Nimue Brown's Blog, page 465

Reputation, Celts, Druids, Zen and the title that has just run away from me

I’ve just read a most excellent post from Jo over at http://octopusdance.wordpress.com/201... at Zen attitudes to the opinions of others, pragmatic action, peace of mind and the relationship between them. On the whole, I agree with her – being at the mercy of other people’s opinions is not a great deal of help in life, and focusing on what needs doing is a very good way of doing the right thing.

But, where are the Celts in all of this? I’m not a great historian but my impression of the Celts includes a fondness of showing off, a desire to be thought well of, not just to be heroic, but to be seen to be heroic by those around you. It’s not enough to live an excellent and blameless life, someone should notice and write a song about it. My impression of Celtic culture would include an idea of vigorously defending your honour from attack by others, both in word and in deed. My notion of the historical Druids sits them in that Celtic culture. I don’t imagine them being entirely self effacing!

I’m also conscious that in a Celtic tribe, or village, with honour a consideration all round, there would be wholly different social structures and mechanisms to our contemporary circumstances. A culture that actively praises honourable and heroic behaviour, and where reputation is far more of an issue than bank balance, is very different to our way of life.

The more I think about it, the more interesting I find it. From a perspective of my own wellbeing, there is much to be said for cultivating a disinterest in the opinions of others, in favour of considering only what it is right and necessary to do. However, that either assumes that ‘right’ and ‘necessary’ are going to be easy to identify, or that I am comfortable trusting my own judgement. Jo’s blog has a story of a Zen Master, someone who pretty much by definition is going to be able to trust their own judgement. I’m a long way short of that, and the feedback I get from other people is part of what helps me decide whether I’m making good choices and decisions, and what is actually needed.

Experience to date suggests that verbally defending my honour to those who think ill of me, has been a total waste of time. I can’t think of a single instance where someone has really taken against me, and been persuaded otherwise by my own words, offered in my own defence. Admittedly, my life is not awash with examples to consider. But I can’t think of many instances where words alone seem to have swayed anyone’s opinion much. Partly because anyone can say anything, with very little effort and a minimum of imagination. “Oh no I didn’t,” can be offered as a defence against any accusation.

Actions speak in a wholly different way. The quality, consistency, usefulness, well-consideredness and the like of a person’s actions speak for them. Someone who apologises and then works to make up for their mistake, is far more credible than someone who merely speaks. Someone who acknowledges error is far easier to believe than a person who always thinks they are right in all things and cannot hear alternative perspectives. Your bombastic, boasting Celt is only going to be able to stand on the table and loudly defend his honour if he can say things like ‘you know I was right at the front in the last cattle raid. You know I am a generous host, a good friend, a brave warrior and that I once strangled a wild boar with my bare hands.” Really, it’s the actions that are speaking, the words are just a reminder.

And the right actions, only come if you’re focused on doing the right things, for the right reasons. That’s not about being deaf to other people’s opinions, it’s about working out which bits are important, what needs responding to, where to stand firm, where to be compassionate and so forth. It’s about getting under the surface to the essence of the issue. Jo offered a story in which there was a surface tale of honour attacked, and a more essential tale of a vulnerable child in need of protection. Humans are very good at noise and surface. Until we try and dig deeper, to find the heart of a matter, it’s difficult to act well. It’s taken me a long time to really learn that people who seem controlling and domineering are often fearful, for example. It’s so tempting to respond to the surface behaviour and be defensive, or even aggressive in return. But responding to the underlying fear and giving reassurance instead, changes everything. Not taking things too personally is, as Jo points out, is a good place to start.

More Beatitude than Platitude? An Open Letter to Cristina Odone

Reblogged from Barefoot Anthropology:

Cristina Odone believes it is ridiculous that Paganism be included in British RE lessons.

Dear Ms Odone.

You recently produced an article condemning the inclusion of Paganism and Druidry as part of the Religious Education syllabus in Cornish schools. You omit, though, that teaching about these faiths is not actually required, merely optional – what is required however, is that 60% of every RE course in this county must be concerned with your own faith of Christianity…

Read more… 1,179 more words

Some very wise words here...

Breaking your reality

I’ve been through it twice, so far, at intervals of about a decade. On both occasions the breaking of my reality had everything to do with two separate individuals and the complex webs of lies they created. And on both occasions, I fought hard to keep my reality whole, because the alternative always appears so insane, unstable and dangerous. Until you escape. Both times, in the end, I went through the trauma of unpicking all the things I thought I knew, reassessing everything, falling apart, and being able to rebuild. The first time, I rebuilt on a foundation of broken trust, the second time I think I’ve come out with a more nuanced sense of things.

There are few things more frightening than finding that your reality doesn’t work. However, when you think about it, so much of the reality we inhabit depends on trust. It depends on things we have all agreed are true, exist and can be used as points of reference. Language, countries and economies are all part of our belief system. There’s a process at the moment not unlike saying ‘The Emperor has no clothes on’ in which we’re collectively reassessing the value of money markets, wealth made out of fantasy, and considering that the uber-rich might not be all that good for the rest of us. Bloodless revolutions can be dramatic and uncomfortable too.

I wonder what it was like for the devout Christians of the Victorian era, having to deal with Darwin, and the possibility that their book might not represent literal truth. There are still those who just won’t look at the evidence and who hold to the belief, and their relationship with the rest of reality gets ever more strained and problematic. There must have been plenty for whom Darwin brought deep, personal crisis. We’re asked to do a lot of trusting – of governments, scientists, lawyers, big businesses, media and medics these days more often than religious folk, but it is no less a belief position that keeps it all chipping along. We depend on the realities other people help to make, and sometimes those are very faulty indeed.

Most of the UK is in drought, my bit is being battered by torrential rain. We’ve had years of less predictable and more problematic weather already, but we’re still reluctant to think about climate change. For everyone whose notion of reality depends on car, reliable water supplies, all the electricity you can dream of and the freedom to consume more than you can afford, climate change is madness. Going there, recognising it, would require of our culture something not unlike a nervous breakdown. It’s going to hurt like hell.

I have leaned, in my personal life, that no matter how familiar and established a fictional reality is, when you are dealing with lies and illusions, it just doesn’t work. The effort required to bend and re-shape things into other things, so that your dysfunctional reality holds together, is vast. Every piece of evidence that doesn’t fit has to be reinvented. Experiences that contradict, must be forgotten, feelings that go against the reality, must be crushed. It may seem that we can make the reality stick, and that no other reality is possible, but it catches up with us in the end. Either we can’t sustain the work involved in holding a faith position about things that blatantly aren’t true, or we get so far removed from the rest of the world that we can’t function. Collectively, climate change will do one or the other to us, unless we deal with it. I’d like to think it’s possible to change by reasoned, deliberate choice rather than in crisis.

In personal life, the breaking of reality was an awful experience, but the far side of it is a much better place. Things make sense again. Sensory evidence can be trusted, emotions taken into account. A greater sense of inner peace becomes possible.

I’m wondering if ‘Jayne’ will feel tempted to comment on this post. If she does, it could be to ask if I’ve realised that I have been living a lie for the last couple of years. ‘Jayne’ has tried on several occasions to assert this already, but unless I’m very much mistaken, she needs to. ‘Jayne’ slipped up over the Easter weekend and made a comment that took me from suspicion about the familiarity of her phrasing, through to a reasonable degree of confidence that I know who she is.

Assuming I’m right in my guess then ‘Jayne’s ‘ hostility is necessary for her. Based on what I think I know, her situation requires her to hold the belief that I am a cruel, vindictive, heartless sort of person. It has been necessary for some time that she reads the very worst imaginable things into anything I do or say and must, therefore, cherry pick the bits that can be tweaked support her world view. So she comes to the blog of someone she dislikes for something, anything, that reinforces her perspective. I wonder what she has to carefully ignore to make her world work. I wonder what she has to pretend to like or accept, what she has to suppress within herself, in order to get from one day to the next with her reality intact. It’s no way to live. I know, I’ve been there. I try not to be too hard on her. She frustrates me, but I feel very sorry for her, and I also know that merely my saying that will poke the flimsy foundations of her world. If I am nice to her, I will hurt her. You can’t help someone whose reality doesn’t work, without causing them a lot of distress.

Sometimes the best we can hope for anyone, is that the fabulous prison-castle construction made of lies and straw shows its true nature so that it can be kicked to pieces. The walls are mostly just air. You are free to leave. It’s good when that happens.

Life in the slow lane

I have recently read Carl Honore's 'In Praise of Slow' (I recommend it) which agrees with so many things I've been thinking for a few years now about how we spend our time, the pace we live at and the things we could do without.

Not so many years ago I was routinely working twelve and fourteen hour days, and usually working six day weeks, often seven day weeks. I was writing, editing, marketing, busking, sometimes gigging (all the paid stuff) and then working as a volunteer for several organisations, and for my child's school – which only had a few volunteer parents fundraising and helping out. I was running a folk club, a moot, and a singing group, and involved in organising rituals (all voluntary again) Before that, there were meditation groups. Then add in a young child to care for, and pretty much all of the domestic work for a three person household, including heavy jobs like cutting firewood, and lugging coal. There was always far more to do than there was time.

A number of things kept me working. The volunteering I did because there were things that needed doing, and I did not feel comfortable about saying no. At that time, my social life depended entirely on the musical and pagan things I was running, and had I not put in the work, life would probably have been very thin. I also felt under a lot of pressure to contribute financially, so I worked when I was ill, and when I was tired, and I very seldom took whole days off. I got into a cycle of intensive work, which would last about 6 weeks, followed by total burnout, which would usually involve my digestive system collapsing under the pressure and making me very ill for a few days. Repeat. Repeat. It was not a happy way to live. It's one thing working all the hours you can to get something good done, it's quite another when you're effectively the servant of a person who spends most of their leisure time playing computer games.

I have slowed down. My doctor was very clear that if I didn't make time both for gentle exercise and rest, that I was going to aggravate my illness, which I could not afford to do. And to be honest, I would not ask anyone else to do twelve hour days, seven days a week. I do not believe that life should consist entirely of work. It helped that I was supported in making changes.

Tom and I made a pact that we would have some time off every day, and that we would not work a full seven day week. We aim for a day off each week, but that sometimes turns up as two afternoons, if it makes more sense. We rarely take a whole day off, but sometimes we do, which is a joy. Having some down time before bed has improved my sleeping, and having enough time to sleep, and not waking still tired, to an alarm, makes a word of difference. When Tom is working on pages I tend to pick up more of the domestic stuff, but I haven't cut wood since he's been here, and anything else heavy, he undertakes. Faced with the example of a step father who regularly cooks, cleans and otherwise takes responsibility, my child has also started to sort out his own things, and take more responsibility. I used to have to fight him over that, but now it comes a lot more easily. So the pressure is off me. I find I do not have to run hard all the time just to keep up.

So we go for strolls in the evening. We read books, we take time for Radio 4 comedy and the radio 2 folk program, and sometimes also the radio 1 chart show. We hang out with people, go to galleries and museums. We go to local events. Life is richer, more interesting, and not so hectically paced. My health has improved dramatically, I am no longer living perpetually on the edge of burnout. My mental health is much improved. I am a lot happier.

But here's the curious thing. Overall, productivity has gone up, not down. Tom can average at something like a page a day. That's more than twice his speed before moving here. I get far more done in my time than I used to. This is partly because I am sharper from being rested, and partly because there is more inspiration in my life. The consequence of slowing down, has been to speed up, whilst feeling better about things. Win all round.

The quest for peace

I've blogged before about my anxiety issues, which have been with me for some considerable period now. However, the last few weeks of my life have brought a new development into the mix. I'm experiencing periods – sometimes hours long – of euphoria and a tremendous sense of inner peace. This, I am tremendously grateful for. However, it is in the nature of me to think about everything, to want to understand what is happening. After all, if I can unravel where this oasis of calm has come from, I might better be able to maintain it.

I think there are a number of strands to this. Firstly is, as previously commented, the strange, amorphous anxiety I live with has everything to do with reasons for fear having become normal in my life. There's been a huge shift on that score. Emotionally, physically and psychologically I am very much safer these days. Home life is not fraught with tension and arguments, but is instead warm, companionable and supportive. Most days, nothing scary happens. And so by slow degrees fear has become less normal and happiness more so. I think somewhere in the last few weeks the balance tipped. My sense of normal is all about the life I now have, finally. Not being told off, not facing anger, not having to continually justify myself, makes a lot of difference.

I've taken up being gentler with myself, too – a deliberate move prompted in part by advice from my counsellor last year. I don't push continually beyond the boundaries of my exhaustion. It helps a lot that I now have the support to rest when ill, to take it easy when tired and to take time off. And again, feeling more secure makes it easier to give time to myself.

I sleep more – because I give myself the time, because I am relaxed when I go to bed, I have nothing specifically to be anxious about in bed, so sleeping comes easily. If I do wake up in a state of panic – it still happens- there is someone lovely to curl up against. Often I'm the first to wake in the mornings, and when the day's anxiety rush has passed, I'm overwhelmed by a sense of gratitude, and on some days the decadent pleasure of lying in as late as 8am, in good company.

Being valued by the people around me, has done a lot to ease my anxieties about myself, and to help me build a new sense of who I am, and my place in the world. This in turn contributes to my sense of calm. I do not need to prove anything, so much, these days. I am not short of friendly attention, I'm with someone who enjoys what I do. Pretty much all of it. That makes it far easier for me to enjoy what I do, too. And here again, this process of acceptance makes me feel more able to accept myself. It is not easy to be free from inner conflict when the external world is conflict laden. External peace makes it a lot easier to cultivate inner peace. Of course, inner peace that depend on a calm external reality is a partial sort of thing, and for best effect I need to be able to hold my calm optimism even in face of adversity, but that could well come, in time.

There was a time when I could not imagine feeling whole in myself. A time when I could not imagine being free from fear. That seems a long way behind me now. I got this far in no small part because other people did not give up on me, and did not let me crumble entirely into despair. And also because all the way through, I have dared to hope that maybe there was a possibility things could get better. Sustaining hope can be very hard work indeed.

I am full of gratitude for the small things, the little acts of warmth, compassion and kindness that crop up every day. The smallest beauties, the little moments of good fortune. And I know how to laugh at the setbacks. I'm writing this blog on a train station, because we got stuck behind a funeral, a tractor and a bus, and missed the one we were aiming for. It's a small set back. A chance to linger longer, and I bought a book. I'm getting better at seeking out the silver linings and life is getting better at presenting them.

I'm going to blog more at some point about the relationship between the experience of slowing down, and the quest for inner peace, because that's too huge a topic to cover in this round. As I type, the sun has just peeked out from behind the clouds again. The air smells of rain. My child is ambling about doing nothing in particular, my bloke appears to be deep in contemplation. I draw a deep breath. This is my life. My real life. The one I have. It is the life I want, and I've been a long time finding it, but ye gods I am glad that I did not give up.

Everything is sacred

Today I am writing in response to Solitary Druid's most excellent post here – http://phoenixgrove.wordpress.com/201... (you don't need to have read it to follow mine, but trust me, it's well worth doing so.)

I embrace the idea that everything is sacred, that sacredness is inherent in all things. And, mindful of the blog I alluded to, I also recognise that for human functionality, this is a non-starter. I might hold it as an intellectual premise, but in practice how I treat a cat poo in the litter tray is not how I would treat a mouse that turned up there. Part of this is because of difference – the poo has no needs that I know of, whereas I need to get rid of the smell. The mouse if alive, needs to leave swiftly and gently. So even if everything is sacred, its uniqueness requires us, if we care for it, to treat it in a relevant way.

There are times when we have to choose priority. We can't do everything, relate to everything, save everything. Our energy and time are finite and every moment of living involves an almost unthinkable amount of choice as we pilot our way through potentially infinite options. So we respond to the things that move us, that we are inspired by, or care about and give them priority over those that aren't so emotive. We save the cute fluffy mammal and leave the remarkable insect to die. We give money to orphans with large eyes, not homeless guys with drink and drug problems – or however it falls out in our unique experience. There is no way of not doing this.

We can, however, take out little bits of time along the way to think about our priorities and relationships. If, for example, I have been excluding my own rubbish from the 'sacred' category, I miss its relationship both with the raw material it came from and the land it will be off to fill. I might still find it hard to see god in a paper bag, but I can think about my own relationship with the tree that went to make the paper, and the land it could be going to fill (both easily sacred), and I can opt to recycle it instead. Sometimes the best approach to 'everything is sacred' is not to try and grasp the inherent deity in things we can see no use or value for, but to put them back into a bigger picture. They come from somewhere, they go somewhere, it is all nature. Holding the bigger picture in mind, full time is impossible, but pausing to contemplate bits of the bigger picture, and trying to put small, apparently unimportant things into context, changes perspectives.

I am not going to see goddesses in a cat poo. But I do see a reflection of the cat's life cycle, and a reminder of my own. I do see the challenge of waste disposal, and all the headache-inducing questions of sustainability and impact. Odds are in a few hours time, I will have forgotten the poo, and will be instead looking at the clouds, striking up a conversation with a seagull, contemplating my ancestors or going wherever today takes me. Until Mr Cat makes another offering.

The plus side of an 'everything is sacred' perspective, is that it makes everything worth contemplating. As I said last week, feeling druidic is easy when you're somewhere like Avebury, and its harder wok in a supermarket, or a traffic queue. But starting from the premise that there could be sacredness here to find, is a good way of getting past the sense of isolation from beauty and wonder that urban living can bring. I've spent times in depressing urban places, and I used to find it very hard. The prompt from another druid to keep looking for spirits of place, and to assume a presence of the sacred, took me some time to get to grips with, but has radically altered how I feel about being in cities. Nature is everywhere. It's with us every time we draw breath, or empty our bladders, and it's worth keeping sight of that.

The quest for beauty and meaning, for sacredness amongst the worst messes of short term human 'creativity' can take a person strange places. Many of the good things are accidental, the wildlife that has moved in, the unintentional art. Where there is grim building and low aspiration, a place can feel soulless. Recognising that it does have soul, changes how we relate to it, what we do with it, and ideally in the end, it changes the place. Once you start treating everything, and everyone as though there is a dash of sacredness there, the odds are you're going to show it/them more care and respect, and real changes will occur.

Pondering this yesterday I came to the conclusion that sacredness and relationship go together. Without relationship, ideas of sacredness are meaningless. It's not the intellectual premise that matters, it's how we live it, and that's about what we do with everything we encounter.

Also, I now wonder if my cat is psychic. As I was typing away about cat poo, he thoughtfully undertook to provide me with one! If god is in that smell, it's going to be a while before I can experience ecstatic relationship. But then, I'm only human.

Laughing at Religion

Humans use comedy and laughter in many ways. We do it to deflate tension and mask fear, to mark boundaries of who is in and who is out. We do it to deflate ego and tackle pomposity. Laughter is the only weapon, sometimes, that the disadvantaged have against the powerful. It can be tremendously subversive, but also culturally bonding. Laugher is dangerous, so how we relate it to that most serious of subjects – religion – is an interesting question.

It is natural to fear ridicule, and as religion tends to be very personal, the mocking of religions can translate into the mocking of the faithful. Where the humour is about pointing and laughing at the silly people, this can feel alienating, and like your most sacred things are a joke to others. Pagans get a lot of this, in the media. This is in part because we look different and are an easy target, a bit like morris dancers. I happen to think most men in bells look silly, but I love morris dancing nonetheless. That which is funny adds colour to life, which is a good thing. I think the pointing and laughing is good, in an odd way. All religions are prone to pomposity, which is inherently foolish, and to costumes and rituals that become all about show and lose their substance. The laughter of irreverent outsiders can do a lot to keep us focused on what really matters, and to keep us honest.

Really good comedy depends on insight. I am better placed than a non-druid to make druid jokes, because I know the silliness we, and our ancestors of tradition get up to. If I use it for comic effect, I may do something productive. Jewish culture is full of jokes about Judaism and Jewish people, offered in a self-depreciating way to the outside world. That fascinates me. I have learned from it, and the main effect has been to improve my understanding and respect. I am aware that jokes about Islam result in death threats, sometimes. This makes me wary of comedy about Islam, but if we ever get the equivalent of 'The Imman of Dibley' onto the TV, I will know that a wonderful, cultural revolution has occurred. Irony, parody, and sophisticated word play comedy depend on knowledge, and on the audience knowing as much as the jester. To be jokeable about, is to be understood, at least a bit. The day I hear a mainstream comedian making cracks about Druids, is the day I know the world is really taking us seriously.

Where laughter is shared,, groups and individuals bond. Laugher breaks the ice, breaks down social barriers, and a shared joke gives common points of cultural reference and a sense of belonging. Jokes within a community, about itself, can therefore be important markers of belonging. Religion serves a function in terms of cultural belonging and a sense of place. Laughter and comedy have a role to play in that, and if we resent the giggling at sacred things, the shooting down of sacred cows, the laughter at expense of doctrine and leadership, we miss out. It is healthy to make jokes about religions. Fearing laughter is not healthy, I think.

Challenges to faith are not a bad thing. When the laughter comes from the outside, that can feel like an assault to pride, dignity, and all that we value. But like anything that tests us, it also gives us a chance to walk our talk. For me as a druid, the tradition of satire is an important one. If someone makes a joke at my expense, or the expense of my faith, my religious position is to try and come up with a better one, or a stronger way of laughing back. Each religion has its own ways but I have no doubt each can contribute to how we handle laugher coming in from the outside.

Laughter, when it hits hard, is the most amazing loss of control. It's also more socially acceptable than a wild excess of weeping, or lust, or anger. When laughter takes hold, tears stream, bodies rock, motor control goes. Extreme laugher makes us weak and vulnerable, in a physical sense. We can therefore only do it when we feel safe. It takes us out of ourselves, something is broken down when we are overcome in this way. I believe that laughter, like all other powerful emotional events, has the potential to be a religious experience in its own right. Why should all religion be po-faced and melancholy? Surely god can be as present in a giggle as in solemnity?

The sacred is bigger than us, pretty much by definition. The only things we hurt with laughter are fragile, human egos. If there are gods, they are not human. Mostly, we do not laugh at the gods, we laugh at the strange things it occurs to people to do in the name of deity. Sometimes we laugh because that's better than weeping. When we laugh, we are human. When we laugh, we are not killing each other. Warm hearted laughter is not the beginning of aggression. Hate is a cold, and joyless thing and those who hate will find it just as intolerable to face the gigglers. If we can laugh at ourselves, and the things we do, the odds are, we aren't going to kill anyone, and given the history of religions worldwide, that would be a good development.

Kit and caboodle

Last week I saw a walking group on the towpath. Every last one of them had serious, outdoor gear, I would estimate several hundred pounds worth per person, including walking boots suitable for mountains, and dinky little rucksacks. All of it shiny looking, and clearly new on from the shop. They walked a few miles over flat terrain on a nice day – a walk that needed only a passable pair of trainers and enough clothing not to get yourself arrested.

But it's not just the walkers who are succumbing to the lure of 'the right gear'. You can't go jogging or cycling round here without specific stretchy, got zips in it, figure hugging gear. For a short run, I'm not convinced you need anything more than the basics. It's like the walker – if you're hiking all day through the fells in tricky conditions, or running a marathon, then you do need the right kit. Regular commenter here, Autumn, does serious cycling and I'm sure she has appropriate gear. I'm waiting to see what she says about this blog… There are times when you need the absolutely right shoes, the all conditions sleeping bag, the first aid kit, and whatnot. For a Sunday afternoon local jaunt in whatever form, mostly you don't. Today I have seen canal fishermen decked out like they were on an Icelandic trawler.

There are reasons for clothes that have nothing to do with practicality. There are people who have been sold kit who do not understand that it is a needless expense. What's more worrying is the possibility of people who feel they cannot walk, jog, cycle or anything else for lack of the right clothes. If you believe you have to have all the gear, you might never risk it without, and subsequently miss out on a lot.

The other big aspect of clothing is tribal. The clan of fishermen look like fishermen even when they aren't waving their rods about. People who want to be recognised as hardcore cyclists or joggers only need 'the look' not the activity. The right kind of trousers tell the world that you ride horses, and so on. If all that matters to a person is surfaces and impressions, having the right gear is the main thing. Who cares if you never actually walk anywhere?

There are plenty of people who will happily sell you pagan gear – robes, tabards, cloaks, snazzy dresses, arcane looking jewellery, wands, bags, cauldrons, brooms, big poncy shirts, re-enactment style gear, and so on. You can spend a lot of money looking the part.

Now, maybe there are people who aren't sure if you can be a 'proper' pagan without all the gear. Can you do a ritual without wearing a robe? Can you talk to the gods without the right shoes on? Do you need a bigger pentacle? It can feel that if you aren't gorgeous, slinky and clinking with metal wear, you can't really be a pagan at all. This is (to use the proper technical term) total bollocks. What you wear only matters if it makes a difference inside your head. Be creative, or dramatic, or practical in your clothes, as suits your nature, but beyond that, there is no requirement.

There are, no doubt about it, people who are more interested in that slinky surface than in spirituality. If they're happy, fair enough I suppose, but clothes do not make someone a witch, a druid, a priestess, or, more importantly, any source of wisdom. The man with biggest pentacle is not necessarily the one with the best ideas. Sometimes, the people most keen to get their kit on are the ones who most crave attention, rather than the ones its most interesting to talk to. There are always exceptions, in both directions. If someone dresses in a way they find resonant and meaningful, that tends to be identifiably different from the showy. One of the giveaways is if it looks like the sales tag might still be in there.

So, what gear do you need to head out of the door as a druid? My recommendations are as follows.

1) A really good pair of shoes. Walking boots are good if you're getting closer to nature, or something that you can comfortably go a few miles in, or stand around for a few hours in, doing ritual. Painful feet and sprained ankles do not make for good spiritual experiences.

2) Dress the rest of you primarily for the weather and anticipated terrain. If it is feasible to ornament yourself and you like doing that, add the ornaments afterwards, making comfort a priority. Lugging a ton of metal up a hill is unlikely to improve your experience.

3) Carry extras – a raincoat, a jumper, whatever makes sense. Also carry water and snacks. These double nicely as offerings when the need arises, and mean that if you want to stay out longer, you can.

You probably now look like a typical walker, maybe with a few extra feathers. On the plus side, you will not draw any unwanted attention and can go about your ritual in peace. Those who see you may assume you are having a picnic with friends. Of course, if you ache to have cameras pointed at you, this will fail to deliver.

Also, I have no idea what a caboodle is, but you probably don't need one of those either!

Is This Religion?

Reblogged from Moon Books:

Yesterday evening I got this text from Jesus… "Heyy bro long time no c. R we still m8s. Church on Sunday wb gr8. C U there J" I know it's from Jesus because there isn't a log entry in the text history on my phone and no number to return the call to. So it must be from a supernatural source.

Read more… 799 more words

Wonderful words about beleif from Trevor at Moon books...

Nurturing your paganism

There used to be a hefty debate in psychology about which was the most important: Nature (your DNA) or Nurture (your environment) in determining your personality, and through that, the rest of your life experience. As, for many of us growing up, our biological parents are also the main providers of our environmental experience, this is not an easy set of things to pick apart. However, it's looking increasingly like lifestyle affects which genes we manifest – from that raw material, there is scope to switch on and off certain features, to express one option rather than another. As we grow, we also become more able to choose and shape our environment. It turns out that it is what we experience that does most to shape us.

The thing about experience, is that we are active participants in our own life. Most of us have at least some control over how we spend our time, who we spend it with and what we expose ourselves to. I'm not aware of any studies about how environmental choices affect adults, but there is a lot of evidence that children learn, and grow more happily and effectively f they have time out of doors. There is evidence of how observed violence in particular impacts on developing minds, tapping into mirror neurones that are part of how we learn. There is evidence that a mere five minutes a day out of doors in a green space has positive mental health benefits. I can't recall sources, but if you've time to wander online, it's all out there, because I probably got it from BBC radio.

Now consider what it does to an adult to get up, drive to work, spend the day in a little cubicle, drive back, eat a ready meal and spend the rest of the day in front of the TV or a computer. If this is the environment we create for ourselves – as plenty of people do – how is it, in turn, feeding and shaping us? Who are we if we do this? What is our life experience? What happens to our inner life, our emotions, our relationships? One of the biggest apparent reasons for being like this is the belief that there is no alternative. Every time I moot this kind of issue, someone tells me that they just can't do differently. If you are not choosing this way of life, but it is being forced upon you, I would seriously suggest doing whatever radical, non-violent thing turns out to be necessary to escape.

I hear from people new to paganism who struggle with how to make that huge, almost unimaginable leap from normal life, to real life. Pagan life. The move from passive endurance to active, joyful living. The move away from a life in small boxes to one of great horizons. The answer does not lie in thought, or study, or wishful thinking. It lies in simple and direct action. Change your environment. If only for a few minutes every day, change your space. Bring plants into it. Go outside more. Walk. Turn off the television. Five minutes a day will shift you, and something else will naturally come from this, and when you do that too, you will be walking your pagan path, taking those first baby steps towards new perceptions and understanding. It is in your power to decide at least a little bit of where and how you spend your time. Once you start getting nature into that, once nature becomes part of your environment, the other stuff becomes easier. It's not a struggle to find the time, but the ability to experience your own natural impulses, and the confidence to give them the space they deserve.

Then in turn, you change the kind of environment that you create for other people, and they too will be influenced by this.

Given due time, anything is possible.