Being committed

(Nimue)

I wrote recently about how asking people to make high levels of commitment can exclude a lot of people. Today I want to explore what kinds of commitments we make ourselves, and what we ask of ourselves.

Promises are important things, and if we don’t keep them, that impacts on our relationships. This is true of our human interactions, and also of any promises we make in a spiritual way. Commitment is a matter of honour.

It’s important to think about what you promise. Can you really do it? If you promise to do something every day, or every week, how long can you sustain that for? What are the consequences if you don’t? I’ve been an everyday blogger for years, and it’s rare I miss a day. It’s also not a huge problem if I do. I also put up Patreon content every week, and because that’s more of a contract with the people who support me, I feel honour bound to deliver. Similar issues apply with our spiritual commitments.

It is better not to promise than to promise and then not be able to deliver. It is better to make small and realistic promises and keep them. In the heat of the moment, inspired and perhaps intoxicated by ritual and a sense of magic, it might be tempting to commit yourself to some big, dramatic thing. It might sound good and feel good and important, but if you haven’t thought it through and can’t manage the commitment it will do you more harm than good.

Broken promises don’t just cause harm in terms of damaging our relationships. They also impact on us. We find ourselves unreliable and untrustworthy. It’s hard to feel good about yourself when you know your word isn’t worth much and you don’t follow through. It’s hard to respect yourself or take yourself seriously on those terms. And if you are able to believe your own PR and put that ahead of your actions, you will damage your relationship with reality.

Of course we all find ourselves now and then in situations where we can’t do what we intended. There are plenty of honourable ways of dealing with that – getting to the promised thing when we can, apologising, compensating, re-balancing the situation in some other way. We can be flawed and human and dealing with the messy realities of life and still remain honourable and just in what we do. We can ask forgiveness. Sooner or later each of us will let someone down, or drop a ball accidentally. You haven’t failed as a person or a Druid if that happens – not if you are honest about it and deal with the consequences.

Sometimes promises cannot be kept. If what you agreed to isn’t what happens, then there’s a limit to what you can do around keeping your own promises. If circumstances change, sometimes we have to renegotiate how things work, or put down things that just aren’t viable any more. To break a promise clearly and give fair warning about it can be a workable and honourable choice.

Big, impossible promises can be a form of self-sabotage. It can be a way of setting yourself up to fail. Realistic promises can help us grow and develop, and can create helpful structure. Ongoing promises (like posting to a blog every day) can be satisfying and of benefit to the person doing it. Unrealistic promises lead to stress and discomfort at best.

Orchid season

(Nimue)

This is an early purple orchid, and they show up on the commons around Stroud at this time of year. These are the first wild orchids to bloom locally. Next will come the pyramidal orchids, then lady orchids, marsh orchids and spotted orchids. This last trio I’m not confident on identifying. One year I went out with a wildflower book and still couldn’t figure it out. Rumour has it that they hybridise.

Later in the year, the bee orchids will appear – these are my absolute favourites.

I’m in a process at the moment of thinking a lot about the seasonal names I use, and wanting to move away from Irish terms that relate neither to my heritage nor my landscape.

The photo is mine. For the first time in many years I own a device that I can take photos with. However, it’s a tablet and not fantastic as a camera. So much better than no camera, though!

Issues of enchantment

(Nimue)

The need for re-enchantment is an idea that comes up in both Pagan and environmental contexts. Our lack of enchantment as a species, and our lack of care are causing us to destroy the living world.

If you are exploring re-enchantment, then there are a number of things to consider. Firstly, who or what do you think needs enchanting? It is all too easy to create the impression that we humans are the ones who have to bring magic to the landscape. That can feed into ideas about human dominance. The land does not need enchanting, it needs us to see the life and beauty that already exists.

It may be tempting to think that what we have to do is get out there and enchant other people. That in turn can be about feeling more enchanted than everyone else, which can go with feelings of spiritual superiority. Once those qualities are in the mix we’re creating situations where we are going to be less able to enchant others because all they will see is our ego, or power-seeking behaviour. Enchantment doesn’t work on those terms.

So what does work? I think it’s most effective to focus on your own enchantment. Dedicate yourself to seeking inspiration and to exploring the things that nourish your soul. Come back inspired and enchanted, and share the fruits of that, and let other people do what they will. If you are inspired, then what you share of that will impact on other people – supporting their own journeys towards enchantment if they were already doing that. Trust the magic in the process rather than trying to direct others.

It makes sense to talk about the mechanics of things, in much the same way as we can talk about the mechanics of poetic structures, or the impact of specific words. It isn‘t easy to analyse the means by which magic gets in. There’s only so far you can do with technical analysis. The living, breathing soul of something, and the power in it to affect others is necessarily difficult to pin down. These are very much issues for anyone on the bard path.

This is not a post that has much potential to actually enchant anyone. The poetry David and I have shared this week is far more likely to achieve that. Talking about the mechanics of a thing is useful but works in an entirely different way. I don’t feel that talking about the technicalities of enchantment is disenchanting, but for me the key to that is how much space we allow people for their own experiences.

One way of thinking about this is that enchantment isn’t something we make and give to others. Enchantment is something we can invite to flow through us. We don’t own it and aren’t in charge of it. You can undertake to be a conduit through which magic and wonder can flow. You can open yourself to being a means through which beauty and compassion can enter the world. Arguably the work of the bard is refining your skills, knowledge and opening your heart so as to do that as effectively as possible.

From a Sandbank

(David)

I lived upon the sea.
Knew the freedom of salt air
in my lungs, salt wind in my hair,
the violent exhilaration of flirting with death.
I stood high on the bow as it thumped and soared
and thumped and thumped and soared,

and struggled to breathe at the stern as it plunged under
and plunged,
and stayed,
and stayed under,
and laughed with maniacal glee when we broke surface eventually.
I really lived upon the sea.

And I lived upon the land.
Survived courses when survival
meant more than just passing the course.
Ate things I would rather not even touch
and went further than I ever thought I could.
I stayed alive.
I survived.
I really lived upon the land.

I shared those things with friends.
We were friends because we shared those things.
Some survived.
Others did not.
I suspect you did.
At least, I hope so.

You are my best friend, my confidant.
We went through hells and high waters together.
I know you are still alive
because sometimes I think your thoughts.
You took me to sea,
taught me to defy the storm and to live.
You led me up mountains,
taught me to survive and to live.
You are the one, and I always thought I would see you again.
You are my youth, and I still think I will see you again.
We are a team and we keep each other alive.

Some won’t understand that,
although sometimes they will think they do.
They just don’t understand it.
It’s something we always knew.
Some survive, often without knowing why.
We really lived because we weren’t afraid to die.

You are hope and I hope you are still alive.
I hope you come crawling out of the surf,
wearing that stupid bandanna,
with a glint in your eye and a knife between your teeth.

Being Inclusive

(Nimue)

One of the easiest ways to make a group more inclusive, is not to set the bar high when it comes to attendance. When you demand high levels of commitment from people, there are groups you are very likely to end up excluding, even if that isn’t the intention.

People dealing with illness and disability can be in really unpredictable situations and often also struggle with unreliable energy. Anyone with caring responsibilities can have a hard time making commitments. Anyone with an unstable work situation will also struggle – which tends to go with being badly paid. Flexibility gets a lot done.

The Cryptids project was set up very much with this in mind. This isn’t the full group, it’s the people who could make it to Gloucester last weekend and I’ll have a somewhat different team for the next event we do. Flexibility is hard wired into the project. James and I are holding the core of it, and then we build around that with whoever feels able to show up.

Working flexibly takes a bit more organising, but it’s not a huge workload. I’ve run Pagan spaces on similar terms, it’s entirely manageable. That flexibility also comes into play when we hit unexpected challenges. I struggled with low blood pressure on the day of this gig, and the rest of the team reorganised around me to keep the whole thing viable. Most of us will be disabled at some point in our lives – sometimes as a temporary  problem, sometimes as a change we must learn to live with. It’s as well to be prepared for that.

Demanding high levels of commitment can feel like a good thing. Dedication, seriousness, discipline, and so forth are all attractive ideas. However, I don’t think it’s worth putting that ahead of people’s ability to participate. There is of course a power-over aspect to being able to demand high levels of commitment, and it’s worth being alert to that temptation.

(Photo by Alaric)

Gratitude and balance

(Nimue)

In winter, the bedroom window has a view of the nearby stream, which we greatly appreciate. In summer, the leaves on the trees enclose the space and it feels like living in a secluded treehouse. Both are lovely.

It would be easy enough to go the other way, lamenting the loss of the stream view in the summer, or bemoaning in the winter the visibility of nearby houses. It isn’t always the case that we shape our realities with our choices, but sometimes that really is the case. In terms of everyday life, our choices about what we focus on have a huge impact.

When you don’t have a lot of good options, it isn’t possible to make good choices. However, unless your life is beset by constant strife, there are usually some good options available. I’ve lived through some grim domestic abuse, but even then a beautiful flower or a pretty sky could still impact on me and I was always open to those things.

When the only good things are the tiny joys, it can feel like a diet of crumbs. It’s still better than nothing, and there’s a lot to be said for going after those crumbs. It’s also important not to internalise the idea that the diet of crumbs is either enough, or deserved.

The most unhappy people I have met along the way have not also been the most unfortunate people I’ve known. What the unhappy people have had in common is a tendency to focus on whatever makes them unhappy and to ignore or reject better things. People I know who have endured truly terrible things actually tend to be better at making the best of anything good that comes their way. Some of this is clearly about perspective and whether a person sees small setbacks for what they are, or as massive and unfair disasters.

We all experience horrible, difficult things sooner or later. To some degree we get a choice about what we do with it and how we carry it. When you’re recovering from trauma, the trauma can continue to dominate your world, and that takes a while to sort out. You can’t recover if the trauma is ongoing. Sometimes all you can do is try to focus on surviving.

Taking time for gratitude can really help with all of this. Identifying good experiences and giving them extra attention can be part of a healing process. Watching out for what good there is can help make awful situations more bearable. Alongside this it’s important to be aware of the things not to be grateful for. You do not have to be grateful for the lessons if you’re being crushed by what’s happening to you. If devastating experience has forced you to be strong, you do not have to be grateful for having to find that strength.

Being well, and having a good relationship with the rest of the world depends on having a realistic understanding of what’s going on. It’s worth shrugging off the small hurts and stresses to focus on better things. It’s important to acknowledge deep wounds and serious harm and not to try and persuade ourselves that this is somehow ok. Balance, as ever, is the key.

When I dwelled in woodland

(Nimue)

Small my antlers, swift my hoofs

Tangled summer flowers in unkempt hair

Birdsong shimmering on my lips

Moss rolling, bark chewing exuberance

Raucous barking in the moonlight

With voice of doe or vixen

Rough, uncanny music.

Happy to leave, flitting unapologetic

Beyond the reach of responsibilities

And other people’s rules.

When I had antlers and belonged

Only to the leafy beech woods

Mine the bounty of windflower and bluebell

Crows my friends and owls too

Dawn and twilight my domain

In the spell of blackbird melodies

No need to explain myself

Living in wonder and beauty

A secret wanderer

At the edges of the world.

I’m currently doing a poetry course with Adam Horovitz. This came out of the first session following a prompt to imagine ourselves as something other than we are. I recently acquired a pair of antlers to wear at events, and these are the feelings that wearing them evoked in me. On the evening of the course, one of the deer can and shouted for a while near my home. they don’t do that very often, so it felt significant.

Resistance is Dangerous

(Nimue)

There’s a lot wrong in the world right now, and that can make it tempting to think in terms of resistance. Of course we have to resist, to push back, stand up for justice, speak out… And yet in some ways this is also a trap and it is as well to avoid it.

When we focus on resistance, what we do becomes defined by that which we are resisting. That can narrow how we act, and come to define who we are. Being against something means only existing in relation to it. Resisting can become a form of joining in, if we aren’t careful. It allows what we wish to resist to define how things work and the ways in which we all operate. It centres the problem, not the solution.

Being focused on resistance means being focused on fighting, and on reacting. It moves us towards combative stances, and conflict. That’s exhausting and hard to sustain. It also doesn’t lend itself to building peaceful, thriving communities.

If you build a group based on resistance, how will it survive and function if you win? To work for the long term, we need instead to focus on being restorative and creative. If we focus on what we can make and do, then we’ll work differently and more effectively. Our actions won’t be defined by those we see as being in opposition. History shows us that all too often, people who fight to bring down systems end up replicating them.

Being against things isn’t especially inspiring. It doesn’t bring people together in the same way – there can be a thrill and an adrenaline rush around fighting the good fight, but that won’t hold people for long. There’s always some new fight to get involved with. Sustained action for change can’t work on that basis. Being ‘for’ something is so much more appealing and sustaining.

If you are for something, and you lose a particular fight, that isn’t the end of your movement or your ideas. New avenues will be obvious. There will be other things to try and other efforts to make. Being too focused on one fight can leave you defeated by a significant setback. When you’re focused on what you can create, setbacks are just awkward parts of the journey.

Don’t define yourself by what you’re in opposition to. Frame it in terms of what you are in favour of. Talk about what you support, and what you envisage. It makes sense sometimes to focus on particular issues in specific ways, but don’t make that the heart of how you do things.  Build your vision and your inspiration so that you can bring people with you.

If you are feeling weary from the relentless fights, step back and take time to replenish yourself. Remember that the heart of all good social change is kindness. The heart of all environmental change needs to be kindness, too. We need to live gently, softly and lightly. We need to live with care and respect for each other. This is the basis of true peace. Sometimes it is necessary to fight for that, but never let what you are up against distract you from what you are for, and where you want things to be heading.

Changing my relationship with food

(Nimue)

I’ve never previously had a good relationship with food. I suspect a lot of it comes from how rationing around the Second World War impacted on my family. Grandmothers giving food in emotionally loaded ways, as an expression of care and perhaps also self-sacrifice. Fear of scarcity. Not being allowed to decline food. Being obliged to accept what is given and not express preferences. Not having the room to say either that I was hungry, or that I was full.

I suspect the impact on the generations who lived through rationing is considerable. I know those early experiences informed how my mother wanted to relate to food, and a lot of boomers were keen not to cook, and to have ready meals and processed food. I suspect that was a reaction to privation and having to think  lot about how to make food work.

I usually think about food in three ways – what’s affordable, what’s nutritious and what’s least harmful to the environment. In recent years I’ve turned away from all notions of dieting in favour of trying to eat what best supports my mental health and gives me the energy to be active.

At the same time mostly I haven’t liked food. When I’m depressed, eating at all is a fight. When I’m stressed, my gut malfunctions anyway. Eating has often been an uncomfortable necessity.

Eating is a profoundly natural activity that binds us into eco-systems and the living world. What we eat is a major daily act of engagement with nature.  When it comes to Druidry I have been tending to see food consumption purely in terms of environmental impact. I’m in the process of changing tack.

I’m trying to put down the shame and anxiety I have around food by reminding myself that I need to eat, and that I am allowed to eat. I am allowed to want food, and to enjoy food. I am also allowed to say no to food that I don’t need, or want or like.

It helps having a good role model for this. My partner deeply appreciates food, and has been keen to share that love and joy with me. He’s a great cook, and has been trying to figure out what I would like and enjoy. I’ve not really explored food on these terms before, so it’s an interesting process. I am developing preferences. I have a favourite kind of olive, and I like having a really broad array of plants in my diet. I have preferences about spice levels, and textures.

I want to change my relationship with food into one of delight and appreciation. I’m giving space to seeking my own joy, and to unpicking the anxieties that surround both meals and the expression of preferences. I’ve been in this process for a little while now. It’s also made me realise that I can change and unpick and remake absolutely anything I want to. That’s given me the confidence to go after my most serious triggers and to start tackling the absolute worst of them. I’ll come back and talk about that process when I’m further along.

Universal Basic Income

(Nimue)

I’m not a great believer in magic bullets, but in terms of interventions that could radically improve everything, Universal Basic Income (UBI) has always struck me as a likely candidate.

If we gave everyone enough to live on, many issues would simply disappear. Every study of UBI in action has shown all kinds of benefits, including increased earnings from employed work too, reduced crime, reduced hospital admissions and more. It’s easy to find information about this online if you are curious.

At the moment, the ‘labour market’ is badly skewed by the far that most people are a paycheck or two at most from utter disaster. That means workers can be forced to accept poor pay and conditions and jobs they hate. Give everyone UBI and unpleasant jobs would need to be a lot better paid to get anyone to do them. That’s basic supply and demand economics, only turned around so that workers are more valuable and jobs less essential. We’d all benefit from that.

Having UBI would change everyone’s relationships with money, time and resources. How exactly this would play out is something we can only guess at, but it would be fair to say that it would cause a radical shift in how consumptive capitalism works. Scarcity is key to capitalism as it stands. What would happen if we instead based out systems on sufficiency? If no one was afraid of becoming destitute, how would our buying and consuming habits shift?

It’s interesting to think about the work you would choose to do if you had UBI. So much essential work is unpaid for, and carried out by volunteers. Would you do more of that if you could afford to? Would you invest in study, or start your own business, or grow food, or something else entirely?

One of the things we know from studies so far is that most people don’t just take the money and do nothing. Most people with access to UBI explore ways in which they can flourish. It creates the scope for more people to fulfil their potential and be of more benefit to others. It creates the possibility of kinder, fairer societies where no one is running flat out just to survive. My guess is that it would also lead to us doing the planet a lot less harm because our lives would not be dominated by consumerism in the same way.

The social justice aspect of UBI has always appealed to me. I believe strongly that no one should be obliged to suffer and struggle – we have the resources to house and feed everyone, we just lack the political will. I think if we gave more people the opportunity to choose how they want to live and what they want to do, that we’d have happier, healthier people leading lives they found more meaningful, and that we’d be better placed to work together to meet everyone’s needs, and take restorative action for the planet as well.