The Song of Recovery

The Song of Recovery


"And there came three birds who began singing such a song that all
the songs they had previously heard were without harmony compared
to this."   ___ Branwen, Daughter of Llyr, from "The Mabingion"



  When the remnant of a British host returned from a disastrous war against the Irish, bringing with them the remains of their great leader Bran, they entered into an otherworldly sequestration. Rhiannon (Hree-ANN'on), the British goddess who eases the burdened soul, sent her three birds to sing their melodious song.

  This period of temporary forgetfulness of all that had passed was a wonderful recreation for Bran's followers after their dreadful defeat. Their leader was able to speak with them, easing their sense of loss and anxiety. They remained in the otherworld until one of the men opened a door that had been forbidden to them; when it opened, serial time began again for survivors, and they continued their journey in full remembrance of all that had happened.

  The birds of Rhiannon still sing to us in times of loss, illness, or crisis, bringing their three gifts of tears, forgetfulness, and laughter. These three gifts are central to any recovery or restoration. Tears help us discharge our pain and sorrow, so that there is room for healing to enter in. A period of forgetfulness or sleep enables the fraught soul to cease its mental turmoil and find rest. Without such a period of respite, the anguish could become overwhelming. The gift of joy and laughter reconnects us with the everyday world once again and is a real sign of life.

  The resumption of everyday life often seems to us as sudden as the opening of the door in the otherworldly island of Gwales. Time runs, life is lived, and past events take their place in the treasury of memory once again.

"Ask your spiritual allies to remove from memory some burden of your remembrance."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

The Seasonal Thresholds

 

The Seasonal Thresholds

"This has been our way: Spring for plowing and sowing,
Summer for strengthening the crop;

Autumn for grain's ripness and for reaping,

Winter for consuming its goodess."

___ Cath Madge Tuired, from Caitlin Matthews,

"The Celtic Book of Days" (trans. CM)

    The gifts of each season create thresholds and doorways of opportunity for us as the year turns. The circuit of the earth about the sun is like the turas (TU'ras), or revolving walk of a pilgrim about a sacred site: at each point of the circumambulation, there arises a different symbology in the changing weather and in the correspondences of the growing world. As we become more sensitive to the annual turas of these changes, we can become attuned.

  When the first spring flowers emerge, the winter may still hold sway, but we sense the time of beginning, we struggle, like the young plants, to bring ourselves over the threshold of emergence. When summer's heat encourages us to leave off our warm clothing, we pass through the threshold of confidence and action. When autumn leaves drift from the trees, we look for the threshold of gathering. When winter fastens its grip on the world, we cross the threshold toward reflection and stillness.

  Through every station of the earth's revolution, we pass through a kaleidoscipic variety of moods, expectations, and opportunities. Everyone has p0referred seasons, accepting their gifts with pleasure. Those seasons that we actively dislike may be offering us opportunities to come to terms with aspects of our own annual distress - with depression, impatience, anger, or fear. If we can live each moment of the year as it is happening with attention to the seasonal thresholds and their gifts, we may discover a new resourcefulness that will enrich our lives with special joy.

"Consider the gifts and opportunities that you receive from each season."

[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews

Conversation

  Conversation

"What is sweeter than mead?  -- Intimate conversation."
    --"The Wooing of Ailbe" - early Irish story



  The kindling of mind upon mind, the flame of word upon word, is the essential fire that brings hearts gladly to the hearth of friendship. In the charmed circle of intimacy, friends lean together just as stars in their loneliness seem to draw closer together at nightfall. In our separate revolutions in time and space, we sometimes become like planets, solitary and aloof from all others, unable to bring ourselves into the fold of intimacy, able only to preach portentously from a high pulpit, uninitiateed into the vulnerability of the truly human.

  But in our special relationships, we can enjoy a wonderful exchange when we take time to draw together, to share and to listen, to quicken to the ideas and viewpoints of another. In intimate conversation, our thoughts and opinions find a yoke-fellow who will help draw them nearer to manifestation. In deep converse, our uncertainties and anxieties can be uttered fearlessly, and just as trustfully received and allayed.

  An intimate friendship passes beyond the intimacy of lovers; the shared currency is not physically sexual, although it can prove just as intoxication. As ideas cascade and themes are tracked to their very source, a heady ferment fills the cup of friendship. It is in the quiet times intimate taqlk that we really come to know each others and relaize how much we share.

"Make an opportunity in the next month to have a really good, deep and intimate conversation with a close friend."
From: "The Celtic Spirit" from Caitlin Matthews

Protecting the Boundaries

Protecting the Boundaries


"Cuchulainn's geasa were that no woman should leave his land without his knowing of it; that no birds should feed upon his land without leaving something for him; that no fish should leave his waters unless he had caught it; that no warrior from another tribe should be upon his land without his challenging them."
   __ "The Adventures of Nera," early Irish text (trans. CM)



  The untranslatable Irish word geis (GEE-YES - the plural form is geasa ) means a binding obligation that has to be upheld at all costs; it is sometimes also used in the sense of 'taboo', something forbidden.
The concept of geis, in the ancient world, was very much tied up with one's honor, and the obligations or prohibitions it entailed were often pronounced by seers directly after a child's birth or at her initiation into adulthood. We each have things we must observe and actively do, as well as things we must strictly avoid. Our geasa are our boundary-protectors. If we observe them, they will ensure our own survival and integrity; they will keep us from harm.

  Our geasa increase or evolve as we ourselves grow. Self-chosen geasa - "I will always dye my hair nred" or "I will never eat meat" - are joined by geasa that are laid upon us - "My employer requires me to wear a black suit" or "My religion enjoins me never to make war on others."  These may be followed by stronger and more binding geasa - "I pledge to keep faith with my country" or "As an addict,, I must never use alcohol."  Our identity, talents, and integrity all have their own special obligations and prohibitions.

  We do not choose all our geasa; those that are laid upon us are often highly inconveneit, restricting our freedom. Yet they protect us and remind of the boundaries of our honor; and, as the contracts of life itself, they maintain the boundaries of the universe in a special way.

"What are the geasa of your life? What obligations are you bound to perform? What prohibitions must you observe in order to be safe?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Cutting Through the Celtic Twilight

Cutting Through the Celtic Twilight


"Facks are chiels that winna ding."
[Facts are things that cannot be shifted.]
    __ Scots proverb


  The reappreciation of the Celtic tradition in the nineteenth century led to an overly romantic view known as the 'Celtic twilight.'  Professor J.R.R. Tolkein once remarked that 'anythng is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight, which is not so much a twilight of the gods as of the reson.'  It is a very dangerous place to inhabit, this twilight, as the poet W. B. Yeats discovered; he, who had himself been instrumental in the formation of that twilight, hit the hard iron of reality during the savage Irish civil war, writing in "The Stare's Nest by My Window":

"We had fed the heart on fantasies,

The heart's grown brutal from the fare;

More substance in our enmities

Than in our love."

   Many of the popular myths and fantasies that have been woven around the Celts - some self-fabricated - have been designed largely to mantle the unpalatable facts of conquest, colonization and cultural diminishment. Romantic traditions are tales that both colonizers and the colonized have spun after the event. The living, transformative myths are those that speak to us in all eras and conditions. But the minute we listen to romantic traditions, with their victimhood and inadequacy thinkly veiled by bombast and boast, we mire in a quicksand that will suck us out of reality into a jealous cauldron where bitter nationalism and retributive terrorism can be brewed.

"Take a hard look at the romantic traditions concerning your own people. What enemies to the common good are lurking behind them?"

[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Homecoming

Homecoming

"Come you in and sit you down,
What you lost shall here be found.
Bowl and cup shall slake your lack,
Cast the bundle from your back.
No more wandering, no more war,
Come you in and close the door."
   ___  Caitlin Matthews, "The Wanderer's Welcome Home"



  The annual sense of settling down to things as the years turns toward winter makes us appreciate our home at this time. Home supplies us with roots, it nourishes us and makes possible all that we do, holding and cradling us when our activities are concluded for the day.

  Yet there are many for whom the family house is no home: young people who yearn to fly the next, and who are dissatisfied with their parents' way of of running things for example, and relatives who have to live with their family as dependents because of age or infirmity. And there are many who are without a home of their own, who lodge uneasily in inconvenient, noisy apartments, in temporary accommodations, in dirty alleyways or in draughty doorsteps. For wanderers and travelers, the home is wherever they lay their heads.

  The home that lives in our hearts and minds forever calls out to us to come and be where we are most true to ourselves.  It is a strong spiitual calling to our soul to inhabit our body in the fullest sense. When the spiritual concept of the soul's home and our desire for a place to live become confused, there is remarkable upheavel, even war.

  People move from one land to another, seeking a home of their own. When we acknowledge and welcome the soul within, we come home in truth: we can jettison the burden of expectation that we have been carrying this long while and, for the first time, come home, really home.

"What or where is home for you?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit", by Caitlin Matthews]

The Blessing of Story

The Blessing of Story


"If poet's verses be but stories,
So are food and raiment stories:
So is all the world a story:
So is man of dust a story."
   ___ Amra Columcille, early Irish text



  There are many traditional Celtic texts and stories that have their blessing upon the reciter or listener. At the end of the Irish story called 'The Fosterage in the House of Two Pails," the reciter blesses the people about to embark on a long voyage with safety, those about to be wed with fertility, those about to open an ale-house with peaceful business, and kings who are threatened by destruction with a peaceful reign; it further promises to bless prisoners with freedom!
   Here we see the therapeutic blessing of story as a healing agent to certain conditions of life. The receipt of story by eyes or ears was regarded as a vital pathway of blessing, if the reader or listener were in a state of proper attention and respect. Those who merely siphoned the words off the page like a vacuum cleaner, those who sat inattentively, mentally wool-gathering, did not receive the blessing. Our own saturation with printed materials sometimes renders us insensible to the sacred blessing of story and its many gifts. That blessing flows past our eyes and ears without impact.
   But when we memorize a story, its blessing works at a deeper level within us. It is then that we enter fully into its workings; it is then that we become the story. When we become garments of story, we are able to clothe others with blessing.

What is the story to which you turn again and agin for nurture?  What kind of blessing do you derive from it? How is that story akin to your own life? Write a blessing that seems to derive from this story for other readers or listeners to benefit from."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]