
Unafraid of the Sound of Grief
August 19, 2023They already know so well, how to mend the world with their own hearts. They are both unafraid of the sound of grief.
They already know so well, how to mend the world with their own hearts. They are both unafraid of the sound of grief.
It’s just that way for some parents. When some of us lose a child it hits so hard we just can’t seem to go on living. If the heart breaks completely the body can die.
I’m cleaning the kitchen, I mean REALLY cleaning it. My Mother would call my kitchens current state a shit-mess! It has been weeks since the…
What 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…
I 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.
What 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?
I 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 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.
I 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.
To 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….
How 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?
I’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…
When 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.
When 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.
I’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.
I suspect somehow that our wonderment actually feeds the Earth.
When 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.
“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.
To 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.
This 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.
Since 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.
It 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).
Its 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.
I was finally willing to let the veil fall, hearing again the world beyond the wooded ramparts of my home.
We welcome this season of harvest
with gratitude, humility and hunger.
The 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.
The 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.
I counted all the NO’s
in my life,
they didn’t add up to a single YES.
Sitting 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.
Santa was very happy to see me this year. As jovial as ever he instantly embraced me and welcomed me into his workshop.
There 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.
This 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.
I filled my days
with slow chores,
clay covered toes,
and the scent of your absence
on everything.
These stories harken back to a time when the boundaries between people and other creatures were woven …
The 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.
When 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.
For 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.
We are the makers of story, and story is the maker of us.
Its 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.
I 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.
A few months ago I played the Beheading Game. Don’t worry, my head was returned to me – though I’m sure its not…
I was talking with my Teacher Tree the other morning about my life. To talk to a tree you have to first open your heart…