Nimue Brown's Blog, page 464

Those whom the gods most love

Heather left a powerful comment on my Downtrodden blog, about spiritual attitudes to poverty. I’ve been reflecting on that, and wanted to follow on from there. I’ve never been one for the New Age theories of like attracts like, or that misfortune is the paying off of karmic debts for some awfulness we did in a past life. Equally I have never seen wealth and affluence as proof of being in a deity’s good books. Until recently I hadn’t examined why I hold such beliefs, but on reflection I think it has everything to do with the Celtic element of my Druidry.

Skipping over how truly ancient any of the Celtic myths are, I would say it’s fair to describe them all as a bit mournful. Very few Celtic myths end happily ever after. Many end with the death of the ‘hero’. Tragedy is a pervasive theme. I think about Rhiannon, deprived of her child, blamed, humiliated and suffering. I think about the torments Branwen suffers, and all those doomed lovers, people destroyed by geas… Celtic myth is not resplendent with happily ever after, and this is a big part of what I grew up on. But then, the more I think about it, the less able I am to find stories where the righteous do not suffer. In most traditions, religious stories are all about being tested. From Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son, onwards, the Old Testament makes it very clear they have a God who tests his followers.

What makes a hero, or a legend? Once upon a time, there was a man who the gods loved. They did everything imaginable to make life easy for him. He never had to work because money grew on a tree in his garden. He had a wonderful wife who recognised all the qualities in him that the gods loved, and did not want him solely for the money tree, and who bore him lots of charming, beautiful and well behaved children. Life was perfect for them in every way. It’s not a very good story, really. It’s dull, and you’re waiting for the moment when it all goes crushingly wrong, because that’s what happens in stories. It also raised a point. What are the qualities, in this deity-blessed man, that make him so appealing to the deities? If they do everything, and he does nothing, all they’ve got to go on is who he imagines he is. This man is untested. He is not a hero. He has never done anything of note, and he never will.

Compare this with the story of a woman who starts out badly – her parents are poor, maybe she’s blind, maybe she has some virtue – a good heart, a quick mind, a pretty face. To take care of her aging parents, she sets out into the world and faces terrible adversity. Bears chase her. Bandits steal her only possessions. She shares her last crust with a swan who turns out to be a fairy who can tell her how to find a fortune if only she will undertake to do three impossible things first. Not only is this more like a story, but at a symbolic level, it is more like real life.

In practice, being dishonourable, selfish, greedy and ambitious is more likely to pave the way to affluence than being generous and kind. A compassionate person won’t use their energy praying for a new car, they’ll be praying for the starving, for the homeless, and will spend their time trying to help others. Only someone who sees it as their god given right to strive after wealth above all else, will live that way. However, very few people like the idea that they might be morally bankrupt. So, by assuming money, ease and success to be signs of divine favour, they neatly get round the ethical issues. I must be fine, see how much the gods love me, see how much money I have…

If the stories are anything to go by, the gods are anything but kind to those they love most. You do not get to be a hero unless there are monsters to fight. Saints are given opportunity to die for their faith. Heroes die in battle. Mythical women die for love, or protecting their children, or defending their virtue. In face of adversity, the people who spawn legends, shine. We might take Nelson Mandela and Ghandi as more contemporary and famous examples here. The martyred icons of protest, the heroes of bloodless revolution, the ones who stand up to injustice. They are on the news every day. You can bet they aren’t praying for a pay rise. Those whom the gods love most, they challenge, sometimes to breaking point. But then, it’s only when you break a person that you see what’s inside them. Often it’s the cracks that let the light through. Often it is the wrongs, or the pain suffered that motivates a person to do amazing things. A person can have a life of ease and comfort, or they can have a life of trial and heroism, but not both. For me, one of the essential messages of the Celtic myths, is that I would seek out the latter if it did not come to me anyway.

Questing for inspiration

I talked a few blogs back about the difference between the raw material of inspiration, and the connections and sense of flow – the awen – which turns that raw material into something new. I’m reading Darryl Reamey at the moment, who talks about how the habituations of seeing or experiencing something makes it normal, and we cease to experience wonder. When all is normal and mundane to us, we are unlikely to feel inspired by it. This is, I think, one reason a great many people see inspiration as mysterious. Real life, everyday life is not inspiring. It is normal, humdrum, familiar.

There are many things that coax us towards not thinking. Repetitive patters of living, the brain blanket of media, the material cocoons we voluntarily wrap about ourselves the better to sleepwalk through everything. We expend a lot of energy, collectively, making the world safe and predictable. Then we settle down into the assumption that we know what we’ve got, and can stop bothering with that nasty business of thinking about things.

Every morning, the sun rises, bringing light back after the hours of darkness. And every morning the birds sing their response – levels of enthusiasm depending a lot on the weather conditions. Every day features small miracles and wonders. If you are going through life assuming it to be banal and predictable, you won’t even see them. We learn not to look, not to think, not to wonder and not to feel. We take each other for granted, along with the sunrise.

Predictability and freedom from thinking creates a kind of comfort. It’s an easy sort of life, but ultimately not all that satisfying. Rather than tackle the underlying issues, it’s easier to drown that discomfort in alcohol, or bury it under hours of television, or computer games, or whatever your current poison happens to be. We’ve spent millions of years evolving to be thinking, feeling, creative creatures. Our ancestors depended a great deal on their brains and ingenuity. We are squishy things with lousy teeth, no claws, no natural armour, no camouflage, and barely the capacity to remain warm. We’ve evolved to think, but somewhere in our more recent history, we got into the habit of not thinking. It doesn’t suit us.

Not thinking helps to keep us docile and biddable. Therefore encouraging people not to think is in the interests of anyone who wishes to control others. Thinking, if you make a habit of it, will turn you into a radical and a revolutionary with very little help from anyone else. All it takes is casting of the habit of banality, and the assumption of familiarity. We hear a tragedy on the news. The news is full of tragedies. We shrug. Someone points out that our postal voting system would shame a banana republic. We think corruption is normal and inevitable, so we do nothing. The government takes away a few more rights and essential resources, but we’ve been told we are powerless, so we lie down and take it. Umm….

Inspiration is not just about recognising all that is wrong in the world and finding the courage to do something about it. Inspiration is the experience of opening your eyes all over again, like a child, a puppy, any new creature that still knows how to be surprised. Finding inspiration is easy as soon as you throw off the shackles of taking things for granted. All around you, there is life. Right in front of you, there is something beautiful. It may be small. It may be a dust mote caught in a sunbeam. But it is there, and as soon as you start looking, you will see it. Casting off assumption about relationship and seeing what is good, and what needs more care and attention, brings inspiration into how we live.

I look at the patterns of cloud across the sky. I listen to the birds. Today, the rain was wild, and that was intoxicating. Now I revel in experiencing warmth and comfort, safely out of the rain. I have no idea what this afternoon will bring. Inspiration is part of my everyday life in no small part because I know how to be surprised. There is far less mystery in inspiration than people imagine, and far more mystery in all of life than many people would dream of.

Downtrodden: The new look for this season

He knows we are the scum of the earth. Every last one of us is committing benefit fraud, taking drugs and leeching off hard working tax payers like himself. Therefore, he is morally justified in doing whatever it takes to get rid of us. He knows that anything we say will be a lie. If we break down and weep, it is just an attempt to manipulate him. If we wind up homeless, that’s no more than we deserve. We should get proper jobs.

There are so many situations I could be describing here. The underlying theme is how we perceive people who appear to be living in poverty. It’s very easy to assume that people are only poor because they aren’t trying hard enough. Too lazy to work, selfish, sponging off the state. These are the people who wouldn’t work at school and have no qualifications, and are a waste of space. It doesn’t take much to get from here to the idea that maybe we should just line them all up and shoot them.

Oppression begins with dehumanisation. Once the intended victim is established, in the perpetrators mind, as being subhuman, it is much easier to proceed. Propaganda in war has often existed to explicitly demonise the enemy. Political rivals may do the same in poster campaigns. Nothing brings people together like having an opponent to fight. We’re standing up for the hard working people here, the good people, the people like you, and over there are the bad guys…. Go get em! It’s cynical, and manipulative, it keeps us fighting amongst ourselves and encourages us not to challenge the people who set the agenda.

Poor people are the easiest target. The odds are, they can’t afford to fight back. Threaten to make them homeless, to take away the money that buys food, or to undermine their human rights, and they can’t even afford to get the law involved. The harder it is to get legal funding for the poorest people, the more vulnerable they become.

I do not doubt that there are some people who are just not inclined to work, and who cheat the system. However, there are a lot of physically and mentally disabled people living in poverty. Victims of crime, people forced to run and leave everything they owned, single mums abandoned by feckless men, people shattered by bereavement, people who have been too sick to work and couldn’t pay the mortgage. There are so many people who come out of the armed forces and get into difficulty in civilian life. There are kids who grew up addicted to drugs, tobacco, alcohol, maybe from the womb – how much choice have they had, exactly? Poverty exists in cycles. It is still the case that your best guarantee of material success in life, is to start out with rich parents.

And what of the others? The people who work part time and care for someone else, unpaid and unsupported. The people who have such a strong calling that they work voluntarily and live in poverty because there is an injustice, a wrong in the world that they cannot ignore. How about the key workers who are not paid enough to be able to afford proper housing in our cities? Almost everyone making the leap to self employment, or seeking further qualification, will have to spend some time with very little income. It’s a gamble that may not pay off. And finally, there are people who chose to live in relative poverty because they reject the modern world and its priorities. But from the outside, to the prejudiced eye, we all look the same.

A bank balance is not the measure of someone’s humanity. There are many reasons why a person can find themselves in abject poverty, against their will. There are also a number of highly honourable choices that would require a person to accept living in poverty. While the wealthy elite have everyone else convinced that if poor isn’t criminal, it’s probably evidence of being criminal, we continue to equate material possessions with human worth.

I wonder what would happen if more people deliberately chose to live in relative poverty? The move towards greener living often means downsizing, owning less, re-using rather than replacing. You might stop buying all the new fashions and following every wasteful trend. Once people give up ostentatious consumption, the appearance of poverty isn’t far behind. Currently, our economy depends on reckless and unnecessary use of resources. If conspicuous rejection of affluence became the height of fashion, everything would change. It really is that ridiculous.

Learning Druidry from the trees

I’ve seen two wonderful posts about trees in Druidry this week – Damh the bard here http://damh.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/stillness-and-the-born-survivor/ and on the fundamentalist druid blog here – http://phoenixgrove.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/oak-totems-and-what-druid-really-means/

 

How we learn druidry is a very interesting question. I’ve heard plenty of druids talk about the religion of the ancestors, the Celts and what fragments we have left of Celtic tradition. I find a great deal of inspiration from things Celtic, but it is not the absolute core of my Druidry, and the reason is this: The Celts did not learn their religion by studying fragments of Celtic mythology. It is possible they inherited something from whatever went before, but if you take that back through time, there must, logically, be a starting point. There must be a place and a time where a person was inspired to think a thing.

 

When it comes to book religions, it is fair to say that before the book, the religion did not exist. Take the book away, and the religion would cease to be viable. While many pagan paths depend to some degree on our textural knowledge of old gods and myths, paganism as a whole does not. The idea of paganism, or the sacredness of nature, the spirit in all things, a multitude of divinity and so forth can be found over, and over with no reference to older cultures or beliefs. Paganism is a response to nature. While there is nature, we can viably keep rediscovering paganism.

 

I believe that my Celtic ancestors venerated the natural world, although that is not all I think they believed in. It is also my belief that they were able to find this for themselves, not in half remembered myths, or borrowed ideas, but from immediate and personal experiences of nature and deity. And of course, trees. So I very much agree with my fundamentalist friend about the essentialness of trees in Druidry.

 

Trees, historically have been vital to human life. Each kind of wood has its own unique properties, and humans have been utilising wood as material for as far back as we know about. The Stone Age was also a wood age. Trees are housing, fuel, and the raw material for almost every civilized activity there has ever been. We might turn more to metals and plastics these days, but trees and earth, wood and ceramics are the material basis of human civilization as we know it. Our modern relationship may seem different, but the breath of trees, the soil holding, life giving, rain influencing magic of trees is no less essential than it has ever been.

 

The experience of being in the company of trees defies language. Trees do not normally speak in human terms, but that does not mean they cannot be heard, experienced and felt. In their age, their seasons, growth patterns and slowness they are a wholly different kind of entity to us, and yet the scope to learn from them is vast. Who we are when we are in the trees is not always who we are the rest of the time. Put a child in a wood if you want to see what a free range, inspired human being looks like.

 

The knowledge of trees does not give authority to humans. It does not make the holder of texts or language the controller of spiritual truth. It does not create a text that can be waved under the noses of disbelievers or used to explain us to other faith groups. By its very nature, what we learn from the trees is hard to express human to human. I have felt it, and I have no words to speak it. Even if I had those words, I would not want to write them, because speaking it is inadequate. It needs to be felt, individually, uniquely, each of us finding it in our own way. Druidry is not in books, it is in groves and forests, in the trees of our cities even. It is also in the sky and the soil, but these are harder still to engage with, and not always the easiest place to start.

Druidry is listening, and feeling, it is knowing and doing. And we might also find that in relation with each other, in moments of shared inspiration, and we might guide each other in useful directions, but no one can just hand this over wholesale to someone else. No matter how philosophical a religion may be, it is not an intellectual premise. But it is also entirely available to anyone who decides to go looking for it.

The art of apology

Three parts of an honourable apology – recognition, responsibility, restoration.

We all make mistakes, and it would be unproductive to base any ideas about honour on a requirement to be super-human and perfect in all things. It’s not freedom from error that defines a person’s honour so much as what we do when we cock up. I started dissecting the idea of apology for my son, who is always full of questions about how things work and why. What is the difference between a good apology, and a hollow one? This is what we came up with.

First there must be recognition of what the problem is. It’s easy to say ‘I’m sorry’ without ever grasping what the problem is. Saying it to make the complainant go away may be easy, but it’s not very honourable. Expressing recognition of the cause of the problem shows the person who you are talking to, that you are taking this seriously. You are taking them seriously, and you care. Also, without the clarity that you understand the problem, the other two stages are impossible. Often, when we err it’s not in malice, but in ignorance or obliviousness. When that happens, the recognition stage means taking the time to find out what happened. It may be that the other person was hurt by something we did not intend should hurt them, or that we would not be hurt by. In those circumstances, it can be easy to reject the wounded one, and add to their sense of injustice. Recognising the problem means that doesn’t happen. “I hear you,” is a powerful thing when it is meant.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” is not a true apology. It may count as sympathy. A true apology takes responsibility. If you’re clear about where the problem was, that’s not difficult, which is why stage one is so important. It can become more complex when you don’t feel responsible – if the other person seems to have over reacted, misread your intentions or otherwise got the wrong end of the stick. It can be tempting, in such situations to say “I hear you, but it’s not my fault,” and sometimes that is indeed the best call. Being pressured into apologising for something you had no control over, is not helpful, nor is it good for you. So, the recognition of responsibility stage may require that the other person recognises where their own responses, assumptions, baggage etc have come into play. But if you do the recognition stage, and approach this without accusation or a desire to blame, it can resolve matters. More often than not, there’s some detail that we can improve. Some small way of being kinder, recognising a vulnerability, treading gently, that helps improve things. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you, but I realise I have.” That kind of language can work miracles.

Finally we come to the restoration. If you are truly sorry, then it is important to mend what has been damaged. There isn’t always a physical thing to fix, but a promise to be more careful in the future, to remember what has happened here and not let it happen again, can make a lot of difference. “I had no idea that would upset you. I won’t behave in that way again.” If it’s meant, the promise helps to heal damage.

This is not just a model for apologising, but also for accepting apology. It’s no good taking the moral high ground and then refusing to acknowledge one, or all of these stages. When we feel wounded, it’s important to be clear about why, not assume the other person should know, or automatically think it was done deliberately. We have to give time and space to considering responsibility, and look at our own share. If we are offended, how much of that belongs to us, and how much to the offence? It can vary a lot. And if we can, it is better to let others fix things they have broken, it rebalances the relationship. Then, whatever went wrong can all be let go of, lesson learned. It doesn’t lie around festering unpleasantly.

Hollow apologies that we do not mean and will not act on, are not very far from outright lies, but they sound good. They sound like we care. It’s important not to let the hollow apology through, not to accept them when they come, and not to give second, third, fourth chances based on them.

The hardworking people

Apparently David Cameron was on Radio 4 this morning telling the UK how much he cares about ‘the hardworking people’. At first glance, that seems fine, but it stands a poke. First, as soon as you say something like this, you are probably also saying (especially if you’re a Tory), by implication that there are people who are not hardworking and you aren’t in favour of them. You are also saying that hardworking is the only measure of a person. Let’s take that further.

A hardworking person is putting in long hours, pretty much by definition. They probably live to work, rather than working to live. But there’s no call to quality here, only to look busy. A hardworking person may have meticulously re-ordered the stationary cupboard today. They might spend hours diligently folding socks in the best possible way. They might spend several extra hours in the office every day, appearing to be very busy, afraid they will lose their job if they don’t appear to be working long hours, and working hard, but not actually doing anything useful. What they will be doing is reducing their own quality of life, having a terrible work-life balance, and neglecting other aspects of being human.

Hard work and long hours happily contributes to a process of making things we neither need nor can afford and then convincing each other to pay for them anyway. This is one of the things that underpins the inherent instability and unsustainability of our culture. Working long, hard hours contributes to the rising epidemic of stress, anxiety and depression related illness, which in turn costs a lot of working hours every year and a lot of time spent on doctors and drugs. That is not a win in any sense. Long, hard hours at work undermine family life, means parents have less chance to be involved in bringing up their own children, and puts an obscene amount of pressure on our planet. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is apparently the pattern our Prime Minister is cheering about. Never mind that most of his overpaid, over-privileged, under-worked friends have probably never done the kinds of things we’re talking about here.

As a Druid, I care about nature. I see human beings as part of nature, and I see what is natural continually being overruled by this pressure to be good little producers, forever busy selling and consuming. Why are we so obsessed with creating and wasting far more than any of us need? Because idiots stand up in public and suggest there is a moral high ground to working yourself to death for the sake of ten more sales of a thing that is destined to sit in a garage and gather dust, or go into the bin barely used. Of course the more caught up we are in frantically working longer and harder to be good little citizens, the less time we have to think about moral and ethical issues, the less energy we have for questioning governments. What a strange coincidence!

Let’s not cheer over people working twelve hour days, and six and seven day weeks. Let’s gently encourage them to live, and facilitate their doing so. Let’s not demand the quickest, cheapest, least humane option at every turn.

I could work really hard today. I could write thousands and thousands of words until my hands are in agony and my mind is in meltdown. I might even be able to sell it to someone. And then I would have contributed to the great pile of ill-conceived, throw away reading material in the world. Whoopee. Forgive me if I don’t think that’s clever. Or I can move slowly, take the time to think. Which project is most important and relevant? Which topic most needs airing? Where can I say something profound, or something that will improve peoples’ days by making them smile?

From a purely economic perspective, ten thousand words of any pap I can think of, will not make me the next Neil Gaiman, or the next JK Rowling. Quality matters. Better to work lightly and get things right than expend a lot of energy flapping, flailing and messing things up. You can work very hard and end up with total rubbish. You can also work smart, at the right speed, with care and integrity. Maybe it doesn’t look as though quite as much is getting done, but getting it right the first time should mean going home early, not three hours of overtime. We’re too collectively focused on the idea that time is money, and that working – any work, no matter what it achieves or ruins – is morally superior to no work. Remember the guys checking train lines for dangerous faults, overpressured, with not enough time to do the job? Someone died as a consequence of people being asked to work too hard, and being unable to do the job as a consequence. This is not the right way to do things.

In nature, most things do only what is needful. The rest of the time, they rest, play, sunbathe, groom, sing, socialise. Humans are not very natural. I’m not advocating an ethic of total laziness here, I work, and I work most days, but I do not believe in work for the sake of it, and I do not think anyone should be martyring themselves for the cult of overtime and the gods of GDP.

Living dangerously

I’m going to be talking broadly and generally today, but there are some very specific things underlying my thoughts. There are also legal implications to these issues, which is why I’m going to talk obliquely.

In the UK, it is understood that we are policed by consent. There are a lot of people, the police do not carry guns and so viable policing depends on public co-operation. When people riot, as they did last summer, that relationship has broken down, and it is very difficult to fix. We can only be policed by consent if we agree with the laws and the methods of the police. In a healthy, and functional State, the police themselves are governed by the rule of law and answerable to the politicians, who in turn are answerable to the electorate. Policing by consent works because there is a degree of scope for response when things go wrong. We have a police complaints commission. We take death in custody seriously. I have no doubt we could do better on that score, because there is always scope to do better in all things.

It’s not just the police who have the right to police us, though. To a certain extent we are also policed by the inland revenue, customs and excise, border control, the TV licensing people, the car tax people, we have council tax, VAT… all kinds of situations in which all kinds of people in official places are empowered to make us do certain things. The systems we have as a country require this, the raising of revenue for government depends upon it. Most of these structures are reasonably fair, reasonably transparent, and reasonably possible to work with. There are also systems in place for complaints, and a limit on exactly how much damage any one of these outfits can do to you if you fall foul of them. The vast majority of government run policing outfits do not have the power to entirely destroy your life, and this is as it should be.

I am very glad to say that there are laws in this country governing what any person or organisation with power, is able to do to an individual who does not have power. I think one of the most important things laws can do is give protection to the weak and vulnerable from those with the power and influence to just crush them on a whim. The measure of a country is its treatment of its poorest and most vulnerable people. We could do better. There is always scope to do better.

However, all of these checks and balances depend on a number of things. If an individual does not know their rights, and does not know the law, they cannot call on it anything like as effectively. If a person believes that the system is bound to be hostile to them, the odds are they won’t even take the risk of seeking justice. We are getting better, the ordeal of taking a man to court for rape is not as hideous as it was. It’s still pretty awful. We are not quite so institutionally prejudiced against people for reasons of race, affluence, gender, sexuality or religion. But it is also fair to say that we are not entirely free from prejudice either. There are biases and assumptions. That we can still even ask what a rape victim was wearing suggests we assume a person can bring rape upon themselves. We still blame the victims, we still look far too kindly on money, we still make it hard for poorer people to access justice. We also have a legal system so vast and convoluted that a normal person cannot hope to know all of the law. Not knowing the law as it pertains to you, is not a legal defence. This is a breeding ground for injustice. It disadvantages the less literate, the less mentally astute, the less educated and those who cannot afford to buy advice at every turn. We cannot uphold the law, unless we have a fighting chance of knowing and understanding the law.

And so it is that there are people, and organisations, who are successfully abusing power, using the language of law to threaten and intimidate, and manipulating a flawed, but well meaning system, in order to persecute people. But they’ve got lawyers, and I have not. They can afford to sue me into the ground if I speak out. They know where I live.

I believe that laws should protect the weak and vulnerable from those who are already too powerful. I believe in freedom of speech and I am utterly opposed to abuses of power. And I have absolutely no idea what could happen to me, here in England, were I to go public about what I think is happening. I could just sit on it, and hope that none of the bad stuff happens to me, and try to ignore the people I know who are suffering. But I won’t. I also know there’s at least one journalist subscribed to this blog. I’m open to suggestions.

The Emperor’s Old Clothes

If the emperor had woken up the following day and realised that perhaps clothing invisible to the stupid wasn’t a good way to go, he might have acknowledged the mistake and got in with his life. Making mistakes is inevitable for humans. We all do it. Lack of experience, not having the right information, miscalculating, and a host of other reasonably honourable, natural shortcomings can result in getting things wrong.

One answer at this point, emperor-style, is to just insist that you are right, and require everyone else to go along with the farce. Real life dictatorships do this kind of thing, I believe. But yesterday I listened on the news to the story of someone who had failed to spot rickets in a baby who consequently died. The parents were accused of murder, and went through 2 years of total hell. Other experts think the rickets evidence was there to be seen. But the person who made the mistake is in court saying that the evidence isn’t there. When people acknowledge error, there is scope for learning. Other lives can be saved. Future suffering can be reduced, or avoided.

It takes courage to admit a mistake, especially with the current blame and litigation culture. It would be healthier to encourage people to own up. It would also be good if we could collectively acknowledge the idea that people do make mistakes. And not just ordinary people, but professionals and experts. Professionals misdiagnose, misjudge, underestimate, overestimate, and all the rest of it. Professional people are not magically infallible, and yet I’ve run into a few who will answer any query or challenge with an assertion that their professional status means they must, by definition, be right. This kind of arrogance is incredibly dangerous. A person who thinks they know it all already does not listen properly or consider the evidence. Not least, they will never be able to identify and properly handle a situation they have not encountered before. New things do happen. New diseases evolve. New technology creates new crimes, and so forth.

The sooner a mistake is recognised, the easier it is to get things back on track. It may seem like losing face, but the temporary humiliation is worth enduring. It’s so much better than what happens when you have to tune out whole swathes of evidence, or refuse to look at anything that doesn’t fit. The more you try to cover for a mistake, the more likely you are to compound it, adding to it with lies and misdirection, and possibly a few rounds of self delusion for good measure. Now you aren’t holding a cloth that doesn’t exist, you’re walking about in public with no clothes on. And really, by that stage it doesn’t matter what you want people to believe, they know they can see your arse, and not a one of them is ever going to take you seriously again.

Mistakes are inevitable to the learning process. If it isn’t acceptable to get things wrong, then it isn’t possible to learn or experiment. Giving permission to yourself, and to others, to be imperfect, is really useful and allows amazing things to happen. It enables the new bard to stand up and have a go. It enables the druid student to call to the spirits of place and not feel awful that their voice quavered a bit and the words weren’t quite perfect. Accepting mistakes opens the way to compassion and greater mutual tolerance. It turns us away from blame and anger, towards cooperation and getting problems solved. It allows us not just to be human, but to be the best kinds of humans we can imagine ourselves being.

Yes, I have made mistakes.

Does my bottom look big in this?

Unpicking the myths of inspiration

In theory, part of druid life is the quest for inspiration. For followers of the bard path, inspiration is necessarily intrinsic to what we do. I was grumbling on facebook the other day because a subset of people respond to the fact that I write by assuming I am in desperate need of subject matter. In the past, a few people have been really pushy trying to get me to take up what they thought were great ideas. They were only trying to help, but it wasn’t at all helpful, more irritating. I’m conscious that for people who are not perpetually questing after inspiration, the whole process may be a mystery. I also don’t think it needs to be. I write almost every day – here, and creating works of fiction, and non-fiction. So, where do I get my ideas from?

This morning I listened to half an hour of news, which included a number of provocative ideas. What I saw on the school run I could lavishly describe. On facebook, I caught up with friends and heard some exciting personal stories. It’s not 10am yet as I write this, and already the day has offered more raw material than I can use. I have all of the internet to play in, radio stations, books, friends, outdoors… and anything that I encounter could potentially be the seed from which to grow a story, a poem, or a blog. The problem is not finding inspiration. The problem is considering all the many possible sources of inspiration and choosing which ones to work with. I can’t use all of them. Some of them will undoubtedly be more powerful than others, or more relevant to projects already under way.

I begin by thinking about what has the most personal resonance – what has provoked the most thinking or feeling, or both, in me. Some days that’s enough to focus me down. However, I always pause at this point to ask what might be relevant, or resonant to someone else. Bleeding on the page may feel cathartic, but that’s about all it’s good for. So there’s a process of working with the raw responses, imagining an audience and trying to guess what someone else might get some useful mileage out of. That usually gets me to a blog post.

The longer works are more complex because I’m dealing with a theme, a narrative, and something already set up. I can’t just pluck ideas out of the air and shoehorn them in. They have to fit with the ideas already in use. I may be reading and researching to support a project, in which case I’ll be sifting for resonant ideas as I go. I may be drawing on content I’ve already explored. However, I never plan too much in advance. I get bored too easily. If I plot out a novel or pin down the exact content ofa  book, the chances of my finishing it are slim. For novel, I have a shape in my head, and for non-fiction I’ll have a structure of title chapters laying out what ground I mean to cover, but that can change. Working this way allows projects to evolve organically and lets me bring in inspiration as it comes.

I spend a lot of time working on books when I’m walking, cycling or being domesticated. If I have nothing practical to do, staring out of the window is good. This is the time I use to sift through what I know, what I think, and imagine, and work out which bits hang together, and resonate with each other. I’m looking for exciting juxtapositions, ways of relating ideas to each other, things I can knock against each other to create something new.

Every moment of life has the potential to inspire us. The raw material is everywhere. The experience of awen for me, is less about perceiving the individual things that might inspire, more about finding a flow and rhythm that brings ideas into relationship with each other. That’s where the magic happens. It’s a deliberately sought and worked-for magic. It has to be fed. Being open to experience and aware of all the things that could inspire, is essential. But it’s the flow that turns random experience and disparate facts into something both new and meaningful. Seeing how to weave threads of ideas into a new fabric. It’s no good grabbing the first couple of ideas for a book that come passed. I reject far more ideas than I use. I have enough material in my head to create a novel most weeks. I don’t, because I’m not merely trying to write, I want to write the very best that I can.

I love it when people share experiences, ideas and inspiration with me. But please, don’t look round your living room frantic for any small thing that can be fed in. It’s not necessary.

Paganism in schools

Every time moves are made to teach younger people about paganism, we get scaremongering, panic laden reactions from people who show the most depressing levels of ignorance and bigotry. I doubt anyone who needs to read this will get anywhere near it, but perhaps someone will find some useful ammo here.

Religion can, and should be taught as an academic subject. This does not mean teaching students how to be pagans, any more than my RS lessons bleep years ago taught me how to be a Hindu, or a Muslim. Religious studies should cover ethical issues from a range of perspectives and include, in my opinion, what atheist means, and agnosticism. In terms of figures, there are a lot of pagans in the UK – we were the 6th biggest faith at the 2001 census. Teaching about paganism would not involve any deep study of our mysteries – a broad overview of the main paths, a quick whip round the festivals, some words about polytheism and animism perhaps. Plenty of room for playing compare and contrast with other world religions too.

One of the complaints that the idea raises, is that we should, as a ‘Christian’ country only be teaching people Christian values. This makes about as much logical sense as saying we should, as an English country, only teach the English language, the geography of England, the history, literature and politics of England. Perhaps it would be a logical extension to suggest that we should not teach students what communism, fascism, tyranny, feudalism and monarchy are all about either. After all, they live in a democracy, why would they need to know? School is not a political tool for turning out obedient little clones who cannot think for themselves. Education should be there to enable young people to learn about all aspects of the world so that they can grow up able to think for themselves, and able to make good choices. Religion, is not only part of the world, but a major cause of war, genocide, conflict and hatred. I’d like to see a syllabus which pays plenty of attention to the history of religious hatred, and the violence it has inspired. Let’s teach children about the persecution of heretics, that the abuse of the Jews was not unique to Hitler, and that people have been using religion in the most disgusting ways throughout human history.

Another standard complaint is that not teaching just ‘Christian values’ is either about wishy washy liberalism, bowing to multiculturalism, or not upholding proper ethical values. Tolerance is a value. Inclusivity is a value. Respect is a value. Wasn’t it Jesus who said ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’? I don’t remember any caveats about checking their faith position first. When you start exploring religions, you find that the same core values turn up in all of them – variations on a theme of care and respect. Usually with more individual rules about how to honour the deity/deities. When you start looking at the history of religions, what emerges is a sense that the power hungry will happily use them to control and manipulate others, to justify war, and commit atrocities. The more mutual understanding there is between non-violent people of faith, the better a chance we have of not being collectively manipulated into aggression that is all about serving the egos and bank accounts of leaders. Now, why would anyone not want us to do that? Hmm.

When people say ‘Christian values’ do they mean all of Christianity? Are they proposing to teach children not only Protestant values, but also the subtly different values of Catholics, Methodists, Quakers, Unitarians, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Evangelicals, Seventh Day Adventists, Baptists… and what about the more extreme Christian cults? The sort that encourage mass suicide and practice brainwashing? Are we talking all of those variations on a theme of ‘Christian values’? You can bet we aren’t. We’re talking the Christianity approved of by the speaker, who probably has no better grasp of the diversity of their own faith, than they do anyone else’s. This is not really a debate about religion at all, or even about education, it’s about who has the right to tell us what to think. The answer should be ‘no one.’

Not being stupid in public is a really good reason for education. What could be more embarrassing than watching a journalist, politician or other public figure spouting their uninformed prejudices? Making judgements based on prejudice, imagination and the idiotic pronouncements of other uninformed bigots, is a reliable route to looking dumb. It’ also a guarantor of dreadful, unworkable policies.  Decent level of school education about religion will at least prevent our politicians and journalists of the future from publically shaming all of us with their atrocious levels of ignorance.