Blood Rite

A walk in the woods prompted this effort, I am still itching, still sane and unbelievably at peace with myself...despite the itching...

Blood Rite

Stepping out into the wild next door
I walk with ungraceful strides over the ferns and through the witch hazel
in the place of four bears
sometimes my footsteps cross their tracks
and nothing is familiar
except maybe the mosquitoes
my bare arms are not bear arms
the sentinel pines offer no protection
while I wander in large circles over mossy rocks
the wild watches me in spreading awareness
a fly caught in a gossamer strand
and twisted trunks smile in wry amusement
the mosquitoes draw her price from me a thousand times
and my arms are itchy scars

Nature is a blood rite.

Digging Deeper

I am rooted in the earth as I walk, everywhere I walk, every when I walk.  The concrete beneath me presents no barrier, it too is of the earth and my roots are strong.  I feel myself as a great column connecting the Earth to the sky.  I am the sea in which millions upon millions of beings swim in wild freedom.

There was a time when these constructs seemed like obstacles.  Concrete and stairs, pavement and walls.  I have put away such perceptions.  When I touch these things they seem solid but they are not.  They are constructs that pretend at definition.  They are tangible because in my physicality they define a limitation.  In my mind and spirit, they present nothing, I soar through the space between nuclei, electrons and protons pass by me like dwindling stars in a midnight sky.

I have no greater right to exist than the smallest microbe or the largest complex organism.  Without this right, what am I?  I am disembodied consciousness.  I am a will to survive.  I am the bear running through water to protect her cubs, I am the wren watching over her hatchlings.

I am the first arrival at the banquet table of wild nature and I am the next serving of dinner.  How many tomatoes lay in this flesh?  How many trees will feast from my bones?  We act as parent to everything that benefits from our putrescence.  I am not the product of the love of millions, I am the product of the love of infinite beings, rising, falling, living, dying and living again.

I can sense the deep brown darkness of the Earth, the rocks and bones and living things.  I feel them in my muscles, tightening as I lift my hand, my arm, my head, my eyes.  I taste it on the air, bittersweet, "don't leave me.", "Come home"

I am rooted in the Earth as I walk, I am rooted in the air as I talk, I am rooted in the fire as I transform, I am rooted in the water as I remember.  I drag these things up with me, like a sheet off the circular tableau of reality, from the center where my spirit dances in strange winds and uncommon breezes.  I present myself to the universe and I see myself smiling back at me.

Months ago I remember explaining to one of my mentors that I didn't feel I could effectively "ground" at work.  It is after all a prison and has an oppressive feel to it.  While he did not come out and say anything to discredit my statement, I had a very real impression that he did not understand what I meant, he had previously stated he could root (ground) nearly anywhere.  The last several months since that discussion have found me experimenting more with grounding and rooting to the point that I can now do this almost anywhere, in large part because I realized that I was the only real barrier to grounding.  I allowed myself to believe that the physical constructs around me separated me from nature, from the wilderness and realized that these things are inside me and a part of me as much as they are a part of everything else.  The above italicized text is the actualization of thought that I had while undertaking routine duties at work.  I sat down and typed it as I finished my work.

We are nature and nature is in us.  We are wild.  The constructs that prevent us from being wild are those we make for ourselves.  They are a barrier to involvement because it is far easier to rely on the relative security of not being wild.  Everything in nature is an ordered part of a complex system that often exceeds the grasp of our human perception.  So what?  Why give up on learning what we can while we can.  If we have no greater right to exist than any other being, then giving up on creating relationship with something because it scares us that we may not have control (and we do not have control) tells us all we need to know about who we are.

We must surrender to Nature and in doing so, she will teach us all we need to know.

Sacred Relationships, Sacred Communities

The last time I published anything on this blog was days after the loss of a friend, a fellow Druid apprentice and what might have been a potential mentor had I made the time for it.

In the intervening weeks I've spent some time wondering what I am doing here with this blog.  I had an idea when I began about how I would glorify the Warrior in everyone.  I would show that we could all, no matter our strength or impairment, rise to that level and take on the world.  I still believe that but I also believe that I have moved beyond being a Warrior and more towards becoming a Druid and the time has come that I acknowledge that.

So, the context of these posts will become different.  I want to teach and I want to be taken seriously.  I want my voice to be heard and I know in my heart that I have become something much greater than the sum of my parts.  There is still room for the warrior in my life, a good amount of room actually.  The Warrior though is not the focus of who I am and what I am capable of.  The Warrior is one step on a greater path and I am ready now to move on.

So let's talk about spirituality.

I understand that not everyone has a spiritual path they follow as I might follow my own.  Yet, in all the wide world, most people have a belief.  Most often that belief has something to do with what happens after we die because in essence, the idea is that our spirit is the only thing left to us.

I won't lie and tell you I have the faintest clue as to what will happen to the person I am now, my spirit, after the life functions of my body cease.  I do believe that there is something else waiting on the other side of the veil between life and death, I also think I have a few good guesses as to what that may be but I won't pretend to know anything.  What I do know, something I can testify to, is the rich and powerful feeling I have in connection to the Earth, right here and right now.  I can feel it beneath my feet, I can sense it when I close my eyes and I can hear it when no other sounds are present.  I am a part of the Earth, I am subject to it's laws as much as it's love and I return that love to it in kind.

I am not a perfect child.  I know that I can do better when it comes to waste, I know that I could spend more time outside soaking it all in.  These are things that I look to do better and that is a process that may be slow but is ultimately more rewarding.

What is important to me is my community.  I am, for lack of a better term, obsessed with the idea of building a strong Pagan community here in Maine.  It won't take much since the Pagan community here is already strong but it will be important that we have strong community leaders in the years and decades ahead.  These need to be people who are willing to do the careful and important work of helping others in their community come together in positive ways.  This is why I am going to Druid College, so that I can learn methods about how I can craft sacred relationship between myself and the land.  After I feel I have learned this well enough, I will turn around and teach it to others in the belief that it will strengthen us as a community.

It may seem a bit impractical to try and teach others about sacred relationship when they already identify themselves as spiritually connected to the Earth.  What I wish to do is help craft sacred relationship to the land.  It is commonplace within the Pagan community that we worship the gods of our ancestors, most often those who are pre-Christian or even Pre-Abrahamic.  I know those who patronize Egyptian gods, Celtic gods, Norse gods, the list goes on.  I personally do not patronize any god but nature and even then, I do not come as a supplicant or a devotee.  I come as the bear comes in a time of hunger.  I come as the tree comes in a time of rain.  I come as the leaf comes when blown in the wind and as the crow comes when the first, fat grub of spring sticks it's head out of the ground.  I come to nature as a being, with reverence and appreciation but also as a being that surrenders to Nature.  There is an important distinction there that cannot be overlooked.  I am not a person who seeks to control or bend nature through the use of magic or might.  I am a being that surrenders to the natural forces of our universe.

I remember a conversation I had with my lady many years ago before we became an "item".  What I said then (to a group of friends) was that I cannot reasonably endorse so-called "Pedestrian laws" because it violates a simple principle of the natural laws of our universe.  In this case, a Four ton moving object most definitely has the right of way when encountering a Two Hundred pound bag of meat.  This is not a Marvel Comic, the meat bag always loses.  I am not speaking here of course, about the context of morality or ethical conduct, but that is also just the point.  Nature has no morality, there is no good nor evil in the actions of a hurricane or a tornado.  A riptide does not carry people out to sea on purpose, nor does a shark eat a seal for any other reason than that it is hungry.  As one of my mentors recently put it "If the wave rushes in to take me, who am I to oppose that?"

For me, the path to Druidry is a recognition of the fact that I have no greater right to exist than any other being.  That does not mean that I won't swat a mosquito, nor does it mean that I won't fight to survive.  It simply means that I do not suffer from the notion that the mere fact of my existence proves I am worthy of life.  That simple understanding allows me to take the life I have and put it to some meaningful purpose because it demonstrates to me that I get to choose the level of involvement in my life and make my purpose of value to my community.

I recognize the power and beauty and divinity of nature and I need no face to recognize it's power and spirit.  For those who do put faces to their gods, I hold no negative opinion at all.  I believe it likely that the beings they identify with are real and legitimate.  Perhaps, some day, I will identify their call in my life as well but at the moment, what I find when I seek divinity is Nature itself.

When I look at the myths of my ancestors, what I see is wisdom that was passed from generation to generation in a manner that would be easily remembered.  I Love all of the stories of the invasions of Ireland, the tales of Cuchulain, the Song of Amergin and especially the tale told by Tuen mac Corell, from whom came all the tales of the three invasions of Ireland.  I love all these tales and yet these tales are not connected to the land I live in, the land I walk or take my sustenance from.  These are the tales of a people far removed from myself, without any of the cultural influences that make these tales much more than a curiosity or a portal to the lives of my forebears.  I can understand and appreciate these stories from a cultural context and use them as a basis for the crafting of new myths that have a bearing upon the land I find myself in yet to claim that they legitimize my connection to this land would be much like watching "Braveheart" and ignoring the glaring disconnection between that film and the actual history of Scotland.  I can appreciate that film, but it is not the truth.  I can appreciate the myths of my ancestors, but those myths are connected to a land I do not live in and therefore taking them as my own shows no respect for the place where my feet touch the Earth.

So this is a big part of the reason that while I have become fairly knowledgeable about the myths and stories of my ancestors, I do not worship these beings as gods, nor do I worship the Norse, Egyptian or Germanic deities either.  I know those who do and for whom those relationships are deeply personal and meaningful and I am glad for them to have found those relationships.  I hope (and know) that they find my relationships to be as significant to me as theirs are to them and this is exactly what makes the Maine Pagan community so wonderfully strong.

I feel strongly that this makes me a good candidate for being a Druid when my mentors feel my apprenticeship is over, because it allows me to adapt quickly to changing variables.  Different people walk their paths in different ways.  By endeavoring to craft sacred relationship between them and myself, I may also be able to assist in bridging the gap between people of different path so that we all have a better chance of learning from one another.   Because I have no preconceived notions, I am in a position to learn and in learning, adapt.  

When I was younger I was not in the popular crowd and I was not in the unpopular crowd yet I had friends in both groups.  In my life, I have consistently found myself taking on the role of a bridge spanning different shores and in many cases, those friendships have lasted longer than the friendships I myself have made.  So in essence, it has been an important part of my life to help people make connections.  I wonder where my life might be now had I started down this path 15 or 20 years ago but then again, there is little use in dwelling on that.  I am here now and that is what matters.  This is a large part of why I don't really feel the need to be "right" about an "afterlife".  I feel the need to be present in this moment and to build sacred relationship with the beings around me.

Going back for a moment to the disparate practitioners, what if my purpose is to help those who view things differently find common ground in sacred relationship?  I don't feel I have to be coy about it, I believe that is exactly my purpose. It is one of the things that drives me so steadily to foster community, for what is community if it is not a growing number of people building relationships with one another?  This is the sacred work of my life, guardianship and from here on out, that is what I will be focusing on in this blog.