Exile
"Exile, like memory, may be a place of hope and delusion.
But there are rules of light there and principles of
But there are rules of light there and principles of
darkness..... The expatriate is in search of a country,
the exile in search of a self......"
___ Eavan Boladn, "Object Lessons"
One of the strongest sorrows of the Celtic world was exile from one's own country. To be banished beyond the ninth wave of the shore was to lose touch with the integrity, power, and belongingness of the Land. Another form of exile came to the Celtic peoples in the Christian era: the self-chosen exile of Christian service in foreign lands. This was known as 'white martyrdom' to those who endured the pain of exile.
Unwilling exiles need the completion of their native land to make them whole. They are always longing for it -- indeed , they will reproduce it, living within a ghetto created by memory and regret = and are ever suspicious of anything the new land has to offer. When the darkness of exile's night passes, the light of expatriate dawn can arrive. The new land and the immigrant can begin a fresh relationship in partner-ship and (though the old country is never forgotten)
the new homeland can begin to bring nurture, support and joy in all possible ways to the welcome guest.
"From what are you exiled (for example: home, customs; people, places)? What new opportun ities surround you now?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews, July 24th essay]
I cannot let this blog posting go by without bringing into mention Frank MacEowen's book
"The Mist-Filled Path". The subtitle of the book I've put in the title of this posting. In the
book Chapter 1 - 'The Threshold of Mist', begins with first "The Celts believed that there was another dividing line that all people could straddle, if only they stretched themselves a bit.
And that's the divide between the world and the otherworld." (Steve Rabery, "In the House of Memory.")
Then MacEowen begins with: "The mist called to me when I was a child. In the early mornings, and sometimes at dusk, I would look out the window into the thick woods behind our Georgia home and a deep longing would fill my soul....... Just beyond the mossy stone wall, just past the clusters of fern, I would often see the eerie gray-green mist swirling in the trees. It would hang there like a gull in the wind, as if searching for something. It seemed to capture something of my own quest, a deep childhood search for an experience of thy mystery of the sacred world. Some mornings I went outside to see the mist, up close and personal, and just as I would arrive at its edge, it would suddenly disappear from view, almost as if it had never been there. A strange shadowy afterimage would remain. At other times, I would look non with astonished eyes as the mist changed directions and moved away from me, visible retreating from my presence. It would glide along the tree line, withdrawing itself from my overly analytical stare. In truth, my precocious and unrefined piercing gaze was exiling me from the teachings of the mist. ..... The soul searches an ineffable intelligence that cannot be controlled. Like the mist, the soul, we might say, has a mind of its own. It cannot be forced, directed or squeezed into a box where it does not belong. It cannot even be fully seen or perceived, for the soul is a timeless, feathered thing that flies in more worlds than one."
He moves on a little later to say: "Exile is that undeniable sensation of being cordoned off from what is most essential to our souls. .... We may be exiles from a basic sense of joy in our lives. Sometimes our exile is characterized by our sense of being a stranger in our own families, not able truly to share wh0 or what we are without being criticized or judged. ... For many of us a kind of exile may lie at the very heart of our lives. It is an exile many people feel in the twenty-first century. It may express itself as an exile from nature, from ancestral traditions, from cultural homelands, or from spiritual lineages. Sometimes these lineages and traditions appear to be lost forever without the potential of reclamation, so the exile feels even more poignant"
And may I leave you with this bit of instruction from Jalal-Ud-Din Rumi:
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep."
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