I pray today for new ways of walk this earthly reality with my feet firmly planted in each and every moment.
May my feet connect to the one place, one time, one love. May my feet anchor me sturdy and strong. May my feet feel the pulse of Mother Earth, the temperature of present awareness.
May my feet be open to pull in all the valleys, alleys and avenues of choices, considerations here present. May my feet be able to spread my weight evenly with equanimity as my teacher.
May my footsteps be met with desired movement. May forward action be with a tender greeting of all the elements playing a symphony of encouragement and guidance through All the paths and passages of life.
This path to death is the death walk that disrobes us from our layers of injustice, inadequate circumstances that degrades and contains. The path towards death releases the chains and ties that has held us with the imaginal trapped inside a world that looks for love instead of being Love.
The walk is for the ones who can let down the terms and conditions and surrender to the promises of nothing, but receives everything from one act of turning. And sees the path behind and allows it to remain as it is, without revisiting, without another step towards it.
The path of death is seeing death in life, amongst the living, and feeling the dissolution of ties to the heart fall away, to allow the doors of death to appear. These doors are not the end , they hold at first a grief, for what has been, but they are now the destination.
The destination of death is the future. The future of what can be, which feels empty, but this is a life that is the differences to still be filled. It lies currently with spaciousness of sky, expanse of earth, and relationships to be desired and loved. In this one in breath death appears like an hourglass. The above is still full, the below is foundation and the point in-between is the present. And the present is spiralling. Spiralling into current existence. Here we are, here we stand and the path towards death is full.
As we face the spiral life is still falling into the face of our existence. Life is flowing into you right now and in each, present, moment. The sand beneath our feet is just the foundation that constantly holds us up higher towards the life that is to come, of infinite moments.
Do you remember a time when you were absolutely raging. Like you completed hit boiling point and a full on deluge poured and a bit of spit came out of your mouth?
Now imagine that boiling point in front of the folk that your Mam knows, the neighbours and family of all ages, including your peers from work and your friends next door. Imagine that amount of visibility.
There’s a passage written that speaks to that amount of breaking. Here I wish to speak into that description, of that scene, but with volume. I want you to imagine the sound. Imagine the inner crumbling of the contained composure in a very public, the most public place possible, the sacred place within the heart, the mind and the entire shaking and trembling body parts. The heart would be pounding, sight distorted, and sweat would be stinking over the back, as well as pouring over the face to further intoxicate, from the top of the head to the feet below. The outer world would be ablaze with a piercing din. The atmospheric pitch would be ringing throughout the place from the shattering volume of pottery and metal smashing on the stone floor. The high ringing would ricochet off the walls and back and forth disorientating the inner ears time after time after time, in a never ending dissonance and then the roar from the people in disarray. Human voices adding into the overwhelm of discord, aggression and shock of what is a crucial breakdown of order, and decorum.
My thoughts here are to provide a description of the noise, the internal and external breaking open to bring forth a sacred No. When boundaries have been crossed into the personal, the sacred inner temple of ones heart, when Love has been trampled on, repeatedly, we have this internal roar that can not be melted away but is brought forth to crack us open. This sacred moment, is as ugly and sullied as it sounds. It brings a clear and creative moment that unblocks the clenching emotions to the ignorant to reform the imposed and repressed moment.
Sometimes the thundering clatter of a Holy No is necessary. Because the edge of our being can not be crossed over and over to the detriment of our hearts, our minds, spirit and biology, yes our biology!
When I consider my boundaries are just like the cells inside of me, the membrane that has the most wonderful, discernible boundary that is at work day and night, I remember my physiology is the most sacred thing I can have here on earth. My humanness is showing me since the day I was conceived, my boundaries are charged with a sacred no and a sacred yes. This inner working has the most helpful insights. When I say yes and when I exercise a worthy No, my body responds, my mind responds, if the boundary is broken, repeatedly, the most sacred act I can do for myself is to sound louder and louder until it is heard.
Memories of last years snowy visits to my Fathers bedside are arising. This time of year is a reminiscing of those dark nights in heavy white snowflakes and the determination to get to him no matter what.
The car got left at the roadside at the foot of a hill too slippy to climb. We had our faces dipped down and hoods tightly pulled in.
The ground was fresh and crisp and cars that normally litter the carpark where nowhere to be seen. Just clean inches of snowfall outside the hospital entrance.
I sat that night too worried to hold his hand with my freezing fingers. Instead I kept them wrapped around the rosary beads. Pattering through the Pater beads and stringing along my Hail full of Grace. The beads are still in my bag from last year and maybe it is time to give them a new purpose, with winter walks. Once upon a time I wouldn’t have dared to walk about with the prayers pacing aloud but now it feels more necessary. These prayers bring me to the awareness of the nature around me and to my Father. His love of the Robin tweeting, the leaves still orange and the pink skies a 4pm.
For me it also reminds me of the support and nurturing around me. Of the prayers offer to me in my hour of need by a circle of friendship. That night as I said the prayers I knew my friends, they call them rosebuds, where saying them also and thinking of me. Prayers hold us up, set us down and hear our grief even in our silence.
My prayers this year are allowing me to release these body shivers and somatic sparks of electricity as I remember Him. I still sit in circle with those who held me so near from so far across the globe. Our prayers transverse continents and encircle us when we need it the most.
Thank you Rosebuds. You are always in my heart and in my walks of prayers.
It has been a long time since I wrote about my 50 something life. This last year I have been navigating the loss of a parent and the grief that arrives and stays as the other parent tries to pick up pieces of the day to day after 60 years in a partnership. Their companion has departed and the one left behind is struggling with night time anxiety. As well as days to fill in a quiet house once filled with noise in abundance.
The year has passed me by with scheduling and rescheduling of appointments and it feels like there has been no space between the loss of a loved one, no silent breath, no pause to reflect.
Today I am sitting waiting for the instalation of an emergency call device while I am greatly aware of the first year anniversary of the death of my Father. All this feels like pivotal moment but it is more like watching leaves fall to the ground. I have sense of time passing and grief that does not change but everything has change from last years fall.
I wonder moment by moment as I try to remain unnerved but my body remembers my state of anxiousness. I wonder if a tree remembers the leaves from last year or if the release is complete each year?
Will I be able to release my grief entirely to the ground this fall. Maybe winter is teaching me to go bare into the darkness and let it all go….
I have a spiritual connection to water. I often wonder where this came from and why I long for water. I suppose it comes from living near to the sea. There is something very special about living near water courses, rivers and stream as well as the great oceans. The sound of the waves, of the trickling brooks is very restorative. I live in a rural area and in recent years I am appreciating the land and the history of the place I know as home, as familiar.
This place, like all places, has old holy wells, sacred springs, the challenge is to research the locations and go out and find their living waters underneath the newly constructed bricks, overgrown paths and hidden forgotten hillsides. I don’t doubt that all your places have holy waters waiting to be rediscovered and honoured with some sacredness as well.
One theme throughout my water “caching” endevours is that most of these sacred sites have had a name change or two in their time. Here, in my area there is a story of a spring that was names after a Roman Emporer’s mother, and still holds the name within the area, but the spring is lost to a farmed hillside, private land with the spring seeping into the grass. The wellhouse was deconstructed and moved indoors as an ornate structure, empty and barren.
When I look back in time this spring was named in the 14th century as Elen’s well, possibly the Goddess of the land that was honoured before the Romans inhabited this region.
These holy waters are intriguing to me, I have a deep curiosity about their traditions, their keepers and what happened to the structures that surrounded them?
I imagine these holy wells and sacred springs would be used to gather the waters in Her name. The keepers would have been our ancestors, yours and mine. They would have honoured the sacred waters, used the water for healing, for blessing, for the births and death ceremony. They would have gathered as women by the waters, they would have gathered as community, as friends and family, kith and kin.
Women have had great connection at the waters edge, they gathered the waters, worked at the waters, sang to the waters, and cleansed their emotions to the seas in chants and communal hymns to the waves that crashendoed back to them. At the streams they would have noticed the changing seasons, the plants,the trees, the birds habituated and the turning of the leaf. At the rivers they would have washed the clothes, stained the fabrics, honoured the water for all that was and all that they wished to be.
At the seashores they would have worked as communities for the catches of the week, they would have foraged for cockles and seaweeds. They would spend whole days and nights with fishing nets, mending and restoring, hauling the catches and batches for sale. They would know the cycles of the moon and the high tides and the changing of the seasons by day and by night.
So how do we honour our living waters, as women, as communities today?
Where are the clotty wells, the well wishes to the trees and the cleansing waters?
Where are the rituals to the rivers that sustain our lands and our fields of corn? Where are the prayers for the land and the harvests?
Where are the crones that honour the high tides to gather the seaweed for our menopausal bones? Where are the women with the knowledge of this land, this climate, these plant medicines, these berries and fruits of my land?
Where are the well-keepers that take care of the waters upon the land that I call home?
Where are your water-women, your well-keepers, that keep clean the areas of the waterways, that chant to the seas, that harvest the seaweed for you to eat for your medicine, that sing to your bones of old?
Where is the knowledge of the women of your land and mine? Where do we find the keepers of the waters once more?
I feel the answer to all this longing is within us all, if not us then who? Will you go look for your sacred springs of old, the lost wells and rediscover the sacred whispers of the waters that arise to greet you? “will the water spirits then return once more, saying “hello sister I have waited for you for so long, I am so happy to greet you and meet you at the water edge once more”.
I am getting my mindset into the sensations of the season. My autumnal mind of gratitude and collecting my thoughts of what I have nurtured this past year. My assessment is that I have had a steady slow path which completed a teaching document I have the task to complete from so long ago. It was a very difficult development to fullfil the congruent structure set by an organisations requirements. At times I thought I would never succeed. I was navigating my grief from the loss of my Father as well as caring for my Mother. A deep desire was unfolding to be nurtured in nature, so I turned towards the sights and signs around me. The focus that kept me going was turning of the wheel and the boundaries of my inner compass. The deadline by which I needed to complete was set at the season of gratitude, the harvest, and the folding inwards for the great pause of winter.
Now it is complete. It is time to lay down the pencils, or save the final draft in a file. Autumn 🍂 is a time to harvest what I have sown. For me it is learning to walk as nature intented. To celebrate the achievement of the completion but not to launch into action. You see, I am turning to nature as my teacher. The steps are leading me to root into the dark seasons with a sense of completion. The dark months for me will be for dreaming in the visions, taking time to consider practically, what needs to be brought into form from the formless. For now, it is a time to pause and let the leaves fall 🍃🍂🍁.
For now, I am putting away the pencils, closing the file, and allowing myself the pleasure of completion.
How do you celebrate all that you have brought into being these last seasons?
Well Woman Water Questing A day venturing to Shap Abbey 💙💚🌊🌀 A hidden Abbey in the heart of Enchanted Cumbria. A walk over the old stone bridge, through a field, passed the well spring with its clear running water trickling over the bricks, to the kissing gate of the ruins. What a beautiful magic Elen energy line this is. 🐉💧 ⛪ 💙💚 Dedicated to
#MaryMagdalene
By the
#WhiteCanonsOrder
“The Premonstratensians at Shap Abbey were a small community of about 12 canons, governed by an abbot. The abbey was founded in 1200 by Thomas, son of Gospatric, a local baron who donated land to the canons. The abbey was the last to be founded in England and the last to be dissolved by Henry VIII in 1540.
The ruins of Shap Abbey are located by the River Lowther, a short distance from Shap. The abbey is in the care of English Heritage”. (English-heritage.org)
Medicinalmeadows 