Wise Words: The Hope Below

This is my last post for 2018, and a farewell to the strange, painful, joyous year it has been. I think I have learnt a lot: about patience, about love, about the importance of speaking the truth (despite how confronting that may be to some people), and about trusting in the direction my life is taking, however difficult and downright odd that may be.

I had wanted this year to be all about embodiment, and in many ways it has been, I just haven’t always been able to see it. There is still so much work I need to do—most importantly, to get away from the ‘idea’ of embodiment, and into the practice of it. Yet I’ve written much this year that has been a direct emanation of my body, my feelings, my beliefs and knowings, and my presence in this place. I’ve written intuitively; and while sometimes I feel a little shy about that—maybe even a little crazy—I also know there is wisdom in the weird and wonderful words I have written down. 

Always, there is the knowing in me that it is what is beneath that matters. Not just the solid ground below our feet, the body of the earth; but also the suppressed and forgotten wisdom of the past, of the ancestors who knew how to live, and may yet be able to teach us how; and the wisdom held under our own skin, in our flesh, our hearts, our guts, our blood and bone. 

In a world that has become so obsessed with superficiality, with artificiality, with the violation of natural limits, all I want to do is return to the source, to myself as a biological being, who may perhaps be able to contribute to the emergence of a new human culture which rests upon, and reveres, this good and bountiful earth. I think we can all make a contribution.

To echo what David Abram says below, my faith is corporeal. We can explore this world of matter in so many ways: dreaming, meditating, art-making, writing, walking, singing, dancing, loving … Yet everything we do, and everything we are, is utterly dependent on what is, on the natural communities that surround us, the air, the ocean, the birds, the sun and moon … Matter is sacred, ensouled. And we all have a part to play in the unfolding of human culture in reciprocity with nature. I still have so much to learn, but I am slowly but surely finding my way forwards … or should that be backwards? Below? 

In the end all I can do is trust that my heart, my embodied, ensouled self, will show me the way.

I will leave the last eloquent and vital wise words to David Abram, who is always an inspiration. And if you are inclined to celebrate, do have a Happy New Year. I will see you in 2019.

* * *

When we speak of the human animal’s spontaneous interchange with the animate landscape, we acknowledge a felt relation to the mysterious that was active long before any formal or priestly religions. The instinctive rapport with an enigmatic cosmos at once both nourishing and dangerous lies at the ancient heart of all that we have come to call “the sacred.” Temporarily forgotten, paved over yet never eradicated, this old reciprocity with the breathing earth was here long before all our formal religions, and it will likely outlast all our formal religions. For it has always been operative underneath our various religions, nourishing them from below like a subterranean river.

… Our greatest hope for the future rests not in the triumph of any single set of beliefs, but in the acknowledgement of a felt mystery that underlies all our doctrines. It rests in the remembering of that corporeal faith that flows underneath all mere beliefs: the human body’s implicit faith in the steady sustenance of the air and the renewal of light every dawn, its faith in mountains and rivers and the enduring support of the ground, in the silent germination of seeds and the cyclical return of the salmon. There are no priests needed in such a faith, no intermediaries or experts necessary to effect our contact with the sacred, since—carnally immersed as we are in the thick of this breathing planet—we each have our own intimate access to the big mystery.

Each of us must finally enact this rapport in our own unique manner, discerning and learning to trust the particular gifts of our flesh even as we draw insight from the ways of others. Slowly we come to follow the promptings of our heart as it responds to the larger pulse of this earthly cosmos, listening inward even as we listen outward. And thus our voice, tentative at first, finds its own improvisational place in the broader polyphony—informed by, yet subtly altering, the texture of that wider music. Our rapport is ours alone, and yet the quality of our listening, and the depth of our response, can transform the collective texture of the real.

(David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, Vintage: New York, 2010, pp. 277–278; my emphasis in bold)

Wise Words: Our Only Hope Is In The Soil

To save the world, we must first stop destroying it. Cast your eyes down when you pray, not in fear of some god above, but in recognition: our only hope is in the soil, and in the trees, grasses, and wetlands that are its children and its protectors both.

“And why are we not doing this now?” … For a lot of reasons, most of them having to do with power. But a new populism could spring from this need, a serious political movement combining environmentalists, farm activists, animal rights groups, feminists, indigenous people, anti-globalization and relocalization efforts—all of us who are desperate for a new, and living, world.

… The earth, our only home, needs that movement, and she needs it now. The only just economy is a local economy; the only sustainable economy is a local economy. Come at it from whichever angle matches your passion, the answers nest around the same central theme: humans have to draw their sustenance from where they live, without destroying that place.

That means we must first know that place. 

(Lierre Keith, The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice and Sustainability, Flashpoint Press: Crescent City, California, 2009, pp. 250, 252)

Marking What Has Been

I’ve been wanting to write something about Writing the Wild Soul, the writing course I took part in in early November (which seems like an age ago!), but I do not feel ready or able to pull any thoughts together at present. Perhaps I will leave that for next year.

Instead, I thought that I would engage in what is becoming an end of year tradition, and look back on what I have achieved in this space over the course of 2018. 

This year has not panned out as I expected or would have liked, and there are many things that I would have liked to do, which have remained un-done: stories remain unwritten, books remain unread, and there have only been glimpses of my return to art-making in my studio. Yet, looking over my posts here helps me to realise that I have in fact done many things, and have travelled a long and winding road since I first established my radical focus, and began unforgetting.

One of the best things I did this year was Sylvia Linsteadt’s Witchlines courses, which have not only led me towards an investigation of ancient pre-patriarchal cultures and their art and spirituality (greatly enriching my own art and spiritual beliefs), but also led me to write 13 small stories, all of which you can find here. Perhaps it is more correct to call them vignettes, rather than finished tales, but considering I have struggled with finding the energy and focus to inhabit the storytelling frame of mind, I consider them quite an accomplishment. The stories of Neolithic Old Europe that I love most are: 

             The Vessel Filled With Time 

             The Dance In The House 

             Snake Woman 

And of the places of wild myth: 

             Ariadne Wakes 

             On The Tip Of The Needle 

             Bird-Woman’s Foot (a brief return to Old Europe) 

             Wedding The Troll-Hag

I’ve also written numerous poems, including:

             Anchoress

             In The Dead Of Night

             The Darkness Of The Beginning 

             These Mountains

             Human Roots

I’ve written of embodiment:

             The Sacredness Of What Is (my most popular post!)

             To Be Embodied Is To Heal

I rambled philosophically: 

             Thoughts On Thinking

And I made myself laugh:

             The Sensuous Fabric (Refuting A Man)

I’ve seen some marvels:

             Lakeside Sights

I’ve had my words published in two books!

             Heroines 

             Medicine Woman, by Lucy H. Pearce

And I have made a few pieces of art:

             Rainbow Snake

             Singing The Sky

             Ancestress

And of course, there has been a whole series of Wise Words, a couple more of which will appear before the end of the year. 

I guess I haven’t done too badly after all. But there is always more to do. Bring on 2019!

Thank you to everyone who has read, commented and shared. Enjoy the riches of the holiday season, however you do (or don’t) celebrate it, and happy solstice.

I will leave you with some photos of a family of yellow-crested black cockatoos I encountered recently. They are beauty medicine.

Wise Words: Words Have Power

I hold to the traditional Indian views on language, that words have power, that words become entities. When I write I keep in mind that it is a form of power and salvation that is for the planet. If it is good and enters the world, perhaps it will counteract the destruction that seems to be getting so close to us. I think of language and poems, even fiction, as prayers and small ceremonies. 

(Linda Hogan, quoted in Jane Caputi, Gossips, Gorgons & Crones: The Fates of the Earth, Bear & Company, Santa Fe, 1993, p.  73)

Ancestress

My studio is quite a long way from being ‘properly finished’. I still need another bookshelf, blinds and curtains, shelving for art supplies, and to decorate the walls with images. I had excitedly thought that 2018 would be the year of finding courage, trusting in the unknown, and recommitting myself wholeheartedly to art and writing because I would have this creative sanctuary to work in. How wrong I was! Just painting the inside and finding the rudimentary furniture I needed took much, much longer than expected. I am disappointed, and a little frustrated. Yet recently I have started to spend some time in my green cocoon, and this little painting has emerged. 

Called Ancestress, she began life as a rough painted sketch of a kind of female icon. Some of the inspiration for her definitely came from watching Max Dashu’s fascinating ‘Grandmother Stones of Megalithic Europe’, which is replete with imagery of the numinous and enigmatic ancestor spirits of the prehistoric past. I wanted to create something that called to mind such beings, a foremother of my own.

The cracking of the paint was unintentional. I added some gum arabic to the black gouache, which I assume is the cause, though I am not sure why it has done that. I was at first quite dismayed, but eventually came to see it as one of those happy accidents that happens from time to time in art-making. 

I love the serene solidity of this image, her gentle mountain-like presence. I hope to create more work like her as I continue to delve into the lost memories of the ancient past, and unearth my own ancestral stories and knowledge, in the (hopefully) generative womb of my studio. 

Ancestress, watercolours and gouache on gesso prepared paper (2018)

Wise Words: Trust Art

Trust it. Art is an act of faith; first for the artist herself and foremost for the audience. It is necessary to believe that there is something here worth having and to persevere into the other world of the artist which will reveal itself with a little work and a little patience. It is a love-affair and anyone who has fallen in love will know that outside of that moment of recognition, the beloved is only another face among faces. What changes is not the beloved but our perception of her.

…

I know of no better communicator than art. No better means of saying so precisely those things which need so urgently to be said. It has been a baton handed on to us across centuries and through difference. It is an act of courage. 

(Jeanette Winterson, from the essay ‘A Veil of Words’, in Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery, Vintage: London, 1996, pp. 96 and 99)

The Burying Of Things

The burying of things beneath layers of denial, avoidance, fear and pain. 

Elsewhere, things are dug up—the blood and bones of the earth, torn from her stony belly, turned into things unnatural, things desacralised and wounded. 

Our own wounds and the wounds of the earth are one and the same. We deny both, to our peril, and to our shame. 

It is only when we stop digging up the inner life of the earth, the memories of past ages; and only when we stop burying the blood and bones of our own wounds, that we will be able to put everything back where it belongs. 

Then, we will plant seeds in the good earth, the good rich soil, and our wounds will heal as a new world grows.

Wise Words: Deep Writing (And Art)

Deep writing comes from our bodies, from our breath and from our ability to remain solid in the places that scare us. It comes from merging with what we are writing - from dissolving our egos so that the real work can emerge through us, without our conditions for success attached to it.

(Laraine Herring, quoted in Jackee Holder, 49 Ways to Write Yourself Well: The Science and Wisdom of Writing and Journaling, Exisle Publishing: Wollombi, NSW, 2015, p. 132)