Cracking Cauldrons
July 8, 2020What will hold your feet to the ground, when the winds of change try to carry you away? Even through Terry’s illness I still had…
Category: celtic spirituality
Killing Magic
March 4, 2020I suspect that is all magic really is: our relationship to true wildness. It is in the movement of water over rocks, the way fire travels, the song of soil remaking itself across eons.
Wilder Grief
April 30, 2019What will it be like, someday, when my children are running through the forest after I’ve died? Will they feel me with them, sharing in their joy?
Doorway
April 20, 2019I think thats why it can be difficult to talk about that doorway, I disappear completely. There are no words, and little thought. Absolute silence from within.
Mending
February 7, 2017Mending asks us to sing.
Mending may require dance.
Mending asks us to allow ourselves to be filled with light.
Mending asks us to grow.
Mending requires that we receive as well as give.
True Words, True Prayer
January 30, 2017I miss the dignity of an inauguration that included a poet like Maya Angelou. Hearing her read “On the Pulse of Morning” made me feel for a time like I, who wrote many poems back then, was actually somehow a relevant part of this nation.
Dream-Children
January 5, 2017To look into Cear’s eyes was to stare into your own soul. Once upon a time… there was child born into the world of dreams….
The Grace of a Daily Shapeshifting Practice
October 17, 2016How do you reclaim wildness, when you are part of a culture hell bent on minimizing or destroying everything wild? How do you embody the presence of an animal to call forth your humanity?
Slipping Into The Otherworld
August 23, 2016I’ve been indulging in a rare pleasure recently – watching something that lasts more than 15 minutes (my current self-designated guilty Papa-pleasure allotment.) Stranger Things on Netflix has…
The Wilderness of You {or} What I’m Doing This Summer
July 11, 2016When did it start for you – that deep ache that was also a yearning waiting to be lived? I remember the moment acutely, my feet dangling over the edge of the back seat of Grandpa’s old Buick, feeling so small, like a leaf waiting to be blown out to sea.
Green Offerings
May 4, 2016When I was making my rounds that fateful day, I was being shown that my work with the Sidhe is always happening. Its really about a quality of presence and relationship to life that never ends. Everything has to fit within that connection.
Crossroads
February 8, 2016I’ve been feeling lately, like so many of my friends, that I’m sitting at an important crossroad. I understand that I need to move forward, but have not really been given the direction yet. So I sit with potential, and that can feel oddly frightening, like you’re pausing at a threshold while something ominous and unknown draws closer.
Wonderment Rituals
January 10, 2016I suspect somehow that our wonderment actually feeds the Earth.
Good Grief
November 10, 2015When it first arrives, you think there’s been some kind of a mistake, surely it meant to sit down next to someone else. You distract yourself, move on, until you finally realize its not going anywhere. So you spend time together, without really acknowledging it exists because, lets face it – you know grief, you’ve been there before. You don’t need any kind of re-introduction. Sure you can tag along if you want to, but don’t get too comfortable.
The Curious Tale of How The Seals Came to Be
October 9, 2015“What are you on about man…why are you trying to keep out the Ocean with that thin wattle?” The youngest Cian often spoke without thinking, as was typical of young people then, just as it is now.
Grieving Slain Dragons
August 4, 2015To finally destroy them in our culture they first had to be painted as physically real, then evil, then slain, replacing many Gods with one God. But if Dragons are larger forces of nature, they cannot be slain anymore than you could kill the rain or wind.
Selkie Dad
June 24, 2015This is the journey available to us if we open to it, the yearning we feel for something more profound, and the answers nature offers us.
Mud Heart
January 2, 2015Since the big rains came, the Mushroom People have come out in numbers I’ve not seen in a decade. Everywhere I turn a new village appears, populated by fascinating folks.
Dreaming of the Sidhe
October 10, 2014It was in just such a dream-place a few nights ago I was taken aside by some people I’d never met. They talked to me about a topic I must keep private, after a while we ended by sharing some food of the Sidhe (the Faerie folk).
Evidence of Dragons
August 8, 2014Its finally happened, the Dragons are waking up after sleeping for millennia. Halfway around the world three Dragon lairs have appeared this summer, proportedly first swelling then blasting their way open.
Listen
November 21, 2012I was finally willing to let the veil fall, hearing again the world beyond the wooded ramparts of my home.
Harvest Prayer for the Springfield Grange Oct 2012
October 22, 2012We welcome this season of harvest
with gratitude, humility and hunger.
Tuath De Danann Space
May 15, 2012The more immersed in that lore I become, the less I’m able to destroy new villages of volunteer plants. Like Ferdinand the Bull I’d much rather crouch down and push my face into the small new worlds forming all around us.
Eoster on the Elkhorn Slough
April 10, 2012The secret, wind-filled family-time buoyed us all with helium laughter. Blustering fog off the incoming tide wiped the dust from the crevices in our faces. The dry winter was over.
Dawn Dance 2012
March 20, 2012I counted all the NO’s
in my life,
they didn’t add up to a single YES.
Really Ready for the Light
December 20, 2011Sitting up in the dark last night I realized I’m no longer afraid of letting myself go into the dark. I think being a parent can give you that kind of fearlessness.
The Santa Solution – 2011
December 5, 2011Santa was very happy to see me this year. As jovial as ever he instantly embraced me and welcomed me into his workshop.
View From the Trough
October 25, 2011There are places of stillness in our lives, vantage points from which we can take in the transformations occurring around us always. The horse trough out our back door is just such a place.
Invitations From The Mist
August 30, 2011This summer’s dominating grayness finally crumbled before the dipping sun of late August. The mist dances away around ten and rushes in like a stampede of phantom mustangs around four.
Unplanned Silence
June 21, 2011I filled my days
with slow chores,
clay covered toes,
and the scent of your absence
on everything.
Every Seal a Selkie
May 5, 2011These stories harken back to a time when the boundaries between people and other creatures were woven …
When Animals Talked
April 26, 2011The Celts were able to hear the voice of the Seals only a few centuries ago because the spirit world was not so far from their daily lives.
The People That Never Sleep
March 30, 2011When we don’t dream, waking life becomes a dream. Conn’s day-dream was a dark one of deprivation, it permeated his kingdom and created suffering for all his people and the land itself.
Swimming Cold
February 8, 2011For years I swam the Pacific in winter. The water was so cold I had to spend five minutes submerging my head until the pain gave way to numbness, just so I could do a mile.
Harvesting Story
October 7, 2010We are the makers of story, and story is the maker of us.
Selkie Dreams
September 21, 2010Its not hard to see a Selkie in every Seal or Sea Lion you meet alone in the Ocean. They treat you as an equal, as kin.
Stepping Over The Edge: Ancestors
March 27, 2010I like to imagine what my wildest Pagan ancestors would say to me if they were sitting beside me now. Likely they wouldn’t caution me to be especially concerned with respect or propriety when exploring my spirituality.
Of Suffering And Sovereignty
June 25, 2009A few months ago I played the Beheading Game. Don’t worry, my head was returned to me – though I’m sure its not…
A Gift From The Slough
June 3, 2009I was talking with my Teacher Tree the other morning about my life. To talk to a tree you have to first open your heart…