Singing for Hope on a Rainy Roundabout ~ Celtic Advent Day 16

Kent Christian Peace Activist Refugees Welcome signs

I am several days adrift with my sharings for Celtic Advent and so I hope that I will be forgiven for posting several morsels today. There is so much loveliness that I want to share.

Firstly, I want to tell you a little about the Kent Christian Peace Activist 'Refugees Welcome' vigils, which take place from 7.30 to 8.30am on the first Friday of every month in Dover on the roundabout opposite the ferry terminal, which is where we found ourselves this morning.

I have been attending the monthly vigil since October 2018 and it has added so much richness, and reality, to my spiritual life. I won't say that it's always easy. Often there are only two of us and we could so easily fall into believing that our efforts are futile. But even that provokes many conversations on hope and how to sing and pray for better in the face of, what seem to be, overwhelming odds against anything ever changing. As I wrote only a few days ago, we can't say that we truly have hope until we have stood on the bitter edge of despair, and in reality in this country very, very few of us have done that in the same way that refugees are compelled to do.

And so we talk about hope; about being imaginal cells, about the promise that God will change everything in an instant ~ how then can we truly despair ~ and today we talked about the feeling that "everything is going backwards"; that the anti-life cult of Empire and patriarchy is increasing its grip, but which might instead be us sensing the death throes of a dying system desperately trying to cling to power. I have believed the latter for many years, and in that time I have watched many deaths. It has always been my experience that just before death a being shines even brighter, a last burst of flame before the light goes out and transformation comes. I am sure that its the same with outworn and outmoded systems.

The root of this thought came when I went to a talk given by author Lynne Sinclair-Wood in London a decade or so ago. She lived in Australia but over the years had spent much time in the British Isles, and particularly in London. During her talk she expressed despair that it felt that money makers and financial institutions had a stronger grip on the city than they ever had before. But I didn't agree. What I felt was that what had been underground; an alternative way of being based in sharing, compassion, love, and justice, had become stronger, was rising up to meet the oppressive systems of greed that we have all lived under for so long. And that it was this sudden clash that she was feeling. When power-over ways of being fully held sway, felt unthreatened, there was no need to stem a rising tide of justice; then we were a river, now we are the sea. The grip of greed might have tightened but, if so, it was out of fear that the systems that fed it were crumbling. The human world turns slowly. It might take a lifetime for change to come. I may never see it but I know in my bones that it's coming, that the arc of the universe is always towards justice, towards Kin-dom.

Some would say that this is wishful thinking and idealism. I say, so what!? In a despairing world it doesn't matter whether this is objectively 'true'. It only matters that it helps us to have hope. This is the work; the work of Advent. It's what we do while we're waiting.

And so, this morning at 7.30am, we were standing on a cold and rainy roundabout in Dover, as we do every month. The police used to stop; sometimes they were nice, sometimes they weren't, but now they rarely stop at all. Perhaps they think us 'safe' or 'irrelevant', but I am mindful of all those who have been thought the same but who have 'turned the tables over' nonetheless. Often we are shouted at by drivers, and quite agressively so. And often, and increasingly, we are given hoots of support. Invariably the person we now call 'sausage roll man' drives past, eating his sausage roll and waving encouragingly. He has a fine beard. He often gives us hope on our most despairing days. Last month, a man who had waved at us from his car emerged from a hotel just near the roundabout as we packed up our things to leave and told us that we were doing a fine thing, that he worked in the hotel, and that if we ever got too cold and wet we should go in for a hot drink. The universe is moving towards justice, but we might not see that from our tiny human perspective. In which case, what we can do is gather up these sweet and fleeting moments into a brew and a balm to keep us standing up for what we believe to be right.

We often say that we are an 'Easter People'; that we are living a 'Resurrection life', and so we are when we must so often be born again from the ashes of despair, and living as we do on a planet of seasons where spring follows winter, summer follows spring. But we are also an Advent People in a constant state of waiting. Holding the tension between these two sacred truths is where we find the Holy One, arms outspread.

We wait until change comes, and that could be at any moment; every breath it's own small resurrection, or it might take forever. What we do while we wait is what matters.

Today it felt that our time on the roundabout was particularly joyous. Perhaps because we are waiting, expectantly and at times impatiently, for better, but we are also close to a point when we can put our waiting aside for just a little while ~ the Peasant King will soon be born and he will Turn the World Upside Down, just as he always has. If the anti-life cult of Empire ever thought that it was safe then it has always been wrong. Here, soon, is a vulnerable child who will break their frozen places into Light.

White Cliffs of Dover

And so, we sang in the cold and the rain; 'Blowing in the Wind' ~ how many times can a man turn his head & pretend that he just doesn't see? ~ 'Jerusalem' ~ I will not cease from mental fight ~ 'O Holy Night' ~ a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices ~ and 'O Come, O Come, Emmanuel' ~ O come, bright Daystar, come and cheer, our spirits by your advent here...

Singing, like poetry, breaks the world open, and so we did. There is hope in any voice that rises above the wind and the rain. This is the work we do while we wait; we keep our voices strong enough to rise above the storm. Whatever our faith, we find our ways to kindle hope.

Becoming Hope ~ Imaginal Cells for Celtic Advent Day 13

Human butterfly crop circle, The Netherlands, August 2009

At Advent we are waiting for a birth, and neither waiting nor birth are easy. This is a transformation; subversive, uncomfortable, disturbing. Come, disturbing God!

It takes courage to sit with this discomfort, rather than drift easily and mindlessly into the secular consumerism and distracting over the top festivity of the Christmas period. Of course, for some, the demands to spend huge amounts of money, to prove our worth through the extravagance of the presents we can afford to buy, is intensely uncomfortable. Yes, Advent is a season of discomfort but, at its culmination, everything is changed.

Which brings us to this week's theme of Hope. It isn't easy to stay hopeful whilst we wait for change to come and so it matters to have images at our fingertips to help us. For me, one of these is imaginal cells.

These are cells that 'imagine' a butterfly into being, holding all the potential for what will come to be. When a caterpillar is ready to transform, previously dormant cells within its body begin to awaken and multiply. Even as the caterpillar retreats into its cocoon there is no part of it that is recognisable as a butterfly. Inside its chrysalis the caterpillar dissolves into a formless organic gloop and this is when the, previously dormant, imaginal cells begin their work.

At first these change-provoking cells are detected as a threat and attacked by the caterpillar's immune system. But they continue with their work. Initially acting alone, they begin to multiply, connect with one another, passing information until they reach a tipping point, and then, WINGS, a BUTTERFLY! Here, is an everyday miracle, like any birth.

This is a perfect analogy for the way in which we can be the imaginal cells for the 'body' of our own species;

• Tenaciously imagining what could be, even in the midst of structures that seem to be dissolving.

• Withstanding a world that seems set on its own destruction and which sees those who speak of a different way, who are counter-cultural as Jesus was, as a threat.

• Hold onto the thread of a hope that destruction and dissolution are somehow needed.

• Connect with one another in all manner of ways, offer support, gather, tell our holy stories of better things, wait for the tipping point (and the tipping point will come).

This is our work and we were born to do it. We must imagine, and never stop imagining, because our imagining will make it real. It already is.

I find this image liberating; both because of the vision of transformation through seeming collapse, and because it tells us that we don't need to persuade everyone that change is needed. There just need to be enough of us and everyone will be brought along. Until the 'enough of us' is reached all we need to do is find and support one another in working for change in the inner or outer worlds.

We are told that we are the Body of Christ, just as all who believe are, just as all creation is the Body of Christ, or for those of other paths, sparks of the Divine. And what greater journey of transformation than that of Jesus to the Cosmic Christ? We aren't watching that story unfolding as onlookers. We ARE the story unfolding.

And so we wait, we choose unknowing, emptiness, as a space in which God and transformation can come in. We choose discomfort, because we must. Trust. Have hope. Be an imaginal cell.

Come, disturbing God!

An Early Spring Prayer for the Beeing

Mo Gobnait*,

Holy honey woman in the line of Brigit,

Little smith who walked the land as prayer,

follower of the white deer tracks,

Wild lands dweller at forge and well,

saint-protectress of the heart-hive of bees.

As the earth wakes from winter into spring and symbols of hope are everywhere,

we ask for a blessing on the waking bees whose hum calls us back to Creation,

and whose gathering of pollen, freely offered by the spring flowers,

by snowdrop, and crocus, by primrose, and by daffodil,

reminds us to trust that the earth can provide everything that we need.

We give thanks for the beautiful creation that we have been invited to share in,

for the intricate web of life that holds us and all our brothers and sisters in

abundance and beauty.

May the pollen gathering of the bees remind us that we are held safely in the Holy One’s generous hand, and may their return after winter sleep revive in us the knowing that we live a Resurrection Life grounded in hope that can break through winter’s frozen ground. May our fear of lack and ingratitude for the simple things melt away with the last frosts. Let us see that we already live in a land flowing with milk and honey.

Mo Gobnait,

Holy honey woman in the line of Brigit,

Little smith who walked the land as prayer,

follower of the white deer tracks,

Wild lands dweller at forge and well,

saint-protectress of the heart-hive of bees.

We come before you in grief and gratitude for all that we have done and do not do

to live in harmony with the web of life.

As our fruit trees begin their journey to blossom,

may we remember the essential role of bees and other pollinators

in producing so much of the food we eat,

not just the wild honey which fed John the Baptist in the wilderness,

but in ways which might not be so easy for us to see.

Let us come deeper into awareness of the intricate relationships woven into

Creation, that we might learn love and serve it better.

Let the bees inspire in us the hope that we too can bring to flower the barren places in ourselves and in our wounded world.

Mo Gobnait,

Holy honey woman in the line of Brigit,

Little smith who walked the land as prayer,

follower of the white deer tracks,

Wild lands dweller at forge and well,

saint-protectress of the heart-hive of bees.

May we follow the example of the hive in knowing that our greatest service

is to work not for ourselves, but tirelessly for the common good of all creation.

May we too strive in the dark and secret places of our hearts to

shed light on our own complicity in not speaking out, in refusing to change through

fear, through tiredness, through stubbornness, through greed, and through

self-entitlement, knowing that in the perfect society of the honeybee all

have equal worth and know their power in working for the good of all.

We ask forgiveness for all the ways in which we give up hope,

letting go of the belief that the honey of love can change everything in an instant, that everything has already changed.

We ask that you help us take the tattered pieces of our battered hope to be shaped into

a honeycomb; strong and beautiful, perfect of form, that might sweeten the lives of our community, the poor, the vulnerable, the oppressed, and any who have given up, lost faith in the possibility of good, or who are afraid to speak. Let justice be the sweetness on our tongue and the medicine we offer to a broken world.

Mo Gobnait,

Holy honey woman in the line of Brigit,

Little smith who walked the land as prayer,

follower of the white deer tracks,

Wild lands dweller at forge and well,

saint-protectress of the heart-hive of bees.

Let us remember the holiness of bees; that it was once believed that their hum

spoke the secret name of God, that the souls of the dead left their bodies as bees, that the tears of Christ on the Cross transformed into bees as a symbol of Risen Life, that beauty can come even from the darkest of journeys.

Let us treasure the Beeing** as a precious messenger of beauty, joy, good work, generosity, and abundance, in a world so often lacking in all of these.

Let us do all that we can to ensure that our bee family thrive by being mindful of our own actions and by speaking out against anything that threatens their wellbeing; the use of pesticides, the mowing of wildflower meadows, the proliferation of monoculture farms, the loss of orchards and wild places, and the hubris that tells us we can do it without them.

Let us speak truth to power for the Beeing and for all who cannot speak for themselves, that the holy Word might become as wild honey in our mouths.

Mo Gobnait,

Holy honey woman in the line of Brigit,

Little smith who walked the land as prayer,

follower of the white deer tracks,

Wild lands dweller at forge and well,

saint-protectress of the heart-hive of bees.

Hear the prayers of our hearts for our sister and brother bees, for the world, and for our part in it.

Aho mitake oyasin, for all our relations, amen, blessed be, Inshallah.

*Saint Gobnait, also known as Mo Gobnat, is the 6th Century Celtic saint of bees and beekeepers. Her Feast Day is 11th February. Like Saint Blaise, whose Feast Day is on 3rd February, she has much in common with Goddess-Saint Brigid, and it may be that they are one and the same. More about the weaving of holy threads soon.

** The 'Beeing' is a name for the collective consciousness of honeybee kind on our planet. See the work of the Natural Beekeeping Trust , who say "Each beeing, each hive is a little universe, completely evolved, perfect like a star", for more.

When Grenfell ~ a poem

Yesterday was the monthly silent walk in solidarity and community with the people of Grenfell. Touching times, as ever. There is so much to be found there which is an inspiration for how to live more deeply and lovingly in the world, how to stand firm in the face of corporate indifference, how to keep hope alive in a world which so often suggests that it would be easier to let it die. It is both a privilege and a blessing to stand beside them in my own small way.

This month's walk was smaller, which had been expected over the summer months, but it is so often the case that when we break a habit it is hard to go back to it, even when we want to. I hope that people return after the summer holidays and, if you have ever thought of joining in the walk, please do. It takes place every 14th of the month, gathering at 6pm at Notting Hill Methodist Church, and walking from 7pm. You can check the details on the silent walk Facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/GrenfellSilentWalk/ I know that it matters so much to those who continue to fight for justice for their loved ones that as many as possible stand with them. News moves on to the next thing. It is so easy to forget. It matters that, this time, that doesn't happen.

And here is a maybe-finished poem which has been going round and round in my head as I walked over the last few months. With thanks to John Clare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Gerrard Winstanley, Gerald Manley Hopkins, and Terry Pratchett for the borrowed lines. I hope that they wouldn't mind too much. It was done with much respect for their own journeys with the Land.

When Grenfell

When Grenfell,

when green fell,

when the green heart fell,

they dropped it and we picked it up.

They call it protest, we call it love.

And I am walking hand in hand with John Clare

who walked the land as prayer

and saw it lost,

the fences raised, the green ways dust,

and we have tied defiance in our hair,

and ceased to weave with toil and care

the rich robes that our tyrants wear,

know this earth was made a common treasury

for every man to share.

Because there is no justice, there's just us.

And we are all peasant poets here

we will not give way to fear.

Gerald Manley Hopkins, pray for us;

let kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame,

reclaim the blaze that wrote their names

in ash, turned hope to stone,

took their homes.

Just another Enclosure, 
another Land Grab,

another Clearance, 
another little tyrant with his little sign shows 
where man claims earth glows no more divine,
but this glow is not going out.
Our silent footsteps fan the flames,
keep live the spark,
community becomes the still beating heart, 
and where the green heart fell we pick it up.
They call it protest, we call it love.

(Jacqueline Durban, 15^th August, 2018)

References:

'Men of England' by Percy Bysshe Shelley https://threeacresandacow.co.uk/2016/01/men-of-england-by-shelley/

Terry Pratchett, "There's no justice. Just us." https://www.azquotes.com/author/11842-Terry_Pratchett/tag/justice

Gerrard Winstanley https://www.azquotes.com/author/29570-Gerrard_Winstanley

'As Kingfishers Catch Fire' by Gerard Manley Hopkins 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44389/as-kingfishers-catch-fire

'The Mores' by John Clare https://threeacresandacow.co.uk/2014/07/the-mores-by-john-clare/

Joseph Tubb & the Poem Tree ~ How to be Differently Alive

The Poem Tree, Wittenham Clumps, 2nd September 2012.

I wanted to write about another ‘holy activist ancestor’ who inspires me, the little known poet and wood carver, Joseph Tubb and his Poem Tree.

On the last day of August 2012 I walked through fields of Greylag and Canada Geese and followed a path of dog daisies to visit Wittenham Clumps, close to Dorchester-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. 

Greylag geese, Dorchester-on-Thames water meadows, 2012.

Wittenham Clumps is the common name for two chalk hills, Round Hill and Castle Hill, in the Thames Valley. Castle Hill is the sight of an Iron Age hill fort, built on earlier Bronze Age remains, and, just over half a mile away, is Brightwell Bronze Age round barrow. At the top of the hills are small woods containing the oldest beech tree plantings in England, dating back to the 1740s. Their summits offer views over a landscape that once contained some of the earliest settlements in our land. The artist, Paul Nash, climbed the Clumps in 1911, subsequently visiting many times, and described the view as, “a beautiful legendary country haunted by old gods long forgotten."

Although 'Wittenham Clumps' is generally used to refer to the entire hills, that name really refers only to the wooded summits of Round and Castle Hills, with their older collective name being Sinodun Hills ~ Sinodun from the Celtic, ‘Seno-Dunum’, meaning ‘Old Fort’, although it has been suggested that it is a much more modern play on words based on ‘sinus’, which in Latin means ‘bosom’. Admittedly the two hills do looks very much like breasts. Some of their more colloquial names include ‘The Berkshire Bubs’ (before boundaries changed they were in the county of Berkshire), and ‘Mother Dunch’s Buttocks’! The latter was named for a member of a local landowning family, which makes me smile. I’m not sure that she would have taken it as a compliment! On the summit of the hills there is a hollow called the ‘Money-pit’, supposedly a treasure hoard guarded by a raven, and a copse named ‘Cuckoo Pen’, referring to the belief that imprisoning a cuckoo would bring eternal summer. Looking out, Dorchester Abbey is clearly visible to the north. At the time of my visit the abbey was displaying a newly commissioned painting, ‘Bright Rising’ by artist Rebecca Hind, which depicts Mary as the full moon rising above a water meadow ~ freeing the divine from church walls and subversively placing her in the surrounding landscape. It was to this strange and blessed earth that Joseph Tubb, in an act of defiance and devotion, came in 1844 to carve his Poem Tree.

Joseph was a maltster, converting grain into malt for use in brewing, and lived at Lavender Cottage in Warborough, near Dorchester. He had always wanted to be a wood carver but his father convinced him, due to family tradition, to abandon his dream and become a maltster instead. He lived at the end of the Industrial Revolution, which had drawn many from the countryside and agricultural work into the towns and cities. It was also when land once held in common as a resource for all had been further enclosed by the last wave of the Inclosure Acts. Some might consider that the two things were even related! Joseph strongly opposed this enclosure and often pulled down fences as an act of rebellion. Because of that he spent a short time in Oxford gaol. Over two weeks during the summer of 1844 or 45, he took a ladder and tent to Wittenham Clumps and carved a poem he had written from memory into the bark of a beech tree on the eastern slopes of Castle Hill.

Wonderful image of the Poem Tree when she was still standing. Photo: The Oxford Times

The poem he carved in a labour of love is a prayer to his ‘motherground’, the landscape that was his home from birth until death. It describes a moment in time, woven through with the threads of history, of both worldly and religious powers ~ Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Dane, the coming of Christianity and its own demands for land. I'm sure that, had he lived a hundred years later, he might also have mentioned Didcot Power Station, which can be clearly seen dominating the landscape from the top of The Clumps. 

View of Didcot Power Station from Wittenham Clumps, 2012.

As up the hill with labr'ing steps we tread
Where the twin Clumps their sheltering branches spread
The summit gain'd at ease reclining lay
And all around the wide spread scene survey
Point out each object and instructive tell
The various changes that the land befell
Where the low bank the country wide surrounds
That ancient earthwork form'd old Mercia’s bounds
In misty distance see the barrow heave
There lies forgotten lonely Cwichelm's grave.

Around this hill the ruthless Danes intrenched
And these fair plains with gory slaughter drench'd
While at our feet where stands that stately tower
In days gone by up rose the Roman power
And yonder, there where Thames smooth waters glide
In later days appeared monastic pride.
Within that field where lies the grazing herd
Huge walls were found, some coffins disinter'd
Such is the course of time, the wreck which fate
And awful doom award the earthly great.

(Joseph Tubb)

"Within that field where lies the grazing herd..."

View of the River Thames from Wittenham Clumps

Joseph’s poem speaks of the ‘ancient earthwork’, which may refer to Grim’s Ditch, a 5 mile long bank and ditch earthwork on the Berkshire Downs, or to The Ridgeway, a 5,000 year old ancient trackway along the chalk ridge between Wiltshire and Buckinghamshire, which Grim’s Ditch forms a part of. Mercia was one of the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and dominated England south of the River Humber for three centuries (between 600 and 900CE). During Alfred the Great’s rule (871 to 899CE) the border between Wessex and Mercia could be seen from the Clumps. I think of Joseph reflecting on the land being ‘carved up’ in this way as he carved into the bark of the tree. 

Mention of ‘Cwichelm’s grave’ is reference to Scutchamer Knob, an early Iron Age round barrow on the Ridgeway near Grim’s Ditch, which was originally called Cwichelmeshlaew or Cwichelm's Barrow and was believed to be the place where the recently baptised Anglo-Saxon king Cwichelm of Wessex was killed by King Edwin of Northumbria in 636CE. The round barrow was thought to have been the grave of Cwichelm for many years and to contain treasure, hence its changing shape as it has been repeatedly excavated but without any significant finds. I love too the description of seeing the barrow ‘heave’ in the misty distance. In my recent writing on Hocktide I mentioned that one of the customs involved local people lifting one another off the ground. I was reminded by one of my readers that this act of ‘heaving’ has its equivalents in many European spring traditions and that it was a way of proving one’s strength at the start of the year. I am sure that Joseph would have been familiar with such customs and wonder whether the ‘heave’ in his poem is a play on words evoking an image of Cwichelm’s long forgotten and ‘lonely’ barrow ‘heaving’ to test its strength against an incoming tide of invaders. It reminds me very much of Rudyard Kipling’s poem, ‘The Land’, which similarly traces attempts by incomers to take over land which isn’t theirs and comparing them to someone whose ancestors have lived on and worked it for generations. I am sure that Joseph Tubb and Rudyard Kipling would have found much to talk about.

Joseph goes on to write of ‘disinterred coffins’, referring to the 18^th century discovery of two coffins on the summit of Round Hill, together with the possible remains of a Roman Villa, a reminder that no power lasts forever, as the ‘lonely Cwichelm’ could no doubt attest; that even the ‘earthly great’ will end up in the ground with the lowliest of us. Here again, Joseph touches on my own thoughts. My friend, Will, who I visited Wittenham Clumps with, was once a member of the Peace Convoy which was attacked by police at the Battle of the Beanfield in Wiltshire on 1^st June 1985 whilst on their way to set up the Stonehenge Free Festival. That is a story for another day but for now I will say that I was both moved and delighted when I discovered that, when he died two years after our visit, the burial site chosen for him following a series of ‘coincidences’ was, without knowing it at the time, on the very farm that the Peace Convoy had been so brutally driven from so many years before. There have always been those who hope to restrict the common people’s access to the land. In life they are very often able to do so, but death is the ‘True Leveller’ and Will’s bones are reclaiming the land, becoming part of it. No earthly power has control over that process of beautiful disorder. Joseph would have liked that I think. 

As for the beech tree which Joseph chose to carve into; she is believed to have been planted around 300 years ago but her health began to decline in the 1980s and she collapsed through a combination of rot and weather challenging to an elderly tree in July 2012, just a few weeks before I visited. Beech trees are not particularly long living and have shallow roots so this is all part of her life cycle. In fact, she lived an amazingly long life before she fell. Once she had been found to be in a dangerous condition, as many of the trees on The Clumps now are, a crane was brought in to make her safe but she disintegrated as she was being lowered to the ground. Luckily, British geographer Henry Osmaston took a rubbing of Joseph’s poem in 1965 before it became almost illegible and this was made into a plaque, which was erected on a Sarsen stone close to the tree in 1994 to commemorate 150 years since the carving was made. Of course, the plaque, which was sponsored by the Natwest bank, makes no mention of the reasons that Joseph may have had for making such a dedicated and lasting statement, nor for writing the poem itself. We must work that out for ourselves and in that way hopefully remember him as he would have wished. 

The plaque erected on top of Wittenham Clumps to commemorate 150 years since the carving of the Poem Tree

The tree herself has been left where she fell and will provide a valuable wildlife habitat and nutrients to the surrounding area in the years ahead. To me, she is just differently alive.

The fallen Poem Tree ~ differently alive ~ 2nd Sepetmber, 2012

The fallen Poem Tree ~ differently alive ~ 2nd Sepetmber, 2012

The Poem Tree, 2nd September, 2012

A few days after her transformation a tribute of flowers, including gladioli, was left on her broken trunk, such is the affection for Joseph and his Poem Tree, and I believe that we found a trace of that offering when we visited. 

Offerings of flowers left for Joseph & his Poem Tree after she fell in July 2012

I feel deeply blessed that I came to that place only a few weeks after she fell and when Joseph’s carving could still be seen in her bark, particularly as parts of it were soon after removed to be put on display elsewhere. And I feel deeply blessed to have touched the 168 year old carvings of a man who escaped the limitations and demands of family tradition to become the wood carver that he always longed to be, even if only for two weeks on top of his beloved Wittenham Clumps. On this high hill, rising above it all to make his stand, he perhaps found in her trees and earthworks a way to carve out just a little bit of liberty for himself and for the land that he loved. A land whose confinement echoed his own. May our own quiet rebellions echo through the years with such creative determination and brightness. 

And what of Joseph's bones resting now in the land that aroused in him such passion for common justice? Like his Poem Tree, they have transformed, become one with the earth, dissolved the boundaries; man, poem, and tree released to do their work in new ways. In death, Joseph Tubb truly has pulled down the fence. He has become differently alive.

Just one last word ~ while visiting the Poem Tree, my eye kept being drawn to this log in the grass nearby. I was convinced that someone was lying there reading. I like to think that it was Joseph, resting at last after making his mark as the wood carver and poet that he was born to be. 

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Poem_Tree
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tubb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittenham_Clumps

http://www.dorchester-abbey.org.uk/reredos/
http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe/wittenham-clumps-ancient-earthworks-haunted-gods-long-forgotten-006755
http://blog.rowleygallery.co.uk/wittenham-clumps/

http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/yourtown/didcot/9855964.Sadness_as_Clumps_poem_tree_falls/
http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/yourtown/didcot/9871211.Poet_pens_a_farewell_verse_to_famous_tree/

And the enclosure goes on. Thank you to @wbGabbleRatchet on Twitter for this link ~

http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/15033921.UPDATE__Villagers_fighting_for_freedom_after_former_UKIP_treasurer_began_fencing_off_countryside/

Novena for the Fallen Through ~ our ninth prayer for our wild kin

Here is the ninth, and so the last, of our November Novenas for the Fallen Through, which for this month are devoted to Saint Cuthbert and to a call for protection for our wild kinfolk. If you would like to read more about this month’s novena you can read our first prayer here.

We have already lifted prayers for our badgers, our hedgehogs, and for the street trees of Sheffield, for otter, cormorant, and seal, and for sharks and orcas, for stag beetles, for starlings, and for water voles. Today, we must return to ourselves, perhaps having learned something of the lives and struggles of our wild family, both those close to us and those who live in ways that we can hardly imagine, such as our sea kin, the sharks, orcas, and seals. Perhaps we will feel more deeply woven into the web of things, or have found a new creature to speak up for, or cried tears of blessing for what has been lost.

Rumi said, “There is sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief and unspeakable love." I know that I have learned a lot, cried a lot, and that I have very much valued making this deep journey with St Cuthbert. I am so very fond of him. Anne, a a Facebook friend who has a long and devoted relationship with him, told me that she and her father refer to him as ‘Cuthbert Greenpeace’. I liked that. And I liked that, this very evening, he helped me to make a big decision when I was reminded of the dream I had about him and the breaking of the cross to reveal a Tree of Life. He is a fine soul friend.

We have shared many stories of Cuddy during this Novena but the other day I was reminded of one that speaks deeply of relationship, devotion, and how powerfully woven in we can become with what, and who, we love.

St Cuthbert had a dear friend for many years called Hereberht, later St Herbert of Derwentwater in Cumbria, who was also an anchorite (someone who has withdrawn from the world for spiritual contemplation) living on a small island. Each year it was Hereberht’s habit to visit his friend on the Holy Isle to seek spiritual instruction. In 686CE he heard that Cuthbert was visiting Carlisle and chose to go and see him there. On meeting, Cuthbert told him, “Brother Herebehrt, tell me now all that you have need to ask or speak, for never shall we see one another again in this world. For I know that the time of my decease is at hand.” Hearing this, Herebehrt fell to his knees and wept, begging Cuthbert to obtain grace from God for them both to enter heaven at the same time. Cuthbert prayed and then said, “Rise, my brother weep not but rejoice that the mercy of God has granted our desire.” And so, Cuthbert returned to Lindisfarne and Herebehrt returned home but soon he became ill with a long sickness. Both men died on the same day; 20^th March, 687CE. In 1374, Thomas Appleby, Bishop of Carlisle, granted an indulgence of forty days for anyone who, in honour of St Herbert, visited his island in Derwentwater and was present at the Mass of St Cuthbert, sung annually by the Vicar of Crosthwaite. Such deep love that one could not bear to live this life without the other.

This is the love that our culture has lost for our wild kin; the sense of interdependence, of devotion, of knowing that we could not live one without the other. The relationship of Cuthbert and Hereberht, and Cuthbert with his wild, and our’s with our own, reminds me of Glenn Albrecht’s phrase ‘soliphilia’, which he describes as 'love and responsibility for a place, bioregion, planet, and the unity of interrelated interests within it', 'soli' coming from 'solidarity'; fellowship of responsibilities and interests, from the French solidarité, from solidaire, interdependent, from Old French, in common, from Latin solidus, solid, whole.' I wrote more about this here; 'Soliphilia: On the Seeing of Stars'

I hope that we find many, many things to fall in love with in the days and months to come and that we are brave enough to cry sacred tears when we must.

Novena for the Fallen Through

Protection, justice, and shining health for our wild kin.

This is a prayer is for the warp and weft, for the weaving of the web.

Blessed Cuthbert,

Beloved Cuddy,

Saint of Salt and Fire,

Antlered ancestor,

Friend of otter, eider, cormorant, and crow,

Walker of the untamed edge of Land and Spirit,

Lover of wild places, wild creatures, and wild grace,

Threader of sea-stars into wild prayer.

We stand in solidarity with you at the roots of the Tree of Life.

The first is for the badger people.

We seek to weave a prayer of protection and bright and thriving life

for our companion of soil, sett, and ancient soul.

We honour badger as digger and unearther, old tunneler,

keeper of the songlines of burrow and root, wild forager,

quiet earth hunter, beloved of the Elder Mother,

lover of the soil, warrior spirit, wild gardener,

planter of primroses, carrier of earth scars, watcher of time,

guardian of land, mapper of memory,

snuffler of spirit paths, wisdom-keeper of home and hearth and clan,

story-holder of the ancient tales of land and tribe.

We seek to weave a wild spell of word and prayer to surround

our badgers, tonight and every night.

We weave a thread of good company and solidarity with the badger people,

our wild kin.

The second is for the hedgehog people.

Blessed, furzepigs, tip-toe urchins,

we come to you in sorrow for the ways in which

we have contributed to your suffering and your decline.

May we come to see the beauty and potential in seeming untidiness,

value the wild poetry of leaf and woodpile,

the silver trail of slug and snail,

knowing that they too are our neighbours and our relations.

Help us to be more mindful in our use of pesticides,

casting them aside forever as we truly weave ourselves

into the ecosystem that we too are part of,

listening to, rather than dominating, the earth,

finding natural ways to bring health to our ordinary Edens,

knowing that all creatures come to teach us balance,

how to care in wilder and better ways.

We weave a thread of good company and solidarity

with the badger and hedgehog people,

our wild kin.

The third is for Sheffield’s street trees, the standing people

We ask for strength and protection for all

in Sheffield who stand for tree and home,

all who speak truth to power,

knowing that attacks on people, badgers, trees,

and all wild kin, come from the same place of

fear for what is truly alive in a world of ghosts.

Let there be justice in Sheffield for trees and people,

rooted in wild grace and the sweet soil of community.

We weave a thread of good company and solidarity

with the badger. hedgehog, and standing people,

our wild kin.

Blessed Cuthbert,

Beloved Cuddy,

Saint of Salt and Fire,

Antlered ancestor,

Friend of otter, eider, cormorant, and crow,

Walker of the untamed edge of Land and Spirit,

Lover of wild places, wild creatures, and wild grace,

Threader of sea-stars into wild prayer.

We stand in solidarity with you at the roots of the Tree of Life.

The fourth is for the seal, otter, and cormorant people.

We ask for the return of health to our waters,

wild children of the Silver Salmon Mother seeking Source,

salt and sweet, fish brimming,

overflowing with diversity of life,

not valued for what we can take,

the money we can make,

but for itself as the womb from which we all were born.

We weave a thread of good company and solidarity

with the badger. hedgehog, standing, otter, cormorant, and seal people,

our wild kin.

The fifth is for the shark and the orca people.

May all beings of the sea that you so loved,

where you sang Pslam songs to time and tide,

be bountifully blessed and wild with mothering,

hallowed with fathering,

and may we, in the name of salt and sea,

walk in grace with grief and gratitude

until justice comes for all beings of land, sea, and sky.

We weave a thread of good company and solidarity

with the badger. hedgehog, standing, otter,

cormorant, seal, shark, and orca people,

our wild kin.

The sixth is for the stag beetle people.

May the stag beetle kin thrive,

may they teach us gentleness in seeming fierceness,

to not judge by appearances, to love the unfamiliar.

In following the tracks of the little deer people,

may we weave a web of noticing,

shimmering threads of right relationship,

woven with the family of all beings.

And in that weaving let there be

a mending between human and wild,

a knowing that we can take communion with life,

that we can be forgiven, make amends.

We weave a thread of good company and solidarity

with the badger. hedgehog, standing, otter,

cormorant, seal, shark, orca, and stag beetle people,

our wild kin.

Blessed Cuthbert,

Beloved Cuddy,

Saint of Salt and Fire,

Antlered ancestor,

Friend of otter, eider, cormorant, and crow,

Walker of the untamed edge of Land and Spirit,

Lover of wild places, wild creatures, and wild grace,

Threader of sea-stars into wild prayer.

We stand in solidarity with you at the roots of the Tree of Life.

The seventh is for the starling people.

May the starling kin thrive.

In a human world where so many walk with loneliness,

let them teach us the value of good company

the protection of community,

the joy of dancing in constellation,

and may humankind and starlingkind

become celestial family,

a twinkling stellar society,

find that our futures are entangled,

that it’s written in our stars.

We weave a thread of good company and solidarity

with the badger. hedgehog, standing, otter,

cormorant, seal, shark, orca, stag beetle, and starling people,

our wild kin.

The eighth is for the water vole people.

May the water vole people thrive,

once more become the tiny engineers,

the cornerstone of the cathedral of our wild,

find safety and peace in our waters,

help us to regain balance,

allow us again to sink into stories

without the taste of bittersweet,

become the awe-filled, open-hearted earth-children

that we were born to be.

We weave a thread of good company and solidarity

with the badger. hedgehog, standing, otter,

cormorant, seal, shark, orca, stag beetle, starling people,

water vole and mink people,

our wild kin.

The ninth is for the web.

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting,

over and over, announcing your place

in the family of things.

Blessed Cuthbert,

Beloved Cuddy,
Saint of Salt and Fire,
Antlered ancestor,
Friend of otter, eider, cormorant, and crow,
Walker of the untamed edge of Land and Spirit,
Lover of wild places, wild creatures, and wild grace,
Threader of sea-stars into wild prayer.

We stand in solidarity with you at the roots of the Tree of Life.

May our string of prayer beads,
formed in the starry sea where all things are one,
gathered on the shore of meeting,
be filled with life, love, and wild justice
for all beings on this earth we share.

For this we pray.

Aho mitake oyasin, amen, blessed be. Inshallah.

“For Earth to survive, she needs your heart. The songbirds and the salmon need your heart too, no matter how weary, because even a broken heart is still made of love. They need your heart because they are disappearing, slipping into that longest night of extinction, and the resistance is nowhere in sight. We will have to build that resistance from whatever comes to hand: whispers and prayers, history and dreams, from our bravest words and braver actions. It will be hard, there will be a cost, and in too many implacable dawns it will seem impossible. But we will have to do it anyway. So gather your heart and join with every living being.” (Deep Green Resistance)

References:

https://citydesert.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/saint-cuthbert-and-saint-herbert-hermits-and-friends/