Gratitude and Devotion Coda: Service

Holy Mother, in Whom we live, move and have our being, from You all things emerge and unto You all things return.

Beloved, I vow to keep opening my heart to you, to surrender to your love.

Holy Mother, I vow to serve and to celebrate and to reverence Life in all Your forms with authenticity and clarity and energy and joy.

Holy Mother, in Whom we live, move and have our being, from You all things emerge and unto You all things return.

So it is.

Blessed be.

This is my vow of ministry, which I took in 1998, and have repeated – sometimes daily, sometimes going years between voicings – ever since. I’ve been repeating it more often, lately. Since September last year – exactly ten years since I took my vow, in fact – I’ve been a full-time postgraduate student. I was led to it: it is my will, my heart’s desire, and that of the Universe that I be on this path. But, swamped as I have been by assignments and the practicalities of arranging fieldwork, to say nothing of the maintaining family relationships long-distance which the location of my studies has required, I have fallen into thinking that the studying is the point.

It is not.

My purpose is to share peace; my vow is to love and to serve. These are the point. Repeating my vow is helping me to remember that.

And you? What is your purpose? What is your vow?

The Elements of Magic

Friday 3rd – Sunday 5th April, 2009

Eskdalemuir, Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland

A core class in the Reclaiming tradition

led by flame and Halo

Sadly, this class has had to be cancelled.

Devotion

The need for devotion to something outside ourselves is even more profound than the need for companionship. If we are not to go to pieces or wither away, we must have some purpose in life; for no man can live for himself alone.” — Ross Parmenter

The experience of devotion is a challenge to talk about – it is one of those mysteries which is secret not because it has been protected by knowledge-holders, but because it literally cannot be put into words. It can be a feeling of love pouring out from our heart, from our entire being, of being surrounded and filled with love, of pure joy and ecstasy or simply of knowing that we are not and have never been alone.

This experience comes from opening ourselves to full connection with something or someone that is outside or beyond us, yet with which, through our devotion, we realise we are intimately and inextricably linked. This opening to and realisation of connection is very far from the dependent ideas of devotion that some of us carry from childhood religious teaching. As my friend and past teacher Miranda Macpherson says:

The heart’s need to relate and love has often been confused with a child-like dependency towards a teacher or deity, falsely believing that the guru or deity will take care of the work of liberation as long as the aspirant is devoted enough. The true purpose of cultivating devotion is to liberate the heart via turning one’s emotional energies towards something much greater than our own ego.”

Cultivating devotion is not all ‘pink fluffy love and light’. It is a challenge, just as much as any other spiritual practice. Despite all our prayers, chanting, offerings or sitting in silence we may feel that ‘nothing is happening’. Or we may come in touch with such a deep and full experience of connection that we fear being overwhelmed. Persevere. The fruits are worth it. Miranda continues:

Cultivating devotion, whether through prayer, chanting or mantra helps lean our heart into The Absolute, fostering a sense of being held and supported. This is extremely powerful in helping us lean into new depths.

“Calling on spiritual giants within the collective that have realized God-nature before us, helps us develop courage to dive deeper when we want to pull away into the known.

“Calling on deities, whether they be historical figures of the past or archetypal forces in the unseen dimensions is profound in enabling our more fearful aspects to trust and open when tempted to close and control.

“Furthermore, cultivating devotion helps us just lean our heart into what it really wants and loves: truth.”

I would add that devotion can also be cultivated in daily life: to our families, through our acts of caring; to an art or a craft, through dedicated practice; to our communities, through the energy we put in to looking after one another and our immediate environment; to those with whom we have no directly obvious connection, through volunteering at a soup kitchen, day centre or animal shelter, and through ensuring our food and clothes have been produced by people who get fair pay and good working conditions; to Gaia, through the care we take in our use of energy and natural resources; to ourselves, through ensuring we eat tasty, healthy food, get the right amount of exercise, have good sleep and nourishing relationships.

This is possible because every being, every life, every molecule on this living planet is part of the Divine. Seen in that way, every act we take can be an act of devotion, waiting to lead us to the ocean of Divine love.

Dive in!

Gratitude

Recently, I’d been experiencing some confusion between fulfilling my soul’s purpose and recognisable ‘achievement’ and recognition in the world. When I’m peaceful and balanced, I know the difference: my soul’s purpose is essential, while worldly achievement and recognition is a nice add-on, if it comes.

What has clarified that confusion for me is remembering to practice gratitude: gratitude for what I am, what I have done and am able to do; gratitude for what I have, what I have experienced, all that has been given me in this life; gratitude for this moment, with the sun shining on the leaves and the wind moving the trees’ branches and the dog breathing quietly at my side; gratitude for the miracle of each life in the all-species tribe that surrounds me, for the miracle of life itself.

I love this inspiration on gratitude and healing from Joanna Macy, whose work on deep ecology and reconnection is well worth spending some time to get to know. She says:

We have received an inestimable gift. To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe—to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it—is a wonder beyond words. It is an extraordinary privilege to be accorded a human life, with self-reflexive consciousness that brings awareness of our own actions and the ability to make choices. It lets us choose to take part in the healing of our world. Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary wellspring of all religions, the hallmark of the mystic, the source of all true art. Yet we so easily take this gift for granted. That is why so many spiritual traditions begin with thanksgiving, to remind us that for all our woes and worries, our existence itself is an unearned benefaction, which we could never of ourselves create.”

Gratitude: that heart-filling, soul-warming feeling that opens our senses, opens us up to ourselves, to one another, to the world, to Source, to all that is. When it overcomes us out of the blue, it is such a blessing, like falling in love. But gratitude can also be a regular practice, something we take time and attention quite deliberately to ‘do’ in our daily round.

One way to do this is to keep a gratitude diary. At the end of each day write down all the things you’re grateful for today. And the more we practise gratitude, the more we realise what we receive in each moment, the more we want to give back, to share with others. Service – volunteer work of any kind – can be a wonderful, concrete expression of gratitude; and keeping service grounded in gratitude saves us from the tendency to become martyrs.

The universe loves us. We are each inestimably precious. May we all remember. May we all be blessed. May we all share our blessings.

New Links

I’ve added some new links to the Weblinks categories (down on the right):

Nick Wilding
I met Nick through the Rural Leadership Programme at Falkland Centre for Stewardship. In addition to being one of the leading lights of the Centre for Human Ecology, he’s an inspiration in the areas of relationship, community, sustainability and just being an all-round decent human being.

Transition Culture
“How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march? This site explores the emerging transition model in its many manifestations.” Rob Hopkins’ website is full of tips and information about the Transition Movement which is growing pace around the world

Resilience
“This blog’s purpose is to support the emergence of a craft practice of resilience. The resilience pioneers are helping the old systems ‘let go’ as well as focussing our evolutionary energy on building resilience at every level – to withstand the coming storms whilst enriching our collective humanity, cultivating life-giving cultures of sustainability.” Another blog from Nick Wilding, this time with a specific focus. There’s some cross-over with his other blog above, but still very well worth reading.

The Elements of Spiritual Practice

Within the Feri tradition*, we use the five-pointed star familiar from Wicca and Freemasonry – the ‘Lesser Seal of Solomon’ – not merely as a symbol but as a tool to aid meditation and connection by linking each point to the elements and to other qualities which relate to those elements.

In the spirit of this tradition, I have been working on a pentacle of spiritual practice, associating each point of the elemental pentacle with a spiritual practice which I have found to be foundational.

I’ll be looking at the points of this Pentacle of Spiritual Practice here, exploring each one in terms of what it means, why it’s important and some of the approaches to it that I’ve found helpful.

* I am a student of the Feri tradition, not an initiate.

Relationships

There is a saying that goes around some New Age and self-development circles that relationships are ‘Yoga for Westerners’. What I think this means is that, for those of us living in the urbanised, technology and profit-driven ‘Western’ (or ‘Northern’) world, the path to enlightenment, or awakening, or self-realisation, or union with God, or whatever is seen as the “goal” of spiritual practice, is via our connections, our harmony and conflict, with our fellow beings.

This insight is deeper than this glib expression might indicate. For millennia, cultures shaped and influenced by religious traditions as diverse as Hellenic paganism, Protestant Christianity and Hinduism have placed the spiritual in opposition to the mundane, set the transcendent at odds with the every day. In European and European-influenced cultures particularly, this spiritual / profane dualism has had a strong hold. The idea that the spiritual can be found through the everyday, mundane reality of relationships, while not new, is often revolutionary in its challenge to a dualistic way of thinking and the behaviour that comes from it.

Relationships have become increasingly important to me over the seven years I’ve lived in Eskdale. Before moving to the country, I had always lived in cities. I always had a feeling of disconnection, living and working in built-up environments.

My first inkling that things could be different was an extended stay at Glastonbury Festival one year as a volunteer. Being able to connect directly with the shape of the land, the state of the ground, the way earth became trees became sky, without the intrusion of multi-storey concrete and acres of Tarmacadam, gave me my first taste of feeling part of a place, being in relationship to a place rather than being a disconnected dot, scurrying about its surface.

My life now is all about relationships – with aspects of myself, with the land and all its forms of life, with my ancestors, with my Gods, with the people in my life, with the built environment, with ideas. I’m not always very good at them; all relationships require some level of intimacy and all intimacy carries risk – it might reveal something about me that I don’t want others to know, or that I don’t want to know about myself.

But I have made a commitment to know myself in all my parts, and that means knowing myself in relationship to others, and others in relationship to me. Harmonious relationships are a beautiful experience, but conflict too has a blessing to offer, if we can be spacious enough to give light and air to all sides, however painful the expansion, the release of defences that such spaciousness requires might be. Conflict is a call to apply the skills honed in daily practice: paying attention, being with feelings and sensations and urges without acting on them, simply being present.

Being present is, I believe, the greatest gift we can give to ourselves, to our family, friends and neighbours, to the world. And in our being present, we receive a gift, too; we find that, in the words of Mary Oliver, from her poem, Wild Geese:

…the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”

Being in relationship, we know that we are not alone, that we have a place, that we are at home, right here, right now.

In that knowledge, may we find peace.

Healing inspiration

This year I treated myself to a We’Moon diary. I’ve not had one for ten years and I’d forgotten what a wonderful resource of wisdom it can be.

Today, I found this poem, written by (Jane) Mara. I hope it speaks to you as deeply as it does to me.

Mending the Tattered Web of My Heart the World

I am mending
the tattered web of my heart, the world,
with plush emerald yarn
of compassion and generosity.
I darn holes torn by blame and judgement
with soft and sturdy strands
of kindness and understanding.

May I repair jagged rips
torn by despair and grief
with braided grasses of gratitude
and deep purple reeds of acceptance
of things as they are.

And where anger and fear
burned gaping holes,
may I reweave
with golden threads of forgiveness,
gleaming copper cords of courage,
and strong silver strands of trust
in the mysterious and holy unfolding
of what is greater than I can know.

To strengthen
this web of my heart, the world,
I send out these healing threads,
to anyone who needs them,
anyone at all
in this whole world.

Spiritual practice – what is it for?

Lately, I’ve found daily practice a trial – more like working through a menu than renewing my soul – so much so that I’ve given myself permission to have a ‘fallow period’ of just noticing myself, rather than sitting down to focused meditation or energy work.

The twelve days of Yule are almost over now, though, and it feels important to recommit myself to daily practice. What has become clear to me during this fallow period, however, is that I needed to be clearer in my own understanding about what daily practice is for – ‘you’re supposed to’ or ‘it’s good for you’ just don’t work for me as reasons, and I’ve been engaged in spiritual practice too long to use the device of ‘you’re just trying it out to see what happens’ and actually convince myself.

So, when I was walking the dogs today, I thought I’d ask advice from Those who really ought to know. Here are the answers I got:

To know yourself as acceptable and whole and free.

To be yourself, who you are, and shine, blaze brightly.

To trust and rest on the tides.

To be still, like a mountain; to truly hear and see; to know through your senses.

To expand to hold and share beauty.

To expand to hold and transform pain.

To be a portal between worlds.

What about you? What are your reasons for engaging in spiritual practice?

A poem for the season

Samhuinn

My altar is laid out upon white cloth:
a single candle and a water glass,
some clear-wrapped Woolworths fudge, a china cup
of Earl Grey tea (no milk), a rosary.

All my dead grandparents are honoured here,
and all of those who’ve died that I loved best -
a tooth, a collar, brushed out puppy fluff -
and ancestors of spirit, genii,

their deeds in clippings, shining words transcribed.
At sunset I will light the candle flame,
door opening to memories and grief
red raw beneath my busy mind, my smile.

The more I name, each year, ‘Beloved Dead’,
the more my heart is patterned through with fear,
anticipating dear ones’ pains and ends.
But fallen apples, cut through to their cores,

reveal their seeds, the star of life in death;
a promise made. I name each baby born
to steal my friends’ sleep in return for joy.
I welcome in, for stewed meat, roots and bread,

the shades of all those dead I yearn to see.
I dream; as day arises out of night
I wake to shiver in the mist and face
the waning sun, draw in first breath and live.