Measuring the Ages

Measuring the Ages
"Three stakes equal a hound's life; three hounds a steed;
three steeds a man; three men an eagle; three salmon a 
yew tree; three yew trees a ridge; three ridges from the
beginning to the end of the world."
   ___ traditional Irish reckoning of time

  Traditional measurements of time such as the one above do not trade in numbered years but in lifetimes and generations - the chronological criteria that predate numeration. The Irish peasants from whom this saying was collected explained that stakes were hedges of woven hazel twigs and that ridges, or eitrat, were the old wide furrows left from pre-historic plowing, which have left their indelible mark on the earth. In measurements such as this, the farming people connected themselves through their agricultural work with that of their ancestors, who first began to farm. Throughout Celtic folk stories and legends, mythic beings such as long-living animals and plants represent whole aeons of time and reconnect us with our beginnings.
   The memory of life is retained by animals, plants, and stones in a true sense that in no way diminishes our ancestral Celtic wisdom. Each cell of matter is encoded with memory in ways that are becoming clear to science as we investigate the mysteries of DNA.  The subtle changes in life forms over millennia reveal new relationships and connections that we never dreamed of. Time is relative to our personal experience. We tend to think in terms of when we were in school, the year we moved to the house on the corner, the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the time our friend visited from France, and so on. We do not always remember which year or month, although we can clearly visualize the masses of cherry blossoms on the tree or the terrible heat on that occasion. The passage of time through our memory leaves its own landmarks, which serve to connect us to the turas of the ages.

"What are the landmarks of your existence? How do you measure your lifetime? How far does your living family memory extend?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Burdens

Burdens

"God/dess fits the back to the burden."
     ___ Scots proverb


   Whether great or small, burdens fall. We may feel that we do not deserve our particular fate, that some spiritual credit must be stored up somewhere that will remit our burden. If this Scots proverb were written the other way around - that God/dess fits the burden to the back - perhaps we would feel better about the whole sorry business; but it is not. When burdens fall upon us, we cannot shift responsibility for them; they are indeed ours to carry. But our carrying power is something we cannot know until we try. Certainly there are many who have sunk under the strain into the distress of physical or nervous breakdown.
   We can prepare our back for heavy responsibilities by bearing the strain with fortitude and human resourcefulness, by not giving up but seeking better and more effective ways. The most effective of those ways, the greatest help in fitting our back to carry whatever has befallen us, is simple beseeching, asking help of our most powerful spiritual sources to open the ways to possibility, to enable fresh perspectives that take the doggedness from our step, to bring the balm that will draw out our pain. Neither the good, the bad, nor the fortunate are spared from the burdens of life, but we can find ways of coping if we ask for help.

"Whatever burdens you are carrying, leave them at the end of your bed before you sleep, entrusting them to your spiritual allies and asking for help to take them up with better heart on the morrow."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Kindling the Hearth

Kindling the Hearth

"Mother of our mothers,
Foremothers strong,
Guide our hands in yours,
Remind us how to kindle the hearth."
____ Caitlin Matthews
    "A Blessing for the Hearth Keeper"

   The hearth is a special shrine that is still ceremonially tended in some Gaelic households. Before retiring, the woman of the house 'smoors' the fire - that is, covers any fresh fuel with ashes so that the fire is banked in and slowly burning. In the morning, the fire can then be easily woken without recourse to fresh kindling. Three blocks of peat (turf) are then placed in the grate, their ends touching so that they radiate out in the customary three-legged triskele symbol, and a prayer is made over the fire, normally invoking Brigid as saint or goddess, since she is the protectress of the hearth. Among traditional peoples, the tending of the hearth is one of the chief duties that fall to women,who also tend to be the repositories of practical spiritual traditions. These two tasks seem to be interlinked: keeping the hearth and maintaining spiritual practice are daily, habitual tasks that cannot be avoided without loss of integrity to the whole household. Today, we may no longer kindle the hearth, but this does not exempt us from kindling our spirit. Many people now incorporate small domestic rituals into their daily life: lighting a candle upon their hearth-shrine, acknowledging their guiding spirits and allies with flowers and offerings, spending time in meditation in a quiet room, making an earth-shrine in their gardens and window boxes. As each home becomes again the focus of dedicated spiritual practice, the hearth-light is rekindled and we remember our own part in the reverence of Spirit as ancestral hands guide our unremembering ones.

"Create your own hearth-shrine and make it the kindling point of your spiritual practice every day."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews"]

The Illumination of Love

The Illumination of Love

"You are the star of each night,
You are the brightness of every morning,
You are the story of each guest,
You are the report of every land."
    Scots Gaelic blessing (trans CM)


    Celtic love-lyrics serenade the beloved by setting a particular love in the context of the universe, for the beloved is the one by whom the lover is connected to the wider world. Time, place, and dimension are utterly confounded in love, fused in one focused obsession. Being in love puts us in touch with the vital life-spark of every being, the commonplace becomes extraordinary and the daily round becomes a dance of joy. We greet and meet everything in a trance of deep enchantment.
   But the real center of the universe turns around the beloved whatever we turn our hands to do, wherever we look, the heart pulls the mind and other faculties back to the object of our love. The beloved becomes a lamp that illumines the dear world with its special ray. We find that the metaphors of poets leap readily to our lips, as in the blessing above, when we seek to express the immensity of our love. There are few lovers who have not at some time recorded their love in verse - however unskilled, however tentative.
    As the floodgates of emotion are opened in us, a greater light is available to us, inundating the world in a fierce brightness. Though the sun grows weaker and the stars be overcast, though the dawn be misty, though the news be bad, the beloved shines over all and encloses us within an eternal story that the whole world is telling.

"Make a blessing for the one you love, drawing on the metaphors that express your own feelings and perceptions."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Choosing a Soul-Friend

Choosing a Soul-Friend

"When is someone able to witness to the souls of others? When she is able to witness her own soul first. When is someone able to correct others? When he can first correct himself."
   ___ Colman Mac Beognae, "Apgitir Chabaid" I(trans CM)

   The idea of the anam-chara (anum-KHAR'a), or soul-friend, arose in the early Celtic monastic tradition. Ideally, each monk or nun had his or her own spiritual advisor and companion, who was sometimes also the person's confessor. The task of a soul-friend was not to sit in judgment or to condemn, but to witness the person's soul and its journey through life. The role of soul-friend also included offering suggestions and setting tasks that would help correct the person's imbalances.
   Each one of us needs our own special soul-friend, someone who can offer nonjudgmental attention as well as words of encouragement, someone in whom we can confide our secret fears and apprehensions as well as our joys and successes. Soul-friends offer us a very necessary reality check and bullshit detector when we delude ourselves or get into deeper water than our abilities can support. A soul-friend, chosen from the ranks of our mature and discreet friends, is one who loves us sincerely and holds the good of our soul paramount.
   A soul-friend must show resourceful perception and gentle strength, dismantle illusion and mirror reality clearly, encourage practice and cultivate trust, curb the tendency to be rash but not diminish the zeal that fuels it. The choice of a soul-friend to accompany us on our spiritual journey is determined by her unswerving dedication to our soul beyond considerations of emotional appeasement or polite restraint. Only the truth and a sensitive hand can bring polish to our soul.

"Who is your soul-friend? What qualifications do you have to be a soul-friend to someone else?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]


  

The Renewing Spiral of Life

The Renewing Spiral of Life

"It is one of their tenets that nothing perishes,
but, as the Sun and the Year,
is renewed and refreshed in its revolutions."
   ___ Robert Kirk, "The Secret Commonwealth"


   The Rev. Robert Kirk was a Scots clergyman with a great interest in faeries and the second sight. His research caused him to talk to many Gaelic people who had firsthand knowledge of these matters. He formed a whole philosophy
of the faery world, including this understanding of the spiraling pilgrimage of life. The wisdom of any turas lies not in the arrival, but in the traveling. With our modern goal-centered, destination-seeking perspective, we have forgotten this concept of the renewal of the spiral of life. We pay attention to the end, to the certificate of achievement, to the self-congratulation of conclusion, when we should be more involved in our spiraling progress through life. Each year, our own spiral path, things change and yet remain unchanging,l freshly and eternally rediscovered, a delight to our senses, powerful enough to move our soul. This unchanging renewal is chanted by mystics all over the world who declare that 'there is nothing new under heaven.'
   Yet these eternal things do not feel stale or repetitive to us when we experience them. They are rediscovered in moments when we have been exiled from or have neglected their savor and wonder: the unstained clarity of a new day, the urgent grasp of sexual need and its assuaging, the laughter of our child, which stays the same whatever age he reaches. All these things are ever new and always the same; time and perspective alone have renewed them for us.

"What is old and always new, what is deep and always true for you this day?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Sacred Encounters

Sacred Encounters

"A sacred being cannot be anticipated;
it must be encountered."
  ___  W. H. Auden, "The Dyer's Hand"


   Many people who are about to embark upon their spiritual quest come to consult me (Caitlin Matthews). They are curious about what they will find and who they will encounter. They have high expectations about the spiritual beings they are going to look up and
'work with.'  As gently as I can, I try to explain that though they may be interested in encountering particular gods or goddesses, animals or heroic characters, they may not necessarily find the ones they hope to. Sometimes, it is true, there already exists a special relationship between a person and a spiritual being - a strong, enduring bond that takes no account whatever of the kind of spiritual discipline practiced or quest undergone. Whether that person treks into the realms of Christianity, or the regions of Buddhism, this being will turn up - sometimes baffling out of place, sometimes very much at home - in her meditations and dreams.
    The most potent spiritual help may come from nameless and sometimes unknown figures who appear in meditation, soul-flights, dreams and visions. Occasionally, however, our helpers are well-known - great figures of history, myth or religion. At those times we may feel humbled or overwhelmed by the sacred encounter, as well as suspicious that we may have made up the encounter from an overactive imagination. Listen to the advice and wisdom that these figures give you, if they come to you; see if it works practically, if it is trustworthy. If everything checks out, you may well be privileged to be accompanied by a sacred being who is known and loved by many. But remember that our spiritual guides and teachers often take forms different from the ones we expect. Do not reject their teachings simply because their appearances does not accord with your expectations. If the help is good, then so is the teacher.

"Who are your spiritual friends and teachers? Visit one today." 
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

October

Month of October - penetrable is te shelter;
Yellow tops of the birch, solitary the summer dwelling;
Full of fat the birds and the fish."
    anon, Welsh poem

October sees the last days of autumn and the presage of winter. The themes of this month are the ordinary and extraordinary, conflict and consensus, adapbility and renewal, combat, and competition, the work of women, the reality of joy.