blood ties to Cornwall, family who came up through Bristol, again seeking employment. I’ve seen family trees, and while there were periods in one place and we’ve been near the Severn a lot, I get the feeling my people move around a fair bit. There’s something restless in me, that chafes against too much routine. A part of my soul that wants to pack no more than I can carry and step onto the path and wander. I feel that even more keenly, living near the Severn with the knowledge of ancient ancestors of place who were nomadic.

Alongside that, I have a keen desire for a place to call home. In the last few years, I’ve come to realise that ‘home’ is the Severn vale, the Cotswolds, and the Forest of Dean. Home is everywhere I could easily walk to if I stepped outside this afternoon and let my feet guide me. Home is a community to belong to and people to be with. For a long time I laboured under the illusion that home meant a roof, and possessing a bit of land. Apparently for me, it doesn’t. Those things never gave me the security I thought they would bring. A boat, a cat, a man who loves me, a child who is glad to be with me – is home enough. The next place, and the one after it… will be home enough too. All of them will connect me to this landscape where I belong.

I can’t imagine settling into a place in the way I see others doing – the same walk with the dog every morning, the same habits of travel and work, all familiar and predictable. I can see that for some, being imbedded in a place and the rhythms of a clearly established life, is a happy way of being. I would always hear the song of the road, calling me out. No matter how much I love these hills and trees, this river, the need to see other places, to go away and come back again, is strong. Shades of Bilbo Baggins, I suppose.

For a while, I’ve been part of a place, and part of the daily rhythm for others, cycling through the village, waving, saying hi. I’ve become a feature of this landscape, and people are already telling me I will be missed when I go. No doubt I will miss things too, and no doubt I will come back sometimes, but there are other paths waiting to be explored, other waterways to follow, and I have not been planted here to root like an oak, as some villagers have.

Being Hateful

We all get angry, that’s just human. Right now, a lot of people seem to be angry, especially here in the UK, with groups of angry people marching to protest about other people. We see the racists getting their banners out, and then we see people who want to “smash the racists” and that doesn’t help at all. I think we all know, if we stop and think about it, that venting our rage on people will not make them change their minds. It will, however, entrench the hostility and give them more reasons to hate us.

When we are full of hate, we quite often feel a desire to make people do things our way, or think the way we want them to. We feel urges to use force to push our desires onto others. Perhaps they have done something awful and we are righteously angry with them. We want to make them pay for what they did, show them the error of their ways. We want to hurt them like they hurt us, in the hopes that they will then understand something. It’s not just about bodily violence, either. There’s the desire to publically shame and humiliate those who have wronged us. Sometimes, there may be a place for that. If a professional person acts unprofessionally, there should be consequences. People who break laws should not walk away untouched.

I get very angry sometimes – with specific individuals, aspects of modern culture, politicians, big business, idiot drivers who seem unable to indicate or perceive bicycles. Idiot drivers who routinely kill wildlife… There are a lot of cruel, stupid and pointless things that humans do, and I get my share of fury over this. That feeling – that if I could only knock some sense into them things would improve. That treacherous, lying impulse that says forcing people to do it my way would make things better. It’s a little voice we all seem to have, and it is a dangerous one. However, culture reinforces it. We treat it as ok to respond with rage and violence to rage and violence. Entertainment seems to be full of people shouting at each other, trying to force their opinions through. We tell ourselves its perfectly reasonable to shout, hit, maybe even kill, if we are cross enough. We justify our own hate as a response to someone else’s hatred, and all we get that way is more hatred, and more, with a side-order of violence.

I started thinking about this blog a few days ago, when I was bloody furious about the way racist elements in the UK are using one awful incident to try and make a few more awful incidents, as though that would balance things somehow. I didn’t write, because I realised that my angry responses were no better than anyone else’s. My hatred is no more reasonable, no more helpful than any other hatred out there right now. Mine is not the magical hatred with the special power to put things right. I’m glad I didn’t post in haste, or in anger. It was as much luck as judgement.

People are full of hate because they are afraid and they want something, someone easy to blame. Hatred comes when we are full of hurt, anxious about what will be done to us, defensive, and vulnerable. Hatred is the easiest thing to manipulate and steer. It worked for Hitler, and for pretty much every other mad dictator you might care to think about. The politics of fear are the politics of slavery. If we succumb to them, they will be used to control us.

Be angry. You are human, anger is one of the things we do. Let it run through you, and don’t act until the anger has run its course and you are able to think. Look to your own fear. Do not let that fear warp your perceptions of other, frightened human beings who are making poor choices right now. If we can get past the fear and the hatred to a bit of mutual tolerance, a bit of patience and compassion, we might avoid a total meltdown.

I’ve been through the long, dark corridors of hatred. It’s not a fun place to be. I do not want to go there again, and that simply means I have to deal with my responses, because I know I’ll still get to heft dead animals out of the road, and dodge stupid drivers, and listen to news items that make me want to scream.

Deconstructing Fairy Tales

Bringing you more insights and re-thinkings of familiar fairy stories, in the form of this guest post by author Judith O’Grady

Chance made me look at another classic children’s tale, when I read about shape shifting magic, Fith-Fath (pronounced fee-fah), in Celtic cultures on a friend’s blog. The similarity to what the Giant says in ‘Jack the Giant Killer’

(Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum,

I smell the blood of an Englishman,

Be he alive or be he dead,

I will have his bones for bread!)

suggested the association, and when I looked into it I discovered that the story purportedly originates in Cornwall. I read both Cornish and British versions, and was again struck by what I had perceived as a child– Jack is a thief and murderer. He is both unsuccessful and inept in the beginning and initially it seems that he is taken advantage of by some pixy trickster when he trades his only cow for a handful of beans but actually they ARE magic beans and DO lead up into the cloud-land where the Giant has his castle.

We must examine the Celtic perception of ‘giant’ to begin with; in the lore, many of the first-dwellers are described as ‘giants’ by the in-comers/invaders. But they subsequently have mixed children, so the wild people who were there to start can’t actually be gigantic; I have assumed that ‘giant’ does not mean ‘many times my size’ in the stories but ‘primitive’ or ‘with a different culture’. Like Goldilocks calling the poor folk ‘bears’ in the first story. This makes the Giant Cornish and Jack a newcomer. Jack’s luck turns when he climbs the beanstalk and systematically plunders what he finds there. He sees the Giant’s castle, sneaks in, and discovers the Giant’s gold. Without any pang of conscience (in any of the various versions) he steals the gold and hot-foots it back down the beanstalk.

So he has taken the ‘native’s’ money. Once that is spent (or in some versions as he or his grasping mother are swept by greed) he goes back and steals the Giant’s treasured possessions. Now the Giant has lost savings and heritage possessions. Not content, Jack goes back and steals the singing harp, which could be typified as the native culture. The Harp, however, defends herself and cries out to the Giant as Jack races away. To save himself Jack chops down the beanstalk while the Giant is climbing down, kills him, and lives happily ever after. In one of the British versions, the tricky pixie returns and hails Jack as a liberator, rescuing the countryside from the Giant’s oppression.

So what is the moral? Culture fights back when stolen.

Judith O’Grady is the author of ‘God Speaking’ which you can find here – http://www.amazon.com/Pagan-Portals-God-Speaking-Judith-OGrady/dp/1780992815/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370088049&sr=8-1&keywords=god+speaking+judith+o%27grady

Official book release day!

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Although Intelligent Designing for Amateurs has been available in the UK for a couple of weeks now, this is official release day, and amazon.com will now let you get paper copies. http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Designing-Amateurs-Nimue-Brown/dp/1780999526/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369989320&sr=8-1&keywords=intelligent+designing+for+amateurs (and just to confuse everyone, is now saying the release date was the 16th May. Go figure!)

Just to tempt you a bit, here’s one of the bits that owes a lot to revival Druids. It was whilst reading Ronald Hutton’s ‘Blood and Mistletoe’ that it occurred to me that actual history of revival Druidry seems a lot like a Monty Python sketch, with the costumes, titles, claims of ancientness. Which led me to this…

The parlour was overfull of familiar and overdressed women when Justina and her mother were shown in. She looked around despondently, taking in the grotesque excess of decoration on women far too old to carry such girlish extravagance. They clucked and preened like so many hens, the bulk of their skirts filling up the spaces between closely packed items of furniture. Why it was felt desirable to squeeze so many warmly dressed people into such a confined space, Justina had never understood. It was one of the features of her life that had greatly hampered her social development – she simply did not enjoy being pressed against a large number of other people in the confines of heavily furnished rooms.

A gentleman with exceptional moustaches leapt at once to his feet. He appeared to be wearing a white night gown with rather elaborate embroidery at the collar and cuffs. Seeing him only increased the terrible urge she had been feeling to scream, and run away. Before she could plan an escape, Mrs. Easlefeet hurried forwards to make introductions.

“Ah, my dear, my dear, I must present this young lady to you,” she began.

Justina loathed her for that. The person of greater social status was asked first, and she could not, possibly, be of lesser consideration than a man who went about in public in a nightgown?

“This is Justina Fairfax, dear Elizobella’s daughter. Justina, this is none other than the ArchDruid Henry Caractacus Morestrop Jones!”

As Mrs. Easelfeet continued with an incomprehensible list of further titles, ArchDruid Henry indulged in some complex hand maneuvering and offered her his services.

“Founder of the Brotherhood of Restrained Enlightenment, and current leader of the Truly Venerable Order of English Druids,” he added.

Justina took a few careful steps backwards whilst saying, “How charming.” She had only encountered Druids once before, at a meeting of the Society of Archaeology an Antiquities. A lecture about whether the Romans might have constructed on Stonehenge had been disrupted by a man, dressed entirely in clothes made from the skins of very small mammals. He had entered without invitation, stood upon a table, waved a sword about and made a wholly unfathomable speech about classical geometry at ancient sites.

Just as she as paused to flee this current scene of dismay, Mrs Fairfax commenced exalting Justina’s many virtues as an antiquarian scholar. With her reputation the new topic of conversation, escape seemed less appealing.

“I myself have a great interest in the ancient times,” the strangely dressed man announced. He had the kind of voice that would even whisper loudly. “The Truly Venerable Order of English Druids has written records going back to before even the Roman invasion. Our oldest manuscripts are known to be the work of Taliesin himself.”

He paused, and Justina knew she was supposed to be impressed by his claims. Certainly such documents had the power to re-write English history, and that made her very suspicious. It was amazing how many bored gentlemen and obscure vicars turned out to have ancient manuscripts stashed in their attics.

A sacred space

I think spirit is in all things, so am wary about ways of thinking that suggest anywhere could be ‘unsacred’. However, the kinds of relationships we have with spaces will inform how spiritual we feel in them. There are places that are more sacred, I think. I like cathedrals for the atmosphere of love and reverence built up over centuries. I love Avebury for the same reasons. I struggle to feel a sense of sacred connection on garage forecourts, in crowded shopping centres and on traffic islands. That’s as much about how I am interacting with the space as anything else.

One of the features of the boat, is that we do not have a permanent bed. Narrow boats being six feet wide, double beds are tricky. Permanent single beds pose no problems, but our solution rolls back and forth on a daily basis. Most of the time, the bed is not a bed. It creates practical issues around illness, and means if I want to go to bed early, the chaps have to as well. We’ve managed this with no trouble at all over the last two years, but the arrangement was making me feel sad. It has taken me most of the time we’ve been here to figure out why this is.

Most of my more private spiritual activity happens in bed. The things that are most important in my private practice, and the things I hold most sacred; dreaming, prayer, meditation and making love are all bed based. Certainly, prayer and meditation don’t have to be, but my preference has always been to work along the edges of sleep at the start and end of each day. A bed that is not always a bed, is not able to hold that space in the same way. I can’t decorate it, or support aesthetically what I’m doing. I can’t retreat to it at need because most of the time, the bed does not exist as a bed. I’m starting to realise how much I need a bed as a permanent structure.

A bed should be a place of peace, rest and trust. It should be a happy place. Warm, comforting, relaxing, secure. That’s one area of anxiety I’ve largely dealt with. Going to bed is a happy thing now, not a fearful thing. I look back at my history and wonder how on earth I tolerated some aspects of my past. But then, a sleep deprived person does not think too well, and I endured years of not being allowed to sleep when I needed to. I don’t wake up to panic attacks all the time now, and I don’t have nightmares every night – I’m down to maybe once or twice a week, which is bearable. There is less fear in me, and this bed is a good place.

Sacred places do not have to be altars and temples, self-announcing in terms of their use. We might look to nature for our inspiration, for groves to gather in and spaces to love. However, there is nature in so much that we are and do. The kitchen and the hearth are no less places of connection with scope for sacred relationship. The bathtub may be your place of prayer and contemplation. These days the centre of the home seems to be the sofa and the television, which does not lend itself to a sense of sacred relationship. The sofa and the spinning wheel would though, or any other kind of craft space. Going out in search of nature is important, but seeing how nature is with us all the time, in everything we do, also matters.

Where are you at your most spiritual? What gives you a sense of connection? If we want a spirituality that is part of life, not a bit set aside, then places of doing and living will also be our sacred spaces.