Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal

Share

In August 2010, just past the waxing quarter moon, a bunch of strangers met for the first time in Rostrevor, a small town in County Down, Northern Ireland, nestled below the Mourne Mountains on the edge of Carlingford Lough that opens out into the sea. From all over the world — from Portland to Hong Kong, from Glasgow to Nashville — they gathered together to learn about peacemaking rooted in the Celtic sense of sacred hospitality and the holiness of the land.

It was my first time traveling alone, and my first journey ever beyond the borders of the United States. For me, the week-long retreat became a kind of pilgrimage, back to the land of my ancestors, and beyond the ninth wave into a place of conversation, connection and new friendships forged.

Day Nine — The World Become Small

...then I went back up to my room, kneeled next to my bed to look out the skylight — and felt this overwhelming sense of closure and peace, and a thrill at the thought of going home. I knew things were finally coming to an end.

~*~

The morning was foggy and damp, with low clouds clustering and rolling along over the mountains across the water. Every once in a while, a parting in the clouds would open and the opposite shore would be bathed with a golden misty light in a small area, as if the land were glowing all golden and green among the dark and the mists.

A rainbow. We stood there in silence for a few minutes, watching the broad ribbon of light and color thicken and take on, imperceptibly, a brighter presence among the dim gray clouds, above the dark, choppy waters. J. leaned over to me and quoted again that Bible verse, Isaiah 45:3, "And I will give you the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that it is I, the Lord, which call you by your name..." When she said this, I suddenly felt overwhelmed and almost began to cry. The rainbow continued to grow brighter and brighter, and I took several photographs hoping at least one would come out. Then J. said how it was funny, from here the land over there looked awash in so many colors, but they couldn't see that themselves — all they knew was that they were standing in the light.

Participating in Enchantment: Reflections on Magic

Share

Susan Greenwood, The Anthropology of Magic.
New York: Berg Publishers Ltd, 2009.
Review by Alison Shaffer

After the flight to Charlotte, North Carolina, two days earlier, I had learned one thing for certain: I was not a natural flyer. My first time in an airplane in more than fifteen years had left me feeling queazy and disoriented, retreating to the quiet sanctuary of my hotel room for the evening as I attempted to ground myself in a new landscape and a new city hundreds of miles from my home in chilly, hilly western Pennsylvania. High-rise buildings, a depressing lack of trees and green park space, people walking around without jackets in early December: I'd spent the trip feeling out of sorts and cut off from my usual sense of place. Now, I sat anxiously in the claustrophobic cabin of the plane, preparing for the flight back to Pittsburgh and worrying that I was in for another nauseating, jolting ride.

Susan Greenwood's latest book, The Anthropology of Magic, was tucked into my carry-on. The text was academic in flavor as well as subject matter, and clearly it had been written with the new student of anthropology, rather than the lay magical practitioner, in mind. A more accurate title for the book might have been "Competing Theories About Magic, And What It Really Is, In Anthropology," though that would have admittedly been far less catchy, and a bit cramped on the spine. The text introduced a good number of scientists and researchers who had spent their long, distinguished careers studying the practice of magic and shamanic techniques in tribal cultures throughout history and all over the world. Some of the names I recognized from my college days studying comparative religions, but even still I had often felt my head swimming as I worked through Greenwood's arguments. I'd spent the past few days reading her intense (and sometimes convoluted) discussions of the myriad competing theories of consciousness, ritual, reason and myth that have been informing and shaping the field of anthropology for the past several generations. While I knew such a book wasn't your typical how-to Magic 101 that many Pagans might enjoy, I also knew that the text held something immensely valuable for those seeking to deepen their understanding of magical work as a spiritual practice. It would take time, and some rigorous intellectual work on the part of the reader, but it would be worth it. As our plane taxied into place on the runway, I took a deep breath and pulled out the book, flipping through the loose pages of notes I'd taken and thinking once again about the nature of magic.

Keeping the Days: Northern Ireland

Share

Normally these photographs would be entirely my own, but I wanted to take this opportunity to share some beautiful photography by others who also attended the "Celtic Spirituality and Peacemaking" retreat in Rostrevor, County Down, Northern Ireland last month. All of the photographs are copyright and owned by the artists themselves; please do not use or reproduce them.


Around Rostrevor




Church Street, Rostrevor (Amy Kong)

Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal (8)

Share

In August 2010, just past the waxing quarter moon, I attended a retreat on Celtic spirituality and peacemaking in Northern Ireland. The hosts of the retreat asked us to respect the safe and sacred space created by the community, and refrain from attributing direct quotes to any of the attendants or speakers. With that in mind, the following are excerpts from the journal I kept.

Day Eight — The Last Day

It's a little after 4 PM, and we've just returned from our last trip into Belfast. I feel... full. Emotionally, mentally — this past week has been intense, meeting with so many people, processing so many perspectives, and then having so many wonderful conversations in the meantime.

~*~

Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal (6)

Share

In August 2010, just past the waxing quarter moon, I attended a retreat on Celtic spirituality and peacemaking in Northern Ireland. The hosts of the retreat asked us to respect the safe and sacred space created by the community, and refrain from attributing direct quotes to any of the attendants or speakers. With that in mind, the following are excerpts from the journal I kept.

Day Six — The Wise Man in the Woods

It's about 10 PM, and our day of silence has technically begun. Which means I may actually have half a second to write and complete my thoughts.

~*~

We came to a bird lookout-hut, a small wooden hut with horizontal slits all along its walls giving a view of the shoreline of the lake. The weather was rainy and gray — my hair was damp and matted down from the walk there — wind whipping the blue-gray waters of the lake into whitecaps. Absolutely gorgeous.

Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal (4)

Share

In August 2010, just past the waxing quarter moon, I attended a retreat on Celtic spirituality and peacemaking in Northern Ireland. The hosts of the retreat asked us to respect the safe and sacred space created by the community, and refrain from attributing direct quotes to any of the attendants or speakers. With that in mind, the following are excerpts from the journal I kept.

Day Four — Poetry, Landscape, Lectio Devina

I sat to pray by the side of the water, and everywhere in the mountains it was morning. I could watch the sun creep down towards the shore, slowly down the sloping hills, down the green, down from the low clouds where they drifted like hardly-held breath.

I sat to pray, and no words came, except the sacred silence, the intake of breath, the slow and gentle rearranging of my body to open and let in just a little more sky. What kind of prayer could I utter after this? When what I wanted most was only to keep moving, to keep shifting in this way, until every part of me was open, and the waters and the clouds and the mountains in their shining came rolling in.

~*~

I wonder if the gods feel this intimacy too, and if, in coming with my ancestors to America, they feel the loss of it as well. Does the land seem larger to them, sprawled out and scaled up — do they miss the smallness of it? That such a small and intimate land could be so full of gods — how could there be enough room? — and yet such a large land have only one.... In some ways it makes no sense.

Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal (3)

Share

In August 2010, just past the waxing quarter moon, I attended a retreat on Celtic spirituality and peacemaking in Northern Ireland. The hosts of the retreat asked us to respect the safe and sacred space created by the community, and refrain from attributing direct quotes to any of the attendants or speakers. With that in mind, the following are excerpts from the journal I kept.

Day Three — Telling Our Stories

I find that I very much want to tell my story and that as I rehearse it in my head, new aspects come out, come into focus, in the narrative of my journey towards peacemaking. I want to share this.

Perhaps I want to share this more than I want to listen to others — and I wonder why this is. I'm trying to sit with that and not come down too hard on myself. There is a process of articulation that I am longing for, not even to be heard, but to hear myself telling the story again. Yet I do want to hear the stories of others as well, and as I listen (sometimes through thick accents) I can hear resonating ideas that I have experienced, too. The violence and sense of silent invasion of both illness and Western medicine, for instance. The lessons of dealing with abuse and creating and defending that safe space into which even the violent cannot and will not come. The experiences of war and the implications of being part of the culture of aggression, being implicated and a part of that violence against our own individual will — and how we resist, in all the little ways.

Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal (2)

Share

In August 2010, just past the waxing quarter moon, I attended a retreat on Celtic spirituality and peacemaking in Northern Ireland. The hosts of the retreat asked us to respect the safe and sacred space created by the community, and refrain from attributing direct quotes to any of the attendants or speakers. With that in mind, the following are excerpts from the journal I kept.

Day Two — Learning to Translate

"God is merciful."

~*~

I find a lot of use of Christian language and terms going on, which is not unexpected and not even that bothersome. I understand the sentiment most of the time — and so the challenge for me is going to be, I think, learning how to express the same (or similar) idea "Druidically."

Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal (1)

Share

In August 2010, just past the waxing quarter moon, a bunch of strangers met for the first time in Rostrevor, a small town in County Down, Northern Ireland, nestled below the Mourne Mountains on the edge of Carlingford Lough that opens out into the sea. From all over the world — from Portland to Hong Kong, from Glasgow to Nashville — they gathered together to learn about peacemaking rooted in the Celtic sense of sacred hospitality and the holiness of the land.

It was my first time traveling alone, and my first journey ever beyond the borders of the United States. For me, the week-long retreat became a kind of pilgrimage, back to the land of my ancestors, and beyond the ninth wave into a place of conversation, connection and new friendships forged.

The hosts of the retreat asked us to respect the safe and sacred space created by the community, and refrain from attributing direct quotes to any of the attendants or speakers. With that in mind, the following are excerpts from the journal I kept.

Day One — The Airport

On the drive out, Jeff and I talked about the distinction between superstition and faith. Decontextualization, it would seem. Faith assumes a certain articulated worldview, a complete or at least coherent theology. Superstition, on the other hand, seems without any larger context — people do things without knowing why or how it works. What does this imply about the anti-theology, anti-intellectualism of the modern Pagan community? Can practice without theology be much more than superstition?

Three Realms of Druidry Travel Altar

Share

Handcrafted by Ali herself, this travel altar contains: a decorative carry-all box, three wooden three-realms plaques, three holders for fire, water and earth, a white handkerchief altar cloth, a sachet of herbs and acorns, a tea light candle, an incense holder, several cone incense, small book of matches, a small bag containing peace prayer beads, a miniature heart-shaped compass, stones and tokens representing the three realms.




Visit Meadowsweet & Myrrh's Facebook Page to see more photos.

Ali's Summer Vacation: Announcements, Guest Bloggers, New Features, O My!

Share

Hello, all of you lovely and beautiful readers out there! I hope your summers have been full of smooth sunlight, cool waters and copious green. I know mine sure has! And there's more to come, as I pack up and ready myself for a month-long hiatus from the blogosphere.

During the sweltering dog-days of August, I'll be traveling north to the rocky shoreline cliffs and wooded mountainsides of Acadia National Park in Maine, where I'll spend a week with my family and my partner Jeff, hiking, biking, swimming, reading, wining and dining. Soon after my return, I'll be off again, jet-setter that I am, on my first ever trip abroad to the emerald and mist-strewn coast of Northern Ireland, to attend a week-long retreat on Celtic Spirituality and Radical Activism, led by Gareth Higgins and Carl McColman.

But never fear! Though I'm taking the month of August off to do some sun-soaking and soul-searching, I've been working hard in the meantime to make sure readers here at Meadowsweet & Myrrh have plenty to keep them engaged and entertained.

And On the Edge, Surrender

Share

Sometimes the world feels very small.

Why is it that sleeping on the hard-packed sandy ground of the campsite, a waxing crescent moon glimmering through the thin canvas of the tiny old tent half the night, leaves me so limber and light and full of buzzing energy? It must be three or four days since I've had a full night's sleep — still, here we are, lying awake beside each other in the dark a half-hour before the alarm is set to go off, lying so very awake and listening to the first few birds of the morning. I think you smile at me in the darkness, and for a long while we just hold hands. When the alarm finally rings it seems quiet compared to the birds, and we slip from our sleeping bags, rustling and feeling our way as best we can towards our shoes and the zipper of the tent flap — in another minute, the tent is empty and deflated on the ground, and you stuff the last collapsed tent pole into its bag as I load up the car and then busy my hands dragging a brush through my sleep-tangled hair before twining it back into a loose braid again. Everything is darkness and night still. Neither of us can remember what time the sun is supposed to rise, but even the blue shadows of the dawn twilight have barely begun to lengthen and ripen, so I guess we still have time.

Goddess in the Details (in three parts): Two

Share

Light on the Water

It's funny, the similarity between the feeling of disorientation, and disgust. Almost as though we weren't designed for this, and deep in our churning bowels we know it.

I kept thinking, all through the flight, and in the fully-automatic bathrooms in the airports (rough single-ply paper, spare no expense) notched into the walls between shining, yelling shops, and racing up escalators and down hallways to rush through the cold double-doors to catch our connection, and even crammed into the close backseat of the carpool ride to the hotel, with its lobby full of billiards and bar stools and trendy striped chaise lounges and the smell of chlorine — the whole time, I kept thinking not that I was disoriented or dislocated, spun around and ungrounded, but that I was sick of it all. Everything seemed glittering and false, great monuments to our ignorance and selfishness, grown men and women playing dress-up, playing house, playing doctor and cocktail party, playing with their expensive toys so polished they could see their faces reflected in their shimmering surfaces.

I felt like the savage of a Brave New World, like a native from the backwards blue planet brought up to marvel at the Starship Enterprise. I thought about how those natives never vomited or choked in the sterilized air, never staggered under the false gravity, how their disapproval was always so cerebral and embarrassing. Never embodied, never visceral, never the physical being revolting against the abuse of contrived artificial environments, begging, pleading for the touch of dirt, the smell of wind and real sunlight. But by the time we'd arrived, checked-in and made it up to our hotel room, it was getting dark and had started to rain. The magnificent view promised us from our seventh floor windows turned out to be an ugly tan roof and, beyond it, the bare gray cinderblocks and exposed iron cables of a building nearby still under construction. Below, you could just see the blaring orange curve of a sign with a black silhouette of a coyote on it and neon-turquoise words that read "Howl At The Moon," though you couldn't see the moon.

Left alone in the room, I tried to fight down the nausea and headache that were still moving restless under my skin. I sat cross-legged on the purple-vinyl padded bench at the end of the bed, and focused on my breath. But the noise kept coming, the noise of another city, the noise of traffic seven stories below, the noise of the elevator down the hall, and the grinding of the AC/heat unit tucked in the corner that kicked on as the sun went down. And the tightness in my chest remained, wrapped tense so that long after the pressure from the air around me had released, my body felt pulled and pressed into shape, confined. So I began to sing. I sang my awen, not chanting, but letting the vowels linger and expand, finding their way from note to note. I felt the vibration of the word in my throat, felt it shake its way down into my chest and deeper. The chords were coming loose inside me, unwinding, unraveling. I reached out into the room with my imagination, feeling my way, eyes still closed — but it was still just a hotel room, sterile and empty above the quantum foam of strangers constantly coming and going. Still, I felt better, the harsh edges softened, the queazy, tense feeling ebbing.

I went to the desk and looked out the window for a time, out into downtown Charlotte as it grew darker. Far away I noticed I could see a broad street where rush-hour traffic was growling slowly down a rain-soaked road, streetlights gleaming off of everything. On the ugly tan roof, raindrops rippled through shallow puddles in a steady rhythm. I noticed the upturned spotlights that were rigged up along the roof's edge, tilted to illuminate the upper stories of the hotel. Every once in a while, a drop of rain would fall onto a hot, exposed bulb and sizzle — steam drifted upward in the light, and the shadows would dance a little in ribbons reaching up the wall. Everywhere in the world, water moves like water, rain falls like rain, and the mirrored light of neon or sunset or fire licks over the curled edges of distortion like a lover familiar with the same old song. The last thread of tension in me unwound, its loose end flung out full of grace into the dark rainy night, making contact with that vision of light reflected in moving water. I touched back down.

Goddess in the Details (in three parts): One

Share

"And too, bearing witness,
like a woman bears a child,
with all her might."
- Ani DiFranco, "grand canyon"

Spin Away, World

The world spun away for a time. I was so worried about getting through airport security — not because I'm a security threat, but because I must have my name on some list somewhere by now, with all the protests and peace vigils and poetry I've got under my belt — that I hadn't spent any time on the idea of actually flying. But I've been so busy looking at the sky lately, the moon huge and low in the twilight month after month, the clouds roiling over gray autumn horizons. I never stopped to think, really, that we would be flying. And then there I was, sleep-deprived and half-jazzed on compensatory caffeine, buckled tightly into my narrow seat in a tiny box of metal and plastic, each uneven crack in the runway's pavement jostling under me.

"Once there was a farm..." the airport billboards read along the moving walkways that we danced and jogged and stepped backwards down for a sense of levity and play. And now, an airport on some of the only flat land in the city, sprawling out in an even-armed cross of shops and bars and shiny things on the wrong side of security gates that moved you so fast through an assembly line of strip-down-and-scan that you were left on the other side — on the inside, now — hastily bundling your coat and bags into your arms, shoes half-on and shuffling off disheveled to look for a place to collect yourself. Instead, on every side were fast food signs smiling neon and drug stores slyly offering to sell you the things you weren't allowed to bring with you. Too much to take in. I admit, there are times when I'm sick with consumer culture. The rows of gunmetal-gray seats of Gate 82 were a relief, and the windows looking out across vast stretches of macadam crisscrossed with worn painted lines. Then, we were boarding, our seats on the Emergency Exit aisle, with only tiny windows to see out of, a view of the wing stretching away from us. And we sat patiently, as we taxied this way and that along the pavement, the rough patches jolting beneath us, the air inside the plane already seeming stale and cramped to my lungs.

But I wasn't nervous, even then. Not really. It felt like an unnecessarily tightly-built bus, was all, and I held my hands clasped in my lap and blinked my tired eyes and waited. We were at the end of the runway, cleared for take-off, and the little plane's engines burned and the noise, the humming and throbbing high-pitched ringing, intensified — and we were screaming down the concrete, faster and faster, but not fast enough, it seemed, how could we possibly go fast enough — and I waited for the lift, for the sense of being lifted....

It never came. What came, instead, was pressure. Enormous, amazing pressure from all directions, a pressure that sped up my heart and my breathing and confused my eyes, which saw nothing change in my surroundings, the sides of the plane, the seats, the ceiling, everything still just where it was, where it had been. But we were screaming, tearing away from the ground by sheer force of humdrum ordinary will, and it seemed for a moment as if the whole blessedly belligerent life-force of the human race was pouring into my head, pounding down through me, so that I was drunk with our arrogance and triumph — we were in the air, we were gods-be-damned flying, and there was nothing above us but sky. And all of us sitting passively in our little cushioned seats, our seatbelts fastened, tray tables and seat backs in their upright and locked positions, like our spines, our minds, our wills, we were all of us right there, plunged into the thrumming, whining ordinary reality of pressurized air thousands of feet up. And nobody else seemed to notice. But my palms were wet with sweat where I gripped the metal armrests, and when Jeff pointed out our tiny oval window, I forced myself to relax before looking, and try to breathe. I whispered a prayer and felt the firm, round stone of peace nestled in my solar plexus. And then, the world spun away.

The wing dipped as the plane turned, and below us was a view of the ground, the land rolling away, all spotted motley browns and ruddy shades of trees and fields in the winter and fog. And, if I had a thought at all, it was only, "That's the land," or maybe "That's the land from above." Then obscured by wisps and thick drifts of clouds lit, beyond comprehension, from behind us. I couldn't have said exactly what it was that caused it — the beauty, perhaps, or the persistence of nature, or just the rushing back of gratitude and humility — but I began to cry.