Nimue Brown's Blog, page 459

Making Sacred, gods, reality and finding a place to stand

There was Red’s inspirational blog here – http://theanimistscraft.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/to-make-sacred/ and some fine comments on this blog too – Tony talking about sacrifice as making sacred, Jenny talking about that in terms of transformation. I’ve been aware over the last few days of a need to go deeper, asking questions of myself and trying to figure out how my thoughts fit. Cat commented that she sees my blog as a much sacrifice as her own. I don’t.

I can say with all honesty that I think about what I do, and I put a fair amount of effort in trying to do the right things for the right reasons. I have a sense of the sacred, closely tied to my sense of the numinous. It’s all about the poetry, the flow of awen, accidental art, and about the best of what we are and can be. I could spend a lot longer trying to pin that down, but hopefully it will suffice for today. That sense of sacredness has the potential to permeate all things. Spirit, and wonder, can be anywhere.

Now, my world view has plenty of room for gods in it. I’m comfortable with the idea of there being deity. I just don’t experience deity at the moment. There was no sense of the divine in the periods when I was brought to my knees in pain and fear. I have been through plenty of dark nights, but it’s always been people who have brought me through, not gods. I look for my sense of the divine in the world around me, and the people around me. So I do all manner of things in the context of relationship. The idea of offering up something to the gods, is beyond me. I’d have to believe they might care what I do, and I don’t think they do. That leaves plenty of room for other people to have entirely meaningful relationships with deities where that offering up has resonance, but I do not have that in my own life.

I’m deeply wary of dualist thinking – sacred and profane, mundane and magical, all those ways of cutting the experience of life into tidy pieces. How can I make something sacred? How can I make it not sacred? The only space for difference that I see lies not in the object, or the moment, but in my own understanding of it.

Since starting out with Druidry, I moved rapidly towards wanting my sense of spirit, of wonder, my ideals, aspirations and ways of seeing the world, to be part of every aspect of my life. I take it with me into checkout queues, public toilets, courtrooms. In the most banal situations, I’ll find the flower pushing through the cracks, the dash of humanity, the unintended poetry. I’ll find something with heart and resonance, because I refuse not to. But I can’t make anything sacred, I can just choose to experience it as sacred.

I think so much of how we practice, especially round ideas of prayer, service, sacrifice, communion, depend on what kind of relationships we have with the divine. If any. A person who experiences deity is in a very different place from one who does not. I don’t know if it’s possible to tease out ideas and ways of being that embrace both the deist and the atheist, that have room for those who love gods, and those who suspect gods might exist but who don’t have relationships, and those who suspect that all the gods are bastards. (I have days…) Who do we offer to? Who do we pray to? And why? These are such huge questions, and I am nothing like close to having answers for me, much less anything to offer anyone else. I will keep questioning and see what comes.

Meta-blog meanderings

On her blog this week, Cat Treadwell described blogging as a sacrifice, giving time and work freely for the sake of making information available. It had never occurred to me to think of what I do here as ‘sacrifice’. I do it because I want to, and it conveys a number of benefits. I feel almost morally obliged to point this out now. I also think it might be useful to explain what I get out of this and why.

I’m a professional writer and editor. Now, the editing side comes in steadily, but writing requires not only inspiration, but research, discipline, development of ideas and themes. That doesn’t happen by magic. So, when I’m exploring a topic, I use the blog to hammer out ideas as I go – a useful thinking space for me. It is important that I write every day – part of the discipline, and part of my sense of self. If I am not writing every day, I find it harder to relate to myself as a writer. In periods of creative block, the blogging has been a sanity saver. Finding a topic, and getting something intelligible out in a blog sized piece, is a technical process, and a good writing work-out. That helps hone my skills.

Putting thoughts into a public space like this enables me to test them and get feedback. This protects me from the risk of slowly vanishing up my own posterior, or getting delusions of grandeur. If I’ve not thought a thing through properly, if I’ve missed something, or the logic is poor, this is when I find out, which helps me a lot. If I’ve not explained well, someone tends to say. And further questions take me deeper into ideas – again, all win for me here. I am absolutely blessed in you folk who stop by to comment regularly. The richness of ideas that others post in response to my words is a daily source of delight, encouragement and insight. I float an idea out, and all kinds of new, inspiring and sometimes surprising things float back to me, and this is wonderful, and thank you. So I am nourished by that process.

Every now and then I write something that resonates with someone else, or that proves helpful, and I get feedback to that effect too. This is of course a source of joy and ego boost, but it also tells me I’m doing something useful. This matters a lot to me. I did not set out as a writer with the main aim being wealth and fame. I’d be writing much more conventionally were that the case. I want to put something good in the world. I want to inspire others. So the writing has to do something, it has to be more than amusing me. If I know I’m doing that, it keeps me on task. Also, I watch to see what feedback I get on my work, what people like, or respond to, what directions are the most response-inducing, and I learn from that, so it all feeds the process.

I enjoy the exchange, responding to other people’s blogs, to things in the news, hearing ideas from whole new perspectives. Writing can be a lonely business, but blogging is all about interaction, and that is good for the soul. I don’t feel like I’m one special person alone poised to change the world, I’m one person who is part of a vast discussion, one thread in a great tapestry of tradition. I know myself to be part of something, but I have a sense of perspective that I think does me a lot of good. Lonely authors in high towers can, by the looks of some of the biographies I’ve read, get a very inflated sense of their own usefulness in the world.

Last but by no means least, I write books. The blog may be free, the books aren’t. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that writing a book does not lead to instant success. Selling a book is a job in itself. There are only so many times you can intrude into a space and say ‘hey, everyone, buy my book, it’s great and you’ll love it’ before someone takes you outside and slaps you about the face with unwashed socks. And rightly so. That kind of thing is dull. Blogging makes me a better writer, and I do it in part to lure people towards the stuff that means I get to eat. I’m not going to pretend otherwise, and occasionally I do post ‘here is a thing you can buy’ blogs.

So as sacrifices go, this isn’t one. I assume if you’re here it’s because you get something out of what I post, and that’s as it should be. I don’t want anyone coming round to witness the martyrdom and mop up the blood. If I get a day when I can’t be hassed to post, or I’ve had a better offer, I go do that instead. In the meantime, have I mentioned that there are books you can buy? (so much for a stealth marketing strategy!)

I also realise that how other people understand sacrifice is very different from my perception. I have work to do, on that subject.

To make sacred

Reblogged from The Animist's Craft:

I have been reading with interest Nimue’s postings over the last few days on sacrifice, offerings and dedication, here http://druidlife.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/no-sacrifice/ and also Cat’s words here http://druidcat.wordpress.com/ Sadly I missed Cat’s original words, so can only respond to her current post.

*edited to say that Miss Cat has now re blogged her original http://druidcat.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/sacrifice-2/#comment-531

For Nimue, sacrifice is a word that she would happily see dropped from modern Druid vocabulary, evidently  it doesn’t float her Druid boat, and that is fine.

Read more… 1,473 more words

Really thought provoking stuff here. I'm pondering and will probbly blog back in a day or two.

Offerings and Dedications

Moving on from No Sacrifice, what does a modern Druid do? I’m going to wave a couple of concepts here today. Offerings are something I have strong opinions about, and where my take does not match what I’ve seen Druids and Pagans generally doing. So, this is not authority, it’s my banging on about personal preference. Obviously, if I convince you all of my superior argument, that would be lovely, but I’m not expecting anything of the sort!

Offerings and dedications are things that we might do for gods, or spirits, that are also things we do for ourselves. Not unlike giving a gift or making a vow to a human companion, we do it for the joy of doing it, and for the subsequent strengthening of bonds, and knowing it will encourage them to feel benevolent towards us. It’s a friendly exchange, it’s not supposed to hurt.

I have an animist world view. I think everything has spirit. Not all pagans are animist and that’s probably key for how you think about offerings. It confuses the hell out of me when people turn up at rituals with offerings that basically consist of having uprooted a bit of spirit from where it was living and plonking it down in front of another spirit with a ‘there you go’.  Wildflowers from the hedgerow, feathers and other gleanings are popular. What makes this ours to give? When some of your own creativity has gone in the mix, it makes a degree more sense. What does the spirit of a tree need with a few fragments of sea shell offered to its roots? (seen that done). Why do all the dark places need offerings of tea lights? Often, the offerings become litter, or there’s a pile of stuff for the celebrant to take away and sort out at the end. Think about what happens to your offerings, after you leave them behind. Also think about what the spirits you were offering to might have a use for. I’d rather take water to plants in times of need, or, more usually, take in a dustbin bag and clear up the litter. Making a temporary altar out of what is in the space, an improvised art working with what lives there, seems a far more fitting offering than a thing bought in a shop or uprooted from where it was happily being a spirit of place in its own right.

Dedications, especially those made in ritual with human witnesses too, are ways of offering ourselves to the gods. They also serve to reinforce community bonds and help us develop in shared intentions together. Pledges to greener living are good. If one person says ‘from now on I shall grow all my own herbs’ other people may be inspired to have a go too. If the newbie dares to say ‘I’m going to recycle, diligently’ recognising that they are just starting out on a path, we can cheer them along. We dedicate to reducing consumption, to better sourcing, to making more of our own. We dedicate to living in more creative ways, giving more, being compassionate, upholding the values of a specific deity. During rites of passage, we dedicate to each other, as partners, parents, welcoming life in, waving it goodbye. We may dedicate as teachers, celebrants, bards – these human roles can be put before the gods too. These are things we can offer to the gods, to ourselves, to our communities and our planet. By formalising that intent into a ritual statement, we strengthen it.

Such efforts as these are not simple, one sided things. We are not giving something away for nothing, and it is not simply an activity which costs us. We are interacting with other things – divine, human, aspects of place, of our own lives. In this kind of undertaking we may be recognising all kinds of relationships. We make them conscious, choose how to conduct them, offer our intentions. By offering we affirm, we inspire others, we share the journey we are making. By offering, we nourish those around us, and when we hear their offerings and dedications, we can be inspired in turn. This is about how we craft our own lives, how we understand ourselves in relation to all things. It creates a focus.

When I make an offering or a dedication, the goodness of that action for me is something I am always conscious of. This undertaking will make my life feel cleaner and more honourable. This will strengthen me, give me purpose, focus me on the work my hands need to be doing. This will invite my community to support me in a new venture, to see me in a new way. This will keep me straight, I’ve pledged in public and will not lose face by then failing to follow through. But equally, if we just did it for personal reasons, it wouldn’t be worth much, and so these dedications are also for the good of the land and its other inhabitants, to honour the ancestors, to guard the future generations and so forth. The reality that everything we do is connected to everything else becomes clear, and that’s essential Druidry in itself.

No Sacrifice

I don’t do sacrifice. I have no doubt that many of our pagan ancestors, druids included, sacrificed both creatures and humans to the gods. They did so to avoid divine wrath, and to seek good fortune. Sometimes perhaps also for divination. Theirs was a different world to ours. Sacrifice in that sense is about doing something to get what you want. Then along came Christianity and Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, a new consciousness in which we don’t kill people to please god (unless it’s a holy war, or they are heretics or pagans…). Sacrifice is of the self in that context. It becomes martyrdom and sainthood. We give our lives for our faith. Ideally in painful and horrible ways.

I’m not interested in killing anything and I’m not interested in martyrdom. I am also absolutely convinced that all historical ‘sacrifice’ (Jesus aside, he may be a special case) was to get something for the self. Be that good luck for a voyage, or the pleasure of knowing yourself to be on the way to sainthood. If we’re calling it sacrifice, we do probably, at some level, expect to get something for it. If we really thought a deity wanted us to do something of no benefit to ourselves, or the world, where the only gain would be that we have suffered for the deity – this is not a God I want anything to do with. To do something, or be asked to do something that is good in some way, should never be thought of as sacrifice, as I see it.

I recall Bobcat saying, or writing that sacrifice should hurt. If we’re doing it for ourselves in some way, it’s not sacrifice. What she also directs people towards, is the sacrifice of ignorance. It is the only one worth doing, and it can hurt. However, we benefit when we do this. Maybe we do give up some of the blind comforts and mindless distractions of modern life, the ease of apathy. What we get is a real life in a real world, where we are able to act, where what we do counts for something. What feels like pain and a hair shirt becomes the best of who we are. That’s not really sacrifice I think, it’s just the cost of learning. If there is a cost/benefit, sacrifice is not the right word.

The burden of sacrifice is also a thing to consider. If we give everything, nobly, self sacrificing for spouse, child, queen and country or whatever we martyr ourselves for, what are we putting on them? How much pressure and expectation does that create? How much requirement to make good, to justify? Don’t do this one lightly.

I’d be delighted if the idea of sacrifice fell out of pagan language altogether. I don’t think it’s helpful. It does more to mislead than to assist us. We do need to let go of our ignorance and all that it allows us to blindly, carelessly do. That’s a process, one to work on every day, and there is no end to it. Let’s not call that a sacrifice, let’s call that learning to be present, happy, fulfilled in the world. Let’s call it entering into conscious relationship with everything. Presenting spirituality as pain, is not going to encourage many people to start living more spiritual lives. Probably the opposite.

More than anything, what we need to do, is learn to love. When actions are born of love, they flow naturally. When we are steeped in honour, keenly alert to justice and compassion, when we are open to loving what we encounter and treating it with care and respect, doing the right things is not monstrously difficult. Often, it becomes a no-brainer. If we think we’re being noble and self sacrificing in what we do, it’s probably a sign that we’re doing what we think we ought to do, not what we feel is right. The more consciously we’re trying to do the right thing, the more it suggests that we’re fighting some inner impulse to go the other way. Now, when a person is steeped in all the dispassionate, consumerist, soulless vices of normal life, that may indeed be a struggle. It may seem that giving up the hours before the telly, the total car dependence, and all other mind eaters and planet killers, is hellish. It may feel like sacrifice. But it isn’t. For as long as we feel like we’re depriving ourselves for our religion, we live in constant risk of lapsing back into old habits of doing and thinking. The answer is not spiritual flagellation, or bigging up the idea of how much we’re doing for the gods. The answer is love.

Love yourself, and you will not want to fill your body with rubbish or your mind with desensitizing, noxious crap. Love your community and you won’t turn a blind eye to what others need, it will become a pleasure to help. Love your planet and it will be natural, and easy to try and take care of it. Love the sky, the plants and birds, the creatures. Love the oceans. Love your children, your grandchildren, love ten generations on as yet unborn and love your ancestors. Love the inevitability of death and the cycles of living. Love the process of aging and the way nature manifests in your body. Love being alive. Do what comes from this.

Another year older

Mostly I’m going to take today to read and be less workish, it being my birthday. However, birthdays lend themselves to considering where we are in life, where we’ve been, where we might be going. The celebrating of birthdays is one of those community and family focal things as well, affirming bonds. Or at least, it can be. Thus far I’m having a really nice day – I have some new books and some chocolate, there was coffee in bed, lovely messages rolling in on facebook, and I woke up in the arms of a most adorable man who treats me like I’m special every day, not just on occasions. Of such things are happiness made.

But inevitably I end up looking back, three and more years ago, to the time before and the other life. The year my ex forgot that my child might want to give me a birthday present and was too young to go shopping by himself. The lingerie that turned up most years, bought to amuse him. I’d maybe wear it once, much of it was then ‘borrowed’ for him to wear and I’d never wear it again. One year I was told off for wearing on a normal day a bra that had been bought for his amusement in the bedroom. Only, all of my other stuff was depressingly tatty. There was the year we went into Birmingham, my present was going to the sea life centre- what I wanted. Only when we got there, he looked at the entry cost, at the size of the building and muttered that it seemed like a rip off, so we went away again, failed to find anywhere affordable to eat, and went home. Happy birthday me. The year James wanted to make me a cake, and needed help (He was five or six). The misery-inducing stompping, banging and burned mess that followed because the ex couldn’t make cakes, couldn’t follow a recipe and didn’t want to do it. There was a decade when birthdays were miserable, along with anniversaries, valentine’s day, Christmas, mother’s day… all opportunities to tell me how impossible I am to please, which of course meant there was little point even trying to do something nice for me, because I wouldn’t appreciate it, or like it. There were a lot of years like that, and they are not easily forgotten. I started to believe I must be an awful, demanding, horrible, unreasonable, ungrateful sort of creature, because I was forever being told that so much was done for me, and only my ingratitude made me not see all of it. With hindsight, I see all of that in a very different light.

I know myself. I appreciate the bliss of a good night’s sleep and the joy of waking up beside someone who touches me with love, and whose words leave me feeling warmed and cared for. I appreciate the joy of a smiling child who has chocolate to bestow, and his noble reluctance in helping me with it (I persuaded him, I can’t eat all that chocolate by myself!) I appreciate the coffee in bed. It doesn’t take vast outlay to make me smile. A little care, enough attention to know what I might like, or the willingness to ask – my family enquired about book titles, and are furnishing me with research material. This is a longstanding tradition. One year they all clubbed together to get me a book on the natural history of otters – the only scientific one in existence. This year I have an excellent looking thing on Shinto, and have asked for Philip Carr Gomm’s Book of English Magic. Often, this is how Ronald Hutton books have come to me as well.

It’s not about the money. It’s the taking time for the other person, trying to find something they will enjoy, sharing a good thing, honouring bonds. A friendly line on facebook, a walk in the sun.  Two years ago Tom bought me a mug, with tentacles. Three years ago he drew a picture for me. Happy things.

This is another day of celebrating my freedom, and rejoicing in the good things in my life. This is a day of being so very grateful for the good friends I have, and for the lovely man I am now married to. Remembering the past is part of the process of coming to terms with it, and letting go. There’s too much to think it could all be forgotten, but the sharp things become a little less cutting with every day and before me, is the prospect of days with nothing of that ilk in it. Good days, with good people, and a world of possibility to explore.

Gods of our childhood

Exploring the ways in which people appeal to deity, it looks like for many, both contemporary and historical, gods are great uber-parents to be whimpered to when we want something sorting out. Some of the requests we offer up are petty, many are self serving. If we assume that life should not be crappy, should not cause us misery, should not deprive us of what we love or fail to give us what we desire, then going ‘oi, God, fix it!’ makes a degree of sense. One of the things atheists pick on theists for, is this constant running to mummy goddess and daddy god, for intervention that seldom comes, rather than facing our own challenges. Of course, not everyone relates to deity that way, but for today I want to ponder those who do.

We come into this world powerless. It is down to others to feed us and keep us warm. We cry, and help comes to us. Or doesn’t. We may be comforted, bottoms cleaned, food provided, or we may be left to howl in the darkness. In later life, we won’t remember much of this, but I would be prepared to bet that our first impressions stay with us. That lingering desire for the parent god who takes away the bad smell and brings the milk and honey, is not so unnatural. How much of our development as spiritual people might hark back to our early childhoods? Some sense of whether or not our prayers for intervention will be answered by benevolent powers might owe a lot to time in the cradle. But, what of those who are neglected? Do they hunger for the parent god who never came, and seek another one in later life?

If this isn’t total madness, then I suspect the transition of growing out of powerlessness, and learning that parents cannot do everything, has got to be a critical part of the journey. On Monday we had a school trip. A handful of inappropriately dressed girls, struggling with the cold, were quite angry about having to wait outside. The expectation that someone should be there to fix it, right now, was evident. My own lad, in his wet weather gear, quiet, accepting, comfortable and a bit bemused by the girls. How much you expect to have to cope with for yourself, how much you assume you are entitled to have fixed, how stoical you are, and what you see as a big deal or no real problem, all shapes your relationship with reality. I would bet it also informs how you think about deity.

When we’re in crisis, the desire that something, someone, sweep in and rescue us, may be natural enough, but it isn’t always helpful. Often what we most need to do is figure out how to rescue ourselves. Life is so full of setbacks for so many people. Letting go of a sense of entitlement, or disbelief at reality, and working with what is, makes life a lot easier. When you are inclined to either deal with things or accept them, there’s not a great deal of reason to go bothering a deity about your problems. You might still talk to them, though, because there is more to faith than applying to the uber-parent to have your psychic nappy changed.

My belief, which to me seems ‘druid’ to me, is that it’s my job to sort out my problems. I have prayed, in crisis, I admit it. Usually what occurs to me is ‘just let me survive this’ or ‘I could do with some insight here’. I find it hard to imagine that any deity is going to swing into my life. But at the same time, there have been periods of such strange coincidence and unlikely connections that I’ve wondered if other hands were twitching the threads of reality a bit. Just because that might happen sometimes does not incline me to think I can have it for the asking. I’m definitely animist in outlook, I believe in the idea of spirits, presences, things that are here and not so tangible. I assume they have their own intentions and desires. If mine overlap, that may help me, if they don’t, it won’t. Pretty much the same as dealing with people, in fact. There could be kindness and compassion, but I’m not counting on it.

I remember being young enough to be making the transition from seeing my parents as omniscient and omnipotent, to having to deal with them being people, and sometimes wrong, and not always perfect. Initially, it came as a bit of a shock, but many things do when you’re that size. I think the longer you go with gods for parents, the longer you spend insulated from life, the bigger an adjustment it is when you have to start fending for yourself. Which is why I’m not attracted to the idea of gods as super-parents, making everything ok and smoothing the way for us. I want to stand on my own two feet when I can.

Trolls, and psychological violence

Apparently the government are going to fight trolls, by making it a requirement for sites to hand over details of abusive users. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18404621 It could work. It means articles need not be taken down for one spurious allegation, and it means real bullies and liars might have a tougher time of it. On the whole, that would be a good thing. There are balances to strike here around freedom of speech and the protection of whistleblowers. I want the freedom to complain about my politicians, say if I think organisations are acting shamefully and whatnot. But, I’m not hiding behind an unrecognisable name, and I’ve got no desire to unfairly bash anyone. That of course doesn’t mean that someone else couldn’t take umbrage at what I write though.

I’m not sure how much odds laws will make, in the scheme of things. People have to act on them, crown prosecution has to be willing to take cases forwards, and judges need to take the offences seriously. At the moment, crimes against the body are taken very seriously, where crimes against the mind are not. It does not help that psychological violence leaves much less clear-cut evidence. Bullying is often subtle, and if it’s not written on a web page or spoken in front of witnesses, what you get is a one person’s word against another’s scenario, and they are pretty much impossible to take to court.

In terms of damage done, if someone attacks me and breaks a bone, I’m going to experience pain, fear, and a long period of bodily healing. If it seems like a one off thing and I have good support, odds are I will get over it. The fear, the psychological part of the attack will give me more of a harmful legacy than the wounding. If someone torments me psychologically, over a period of time, I might never have so much as a bruise on my skin, but my mind might be damaged for the rest of my life. To destroy a person’s confidence or self esteem, is to destroy them. To make a person afraid to leave the house, is to imprison them, but you don’t even need to lock the door.

Culturally though, we don’t take this kind of attack seriously enough. Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me, and all that rubbish. Words push teenagers to suicide. Words need taking seriously. But while psychological assaults are taken as less serious, we collectively tend to look the other way. If you saw someone being beaten up in the street, you might do something, might call the police. But if a friend is crying, again, because she’s been shouted at, again, you might feel tempted to suggest she pulls herself together. We don’t, as someone pointed out to me on facebook, bother the police just because we’re being shouted at. Even though being shouted at can demoralise, humiliate, take away our confidence and autonomy, make us do something we didn’t want to for fear of worse to come if we do not behave as required. The threat of violence, or the implication of it can be frightening, but is much harder to prove, or explain. A person who fears what will be done if they don’t comply can end up doing hideous things under duress, with little scope for legal protection.

We say ‘it’s just’ ‘it was only’ and we minimise the effects of psychological abuse. We say it’s better to be thicker skinned. You’re too sensitive. You’re over reacting. You’re making a fuss about nothing, because you are weak, silly, attention seeking, and so the victim is knocked down again, and becomes unable to even mention how shitty they feel.

This is not the world I want to live in.

Bullying is not ok. Verbal cruelty is not ok. Shouting at people and intimidating them is not ok. Using websites and hiding behind fake names to harass people, is not ok. My main hope is that this change in the law might mark a sea change, in which we all start expecting better of each other, and not turning away from the issues of non-physical violence.

In Praise of the Green and Grey

Reblogged from The Blog of Baphomet:

A few days ago I was staying with a friend who has a delightful house hidden in what, at least in British terms, is a vast forest. Surrounded by the green and grey of the summer season, the air filled with many layers of bird song, I found myself captivated by the spirit of place. Tomorrow I’ll be going into the woods again, this time in the company of two score magicians, to do our Work.

Read more… 659 more words

I wish I'd read this before I wrote the religion in context post, as it has some brilliant points to make.

At the limits of meditation

I had quite an evil end to last week. High winds meant waves on the canal, much being banged about, bridges closed, and our not being able to move. Wind also contributed to a shortage of power supply, that trapped our washing in a washing machine. On top of that, I was diseased and running a temperature. I paused to feel sorry for myself on facebook, and someone pointed out that all those meditation skills must be coming in handy. They weren’t.

There are times and places where I find meditation doesn’t help much. Not least, because meditation requires mental focus. There’s nothing like a headache, or for that matter a fever, for making it tricky to manage any kind of mental discipline. Even the most basic meditations call for some kind of concentration skills.

Often it’s when we are most in trouble that we could really do with the benefits of a quiet mind. In sickness, in pain, in crisis, it does help not to be screaming and flailing. But when you are screaming and flailing, the idea of meditation seldom even occurs.

I’ve been meditating every day for as long as I’ve known how (lots of years) – usually at the beginning and the end of the day, often for short spells along the way as well. I found in my teens that in normal circumstances I drop into meditative and trance states easily. It’s always come naturally to me in quiet situations. In the throes of a panic attack, it doesn’t come naturally at all. I have noticed that, with practice, I am better able to keep control of myself, to rein in panic that bit sooner, to breathe my way through intense pain, and the such. The habit of meditation that comes from regular practice makes it easier to do it in self defence, when times are hard. Easier, but not actually easy. Give me another twenty years and maybe I’ll have it licked.

I remember Cat Treadwell saying on her blog recently (see list of bloggers on the right) that many people don’t want to learn Druidry in depth, they want quick fix magic that doesn’t take much time. Most things worth having, take time. They take work. Sure, I could teach a person the basics of meditation in an afternoon. The book I wrote is loaded with enough exercises to keep someone busy for a long time. But they aren’t a quick fix. Doing an exercise once is interesting. Do it three times and you will learn a lot more. Do it every day for a month and you may start to change. Do it for twenty years and you might well be able to hold your calm in face of any disaster.

Our consumerist culture, all have now, pay later, with its emphasis on faster service, quicker solutions, newer, shiner things, teaches us impatience. The adverts many people see every day are telling them to demand faster, and that faster is better. You should have your perfect solution on your plate in three seconds time, or you must feel let down. The only instant solution to pain, or fear, is a sudden and very intensive hit of drugs, legal or otherwise. That’s not a solution, any more than putting your hands over your ears and chanting ‘I’m not listening’ is a solution. Real solutions take time. It’s ok not to be able to fix everything right now. It’s ok to have to work at it. Inner calm does not come in a bottle, for immediate effect.

So no, faced with high winds, hostage laundry and a virus that seemed to be jangling each of my cells individually, I did not meditate. I’m not that good yet. I went to bed, and tried to sleep it off, which worked.