An uncounted number of scenery changes are now mounting behind me. How long will this continue? I start to feel a little internal wobble, like a snail with a crack in its shell. Home is on my back, in my heart and hands.
I am reminded of this fine creature. It was spring, and I was walking with my favourite fearless nature buddy on the waters of the Olympic Peninsula. This sea snail wanted to show us her own powerful version of the upstream swim.
I have excellent friends. In fact, I find myself surrounded by the best set of individuals one could ever hope to be entangled with. Not that long ago, I took a leap of faith and embarked on a pilgrimage in search of fellowship. I made space, got moving, and in they came. I still have no idea how it happened, though I have to give sincere thanks to a certain wizardly wonder-man who joined some dots for us.
This is a little note of love to them all.
They are the ones who walk by my side even when we are separated by an ocean. They drive the getaway car in my dreams. They open their homes and their hearts to me. They make altars of lego to bring me safely to my destination. They tell me if I have food stuck in my teeth. They show me their warmth, their insight, their weakness and their pain. They embrace the weirdness and the wonder with me. Hot Sexy Mystics, all of them. They are not normal, and neither am I. Thank God. Somehow, we found each other.
“Initiates always come back” NK
(or)
“Warriors are doomed to survive.” Don Juan
I was recently speaking with a wise woman. We were talking about making contact with God. I spoke of digging under that familiar feeling of inadequacy and finding below it a deep seated fear that there is no divinity, or perhaps that I am not capable of reaching it. In moments lost in the darkest blackness of the maze, the horror of a meaningless, mechanical world arises. She then asked me if it would be possible to look in the eyes of one of my dearest friends and feel that that the world is an empty, godless machine. The answer was no. When I want to find divinity, I look to my friends.
They are all miracles and I love them copiously. I count my blessings every day.
Listen to this beautiful man speak. Make a space in your day for his voice and his music. Feel what happens. I love you, Arvo Pärt.
“The most sensitive musical instrument is the human soul.” Arvo Pärt
When considering the patterns of the individual and the patterns of family and heritage, the homeland draws a frame.
England, that tiny land mass with such disproportionately significant influence throughout history, is no longer standing. It is on its knees. There is a subservience that clouds the eyes and minds of the people, an unquestioning obedience to authority, an unthinking adherence to mechanical routines. A discordant mix of cultures and ideologies has been artificially forced into claustrophobic proximity; tensions ferment ominously as the dull sport of grumbling-about-the-mundane releases a little steam and fills the streets with its pointless noise.
Until you go elsewhere and re-acclimatize over time, you are a fish in water. The English water is indeed murky, muddied most recently by two brutal wars that brought about a high velocity crushing of morale and annihilated generations of men in one fell swoop. The brave were destroyed; those who returned were damaged. The right to bear arms has long since gone, and the inability to protect home and family has stripped us of our power and our sovereignty. Men cannot defend those they love, and beyond that, most of them fail to see that they have allowed this tragedy.
This is our land, and we have forgotten.
The Wilderness by Kathleen Raine
I came too late to the hills: they were swept bare
Winters before I was born of song and story,
Of spell or speech with power of oracle or invocation,
The great ash long dead by a roofless house, its branches rotten,
The voice of the crows an inarticulate cry,
And from the wells and springs the holy water ebbed away.
A child I ran in the wind on a withered moor
Crying out after those great presences who were not there,
Long lost in the forgetfulness of the forgotten.
Only the archaic forms themselves could tell!
In sacred speech of hoodie on gray stone, or hawk in air,
Of Eden where the lonely rowan bends over the dark pool.
Yet I have glimpsed the bright mountain behind the mountain,
Knowledge under the leaves, tasted the bitter berries red,
Drunk water cold and clear from an inexhaustible hidden fountain.
A sense of what is being lost is tangible to all who choose to look below the surface of our current material stupidity. I write these observations with great sorrow, and I grieve for this once powerful land as it falls dormant. It has produced so much goodness and beauty.
“Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine,
cum sanctis tuis in aeternum, quia pius es.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine;
et lux perpetua luceat eis.”
“May everlasting light shine upon them, O Lord,
with thy saints in eternity, for thou art merciful.
Grant them eternal rest, O Lord,
and may everlasting light shine upon them.”
Being a walking question mark 