Welcome to Radical Honey...

Welcome to Radical Honey, where in future months you might find all manner of things grounded in a call for sacred activism through connection, community, creativity, cultivating wonder, reclaiming, snuffling out the truth beneath the obvious, small beauties, dancing bravely in the edge places, foraging, mindfulness, seeing what is real, acknowledging what is broken and calls for mending, open hearts and soft bellies, kindness, the power of vulnerability, everyday acts of small subversion, wild acts of fierce courage, and the quiet magic of a whistling kettle and a nice cup of tea. It had not been my intention to begin sharing these writings on the autumn equinox and yet, as is so often the case when we just let things happen, it does feel perfect to let them go as we begin our turning towards the dreaming dark. Who knows what spells we will spin, and what wonders we might catch sight of in the autumnal mist?

'Radical' is such a maligned word and many of us have been taught to be afraid of it, carrying as it does within its few letters a whiff of what we have come to think of as harsh, strident, confrontational, and aggressive. And yet, when we look beyond these learned fears, we find that radical is a deep and beautiful word, meaning 'of, or related to, the root', or going to the origin and fundamental nature of something. It is all about digging deep and seeing beneath what we might see at first or have been told. It means asking 'why?' When I feel out what the word 'radical' means, I imagine curling into myself like a fox, snuffling through layers until I find what smells like good earth, and I sense the power of connection and community underneath all those things which seek to divide us. When we are radicalised, brought back to our roots, there is no hope of dividing us and this seems to me to be a powerful standpoint from which to challenge all that we wish to change. 

 

And what of honey? For me honey symbolises creativity, the gathering of beauty to nourish our spirits, to sustain us through times where we feel a lack of what is good and sweet, and to help us trust in healing and abundance. And the sister bees are dripping with the magic of community, connection with the song of the land, the value of the individual woven into the collective, and the rightness of placing what, and who, is the most vulnerable in the centre of all that we do in an ever-changing, ever-flowing movement of love and care. In bees I find She~Who~Is and the Source. It is significant that they are struggling in the world, just as many of us are. Our relationship is old and there are many threads of kinship woven between us.

                                             
                                                                                                                               
 And so Radical Honey is to call for sacred activism and change, through connecting to our roots and drawing on deep wells of creative and joyful honey. In a world like this one, any act of connection or happiness is a radical act, and a rebellious one. I encourage each one of us to acknowledge our rebellion, from standing in front of line of riot police on a fracking protest, to speaking out for those who have no voices, from joining a march, to seeing the beauty in a magpie's wing. And, after it all, knowing that often we all just need some kindness and a hot cup of tea in order to stir up something that might change the world. This is Radical Honey; nothing, and no one, is insignificant. Everything matters.

In the next few weeks, I hope to write about my own small acts of rebellion and the ways in which I support myself in community with all beings. In my own small community in London this might mean introducing fly agaric mushrooms and harebells, blue alkhanet and the local squirrels, ashy mining and hairy flower-footed bees, the man from the kebab shop, foxes and cats, my human neighbours, soil microbes, moss, the crows on the Heath, the pigeons on the Green, hidden rivers and wildly growing weeds, and, moving further afield, the Kent sea, and Sandstone Hill Woman and Silver Spring Valley Woman; spirits of the land where I spend my free days wrapped up in love. All are part of the community that sustains me. This is where I find my radical honey and from that ground there shall be adventures. Who knows what the autumn will bring...