DRUIDS BY ANOTHER NAME?

There's a touch of Morgan Llywellen's Druids in McKillop's land rulers. They not only have an intimate knowledge of the land, in a way they are the land, the people, the plants, the animals. They are there to keep the balance. Maintain the pattern of life. Some of them have powers that look like magic. Magic or a deep understanding of what's real.

THE BALANCE

Caesar's death wasn't a tragedy. It was an attempt by the Maker of All Things to restore balance. Too bad he could only die once.

CARRIED BY THE WIND

WHAT?

What draws down the prophetic wrath? The man who steals because he's starving, or his family is starving? Because he/she is addicted and has to feed the monkey on his back? Is what our society considers insane? Or the investment broker in the three piece suit. Possessor of an Ivy League degree with what appear to be clean hands and an air of trust. Known to be a power in their church. One who accepts money from oligarchs who supported death squads. Or looked the other way?

IT'S ABOUT TRUST

Realized something today. Probably brought to the surface by my Advent reading. I AM NOT A LITERALIST.  And I'm strictly an amateur here. The original sin was not eating the fruit. When Satan (whatever he/she is) basically said "I know something you don't know." Eve didn't say "that's very interesting let me double check with the Lord, I'll get back to you." She didn't trust God, she trusted a stranger.

Look around us. Lack of trust is choking us to death.Be afraid of the elected hired help; they;re out to get you. Be afraid of your neighbors, they might hurt you, kill you. You need to get them before they can get you. And for too many women in too many countries that fear is very real, and the authorities that are supposed to protect them don't.

 Listen to this year's crop of losers. "It's not my fault." "Our message is good, we just need to package it better."

And the newest? From Mitt's oldest son no less. Now here this. Daddy didn't really want to president. Well, kid, you could have fooled me.

SOUL OF A RIVER

THE SOUL OF A RIVER

A few years ago I invested in the 1990’s Cousteau River Journeys DVD’s. Four of the episodes followed the Danube from headwaters to the Black Sea, with emphasis on the environmental degradation along the river in the former Soviet states. Chemical plants that dumped untreated waste into the river. The dangers of aging nuclear plants that weren’t that well built in the first place. Run off from contaminated ground water along with gas leakage into the atmosphere. Local economies based on fishing and farming were stressed out by the pollution.

The diversion of the river into man made channels to improve navigation, while destroying local economies based on the wetlands and marshes.

So, where is the soul of a river? Is it just the river? Or does the river and its soul stretch beyond the channel and the meandering blue line on a map.

The river is the ocean that gives up its moisture to the rains and snows.

The river is winter ice and summer sun.

The river is snow, rain and hail.

The river is the tiny veins and capillaries of water that stretch beyond the banks and below the river bed.  Searching, seeking, seeping into the deep rocks and the deep roots of the mountains. Finally finding the way to new streams and new tree roots. Coming into the sun again, pulled into the sky a thousand miles from where the rain last fell.

The river is the mountains, home to the springs and rivulets that join to form a torrent.

The river is the animals that depend on it for water and forage, the trees that shade the banks and shelter the birds.

The river is the disappearing marshes and the migratory birds that nested in the reeds.

The canals are the river and so are the drying wetlands that used to hold back the floods.

The dams we build are the river and so are the fish blocked from their native spawning grounds.

The river is the disappearing, sick and mutated fish and the villagers and fishermen who depend on them not only for their livelihood, but for tonight’s dinner.

The river is the untreated chemical waste that leaches into ground water. It’s the sewage from overburdened, aging city systems.

The river is the rain falling through air contaminated with radiation from nuclear plants that couldn’t be built to withstand every possible risk.

The river is us.

The last episode ends with a group of children including one of Cousteau’s grandchildren flying kites along the river bank to remind us that they will have to live in the world we are creating.

(Words fail me sometimes. I have the vision in my mind but can’t find the words to express what I see)

THE PRAYERS OF STREAMS AND STONES...AND MONKS

Two similar visions of the relationship of the natural and spiritual worlds form opposite points of view. Rae Beth is British; a self described wild wood mystic within the Wiccan tradition. John Howard Griffin, author of Black Like Me, was a friend of Thomas Merton and was chose to write his biography. Unfortunately he was only able to work complete the material about Merton’s hermitage years before his death.

“….One who speaks for the tree roots and stone. Who speaks with the tree root’ and stone’ voices One who speaks as the grass and rivers. Who speaks as field and woods and hills and valleys and salt marshes and waves and tides. Yet who speaks as what is close to home. With the mouse’s voice or the seagull’s or the fox’s or the badger’s. One who speaks in cadences that go beyond the darkness and beyond stars, encompassing what is immeasurable. One whose entire being vibrates to the spirits’ words in nature, like a reed at dawn in a pool where trout swim.”

Rae Beth in The Hedge Witch’s Way

“The very nature of your solitude involves you in union with the prayers of the wind in the trees, the movement of the stars, the feeding of the birds in the fields, the building of the anthills. You witness the creator and attend to him in all his creation.”

John Howard Griffin biographer of Thomas Merton’s hermitage years. He spent time in the hermitage used by Thomas Merton at the abbey of Gethsemane and kept a journal during that time.

Rae Beth writes of one of her familiars, an old cunning man who lived in Britain over a thousand years ago. He spoke to her of prayers. He said that we must know all the prayers of the world around us; of the birds, beasts or fish. I can understand the idea that a sparrow or a fox might pray; but the prayers of streams or stones?

What does water dream of and pray for? Does the drop of water in a tiny brook remember when is was part of a mighty ocean? Does it remember being a snowflake, a glacier, or a tiny drop of rain? Does it remember being another tiny rivulet? Flowing from rivulet, to stream, to mighty river and finally to the sea. Does it remember being caught up by the warmth of the sun only to become a new drop of rain. Does it remember the long fall from cloud to earth, the sinking into the soil, the slow drift into tree roots, the release from leaves into the air and back to clouds to fall again.

What does a stone remember? Does it remember when its atoms were part of the primal lava flows? Does it remember further back when the atoms were formed in the death throes of a super nova? Do the atoms remember their lives in a cliff face being ground down by relentless breakers? Does it remember the endless pressure as the sandstone was thrust again into daylight or carried down into the heart of the earth to return again as a lava flow?

Imagining the dreams of a bird, badger or fish is difficult enough for a human. Normally we see water, grass or stone as inanimate, unaware. To imagine their prayers; that is a mystery.