On Gift Giving and the Wild Eye of Prayer

A small gift from the Mac Gwylans? Plus a tiny slug.

Today I have had a chat to the everyday angel pigeons in our garden, together with indulging in a rather acrimonious exchange with a jackdaw, who seemed to feel that I wasn't putting his breakfast out in quite the right way. I was faffing about a bit I know but Jackdaws can be terribly demanding.

An everyday angel, beautiful in the blossom 

Speaking of demanding, I thought that I would share with you this possible tiny wonder and small beauty. Every Wednesday I pop to the shops and for a coffee with my dad-in-law. Yesterday we set off as usual and our garden path was empty. When we came back several hours later the ceramic decoration from one of the pots in our back garden had appeared exactly in the middle of the path! It is quite large; maybe 3 inches across, and is biscuit-thin so it must have been carried and put down very carefully. It is a mystery.

Beautifully placed in the centre of the garden path

My only thought is that Mr Mac Gwylan  the herring gull ('gwylan' is Welsh for gull) gathered it up and put it there. Things tend to move around here, as both the foxes and the magpies like to pick things up, play with them, and then put them down somewhere else. A magpie recently appeared with the cover of one of our long-gone garden lights, which is like a little sparkly ball, in his beak and it is now often put in, or taken out of, our garden pots. I have also seen a magpie do the same with a piece of broken pot, but I think that this is too large for a magpie to carry so carefully and the foxes would have been fast asleep at that time of day.

Mr Mac Gwylan considering my shortcomings as a host 

You may recall that last year we looked after a herring gull chick who had come down from the roof too early in the exceptionally hot weather and had hurt his wing. If you would like to read more about him you can do that here. He was here for a few days and his parents were watching closely. There was much communication between adults and chick, although they didn't venture down into the garden. Eventually he had to go to a specialist wildlife rescue centre as we were afraid that his wing was broken (It was only a sprain. Phew!) My husband, Simon, spent much time explaining to the chick's parents that he was safe and that we were doing our best for him. We were sad at the thought that they might consider him lost.

Steve Mac Gwylan, the baby herring gull

Every year, gulls return to the same place to nest and we were overjoyed when the Mac Gwylans returned after New Year. In the past we haven't had much to do with them, other than admiring them on the roof and ooohing and ahhhing at their gangly babies, but this year they have been popping down to the garden to drink from the pool of water Simon made for last year's chick to splash in and I have been putting out a few mealworms for them by the garden gate. Generally, Mr Mac Gwylan comes down first and his lady sits on the roof making concerned noises, but she comes down too in the end or he goes up to get her. Yesterday, when I went to fill the bird feeder, which they can't get to as their wings are too wide, he made it quite clear that they would also like some snacks. I wonder whether the ceramic disk was a thank you, or a bribe! Either way it was lovely to wonder about that and I have put it on our garden table with all our other nature finds.

The more that I spend time with the birds the more I feel that I understand (a little) the amazing complexity of their communication, the richness of their social interactions with one another, the tides of their cyclical comings & goings. It is a beautiful thing. And a privilege to even consider that they sometimes notice me. They feel like family and they make this feel like home.

Everyday angels

Today, I had hoped to write about St Cuthbert, which I have been planning to do for several weeks, but what follows is what came instead. As Cuddy is sometimes credited as the ‘first conservationist’ for introducing laws to protect nesting seabirds on the Farne Islands as long ago as the 7^th Century, and was said to have been brought gifts by ravens, perhaps I have written what he would have wanted after all. I try very hard to listen to what the day asks of me. I will return to him soon, to Welsh St Cenydd, who was born with a disability and cast out to sea in a willow basket only to be rescued by seagulls, and to Irish St Caoimhín, who had a blackbird build a nest and lay an egg in his open hand when he stretched out his arms out to pray, and who remained in stillness until the egg hatched and the fledgling flew. We have much to learn about relationship with the wild from our holy ancestors.

'St Kevin & the Blackbird, Clive Hicks-Jenkins. From https://blueeyedennis-siempre.blogspot.com/2012/05/st-kevin-of-glendalough.html

Returning to our gift from the gulls; of late there has been a lot of discussion here and there about the language we use when referring to the natural world. How, if we are to play our part in preserving or even saving, words matter and need to speak to the heart. We need to fall back in love with the earth. One thing that particularly struck me was the suggestion to stop talking about 'nature reserves', as though some bits of earth can be set aside for nature to live quite happily whilst we do what we like with the rest ~ to be fair, that is the prevailing mindset but it really needs to be challenged. There is no room for complacency or for feeling pleased with ourselves just because we allow something, anything, to stay green. Instead, we might really engage with what is happening and speak of 'nature refuges'; a place of sanctuary for our wild refugees who have had their homes taken by diggers, and landscapers, and poisons, who have been chased across an increasingly barren land to the very edges of endurance and survival. Our gardens, or even a little balcony or a windowsill, can be refuges too, no matter how small or unpromising we might consider them to be. It is a privilege to be in service to and to watch over any land in a world where so many are landless. There are (a very few) people on this planet who don't care about life, not even their own, and those of us who do care have to hold the line for life itself. All of nature is speaking; “don't mourn, organise”.

We have increased numbers of everyday angel pigeons here now because the army barracks, where so many had roosted, probably for generations, were bulldozed last summer to make room for a new estate. It is the same with the fire-flame foxes. There are more and more squashed into a smaller and smaller area because their earths and hunting grounds have been taken from them. No wonder that mange spreads amongst them. We are currently treating several who visit our garden and who are in a sad state. The badgers are gone; their setts, possibly centuries old, abandoned or lost, or perhaps they just can't bear to come this way. We shouldn’t assume that a badger’s heart can’t also be broken. Rats, who had lived quite happily in the, by now empty, army barracks were forced into the nearby estate and were poisoned. To discourage them trees and bushes were cut down. Before that, despite their close proximity to human habitation, they had bothered no one. The one strip of green that isn't mowed every spring by the council has also been poisoned, dowsed in glysophates, parched earth. Others put down astroturf, because we are all just too busy to care for our gardens. And I don't judge, or try not to; we’re ALL pushed to the very edges of endurance and survival in one way or another and it is just one more thing amongst many. We all fail. There is just no time to care in a world where caring only breaks our hearts, but that is not an excuse, not really. The crows' nests; 100 year old trees, have been felled; there was a man, a tree surgeon, almost in tears over them at a developers 'consultation' event here last year. And even the 'affordable housing' for these new estates are squeezed out to the edges too. It is all the same thing; what we do to the wild we do to ourselves. They cut down the crows' trees, destroy the foxes' earths, and make neat little boxes as battery farms to keep us, the fodder of Capitalism, just happy enough, but worn down just enough too.

Nina George in her Spring 2016 essay, ‘Everything Breathes the Revolutionary Spirit’, for ‘Gods and Radicals’ quarterly which I return to for sustenance again and again, tells the story of four men who were hanged in Chicago in 1887 for being leaders of a movement demanding workers’ rights and an eight hour day. All of the men spoke passionately and eloquently in court in their defence. One, August Spies, used examples from nature to suggest that revolution and resistance are a natural state; that “a force can be brought to try to push us down but this can never stop us. We rise. We grow. No one can stop the inevitable growth of the land, its people, and the forces we contain...Revolution is ever present in all beings’ spirits and lungs.” Everything breathes the revolutionary spirit; a plant that’s cut down will grow again wherever it can, birds who lose their brood will lay more eggs. Life is always bubbling up through the cracks. We must embrace that energy; finding the cracks where life can get in and playing our part in putting it, and keeping it, there for as long as we can. And if, and when, that fails, we must look for more cracks. As Nina George writes, we must be “the green fuse that refuses.”

And we do all need to refuse and find refuge; not to be thought of as us doing our wildlife a 'favour', because we need refuge too and I am quite sure that I gain more from the beings who find shelter here than they from me. But this is one time when we are all in it together. All of nature is in deep communication and trying to communicate with us, in solidarity. “Wake up!” they say, “remember that you are not alone.” The badgers, the foxes, the nettles, the blackthorn, the bees; everything breathes the revolutionary spirit. And of course they are speaking to us. Our planet is dying and we are the ones who are killing her. Why would they want us to give up and sink into despair? There is only even more death that way.

But we do have power, although we are encouraged to think otherwise. Where there is still even the tiniest piece of land for us to call kindness and generosity in there is hope. And so I will rejoice in being told off by jackdaws, and in spending money we haven't got on birdseed, and speak out when it's suggested to me that we buy wheat-free seed to 'put off' the pigeons, because what matters more in life than the breaking of bread in good company, and I will believe that the herring gulls, who are on the RSPB red list as being 'at risk' on our hugely nature depleted little island, have brought us a precious ceramic disk as a gift, because I have to believe that they too know there is still love and hope in the world.

"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)

Thank you, Mr and Mrs Mac Gwylan for the wild eye of your prayer. I am listening, with every cell I am listening.

True love

Aho mitake oyasin. For all our relations.

Soliphilia: On the Seeing of Stars

My beloved honeysuckle staff

“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)

Walking matters to me. There are days when I feel broken, when the sea monsters that move beneath the skin of my everyday rise with the tide and no number of pots of tea will soothe them. And, often, that is when I walk; to remind myself of what is solid, thriving, and bigger than just my own wobbly inner worlds, to feel the edge between me and the wild, and to know that that edge is nothing more than a width of a gossamer thread, to brush a nettle leaf to feel the sting, to drink in the vibrant green of moss in the frost-bright of winter. To breathe. And yet, just the other day, I went walking and returned with my heart broken. That matters too.

In recent days I have come to know and love the little wilding apple tree not far from my home. I always stop to say hello to her, touch her branches, marvel at the saffron and silver of her lichen, congratulate her on her crop of small apples, greet them as her children. On my last few walks I have plucked an apple with much reverence and gratitude, taken the sweet flesh into my body as a gift and a sacrament. And, in this way, I begin to build relationship. It is a blessing. When I stand with her I feel that there is no one but us in the world, such is our connection of heart. I don't see the road or the cars going by, the chainlink fence by her side. I barely notice if someone walks by, which they rarely do. I am caught up in ancient threads. I am in love. And yet when I drove by her for the first time since meeting of her I suddenly became aware of how small and vulnerable she is. How many would not see a wise, tenacious being with her golden apple children but, instead, an old, unimportant tree with 'blighted fruit' on a piece of waste ground that could be better used for something else. And part of me wanted to cut those ancient threads of connection before my heart gets broken. Only a few days later the wildly growing hawthorn hedge just around the curve of the road from her, and which had been laden with almost-ripe berries was cut back, made neat and tidy. The almost-ripe berries lost. I lamented their loss for their own sake and for the sake of the birds who have lost their autumn harvest, and for mine. And so, yes part of me wants to cut the ancient threads that have begun to bind me to the wilding tree, but I won't.

In his 'Duino Elegies', Rilke writes, “Yes, the springtime needed you. Often a star was waiting for you to notice it.”We cut the threads at a cost; to ourselves and to the 'stars' that are waiting for us to notice them. If we believe that we matter, that we are an integral part of this world, then we must notice and we must allow our hearts to be broken...often a star is waiting for us not just to notice it, but to cry over it.

Not long ago, in a little lane close by, I came across the body of a blackbird fledgling. I was in awe of her delicate beauty, I grieved softly for the loss of her life, I felt empathy for the mother and father who had hatched, protected, and fed her. I gave thanks that she might provide food for the babies of another mother. I imagined a fox taking her, being grateful for food without the hunt. I felt connected in that moment to the dreaming of life where threads weave and break and reweave in deep relationship, where one small death supports another life, where Life~Death~Life is all part of the same flow. Truly, there is such great beauty in that and I felt honoured to have become a small part of that tender happening which sang so deeply of the root of things. But I wanted Life to know that this almost-blackbird mattered to someone, and I wanted people who passed by to know that too. And so I picked some honeysuckle blossoms and placed them carefully on her small body, crooning softly to her spirit. The next day only a few honeysuckle flowers remained. I thought of the maybe-fox mother and was grateful.

Singing the small sacred in 

This reminded me of a time when I was on a retreat with a group of women. Our time was spent on a Somerset farm in a small valley and, whilst we were there, some of the cows were birthing their babies. It was Lammas, we were celebrating the Mother, and we were grateful for the new life coming into being all around us. But one young cow, pregnant with her first calf, could not give birth. Her baby became trapped and nothing could break him free. She died and her baby with her. The farmer took her up the track out of the valley and left her by the gate to be picked up by a van from the abattoir. And yet even in the midst of such tragedy there was magic. Without speaking to one another about it, without ceremony, over the next few hours and into the next morning, the women began to walk up the track in ones and twos, feeling deep connection to this mother who could not be. They began to sing to her, give blessings for her life and that of her baby, and to decorate her body with flowers. Someone who saw the men come for her with their van said that they could not have been gentler or more reverent. I believe that they saw and they felt that she had become holy. We might wish that her final journey had been a different one and yet it mattered that we didn't cut off from what was happening, that we sang the small sacred in in the only ways that we knew how. It mattered to us. It mattered to the spirit of the mother cow and her baby. And I like to believe that it mattered to the men who came to take her away. I do believe that it mattered to Life.

"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" (Rumi)

And so, just the other day, I went walking and returned with my heart broken. I am grateful that I have a heart to break. As I walk on from the wilding tree, I take a path through a small wood which leads into a lane behind some sprawling old houses overlooking the sea. 

A tree with cooking apples high above the sea

In this lane I have found a tree laden with cooking apples, have gathered blackberries, elderberries, and nettle seeds, basked in the presence of plantain, green alkanet, cuckoopint, and pendulous sedge, have sung love songs to bees. When I walk there I feel that I am walking with my Grandmothers. I forget cars and televisions and shops and money and all the things that take us out of ourselves and I am happy. Just after the apple tree there is a curve in the road and there I found the most lush and magical patch of wild medicine, for the body and for the spirit; a small bank green and growing with nettles, hedge woundwort, wild basil, thistles and, most recently, the first flowering of mullein, which to my delight I discovered is also known as hag's taper, hare's beard, and beggar's blanket for the downy softness of its large leaves. What wistful acknowledgement of the vulnerability of those pushed to the edges of our society can be found in the folknames of our wildflowers who know those edges so well. It is there that those of us who reject the centre of things, and who often feel that we don't belong, can find good company. 

Green alkanet

Hedge woundwort

Nettle seeds

 

Mullein ~ hag's taper, hare's beard, beggar's blanket

 And so I have woven a deep relationship with this wildly growing bank, have spent time there almost every day, delighted in it for its own sake, for the abundant bees and butterflies that gathered sweet pollen and nectar, and for the wild medicines that I have harvested, taking pleasure in the thought of maintaining my connection with that land through those medicines as winter unfolds. It has been one of my greatest joys since I moved here. It made me feel that I was home. I have come to see foraging as the ultimate in mindfulness, for me at least. It is a responsibility to take the fruit and seeds of a mother plant, to feel worthy of claiming some of her children as my own. It is not something that I take lightly. Glenn Albrecht, an Australian Professor of Sustainability, has coined the 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.' So it was and is with me and this little bank; I walked to get out of myself. I walked and this little bank of wild magic brought me home.

And now the green beings of that little bank are gone. Two days ago I walked around that curve in the road and all that was green and growing had been hacked down, just a few leaves strewn across the brown and dying grass, confused bees still searching for pollen where they had found it so often before and where there was now none. My first reaction was disbelief, shock, then realisation, the feeling that I had been kicked in the stomach, anger, grief. It was just a little bank in a world where so much is changing and dying, where so much is brutalised, and yet it had been so very ALIVE.

Glenn Albrecht also has another phrase, 'solastaligia', the feelings of grief, dislocation, and loss we experience when the environment where we live is damaged, changed, or taken from us. This can apply to the planet that we live on, or it can apply to a little bank of wildly growing things and happily foraging bees.

And the temptation is to disconnect, to switch off, harden our hearts, because what can we do to save the planet, or even a patch of wild just outside our front door. Why dare to love when we know that our hearts will be broken. Better to lose ourselves in the television, possessions, and addictions. Better not to care. Sylvia Linsteadt has written that, “the line between self and the world is very thin. Perhaps it is almost non-existent. And yet we are taught to stay far from that edge –for isn't it insanity to consider yourself fluid with columbine flowers?”And yet, we have to be brave enough to risk that edge, to dare being thought of as 'insane', the 'stars' are waiting for us to notice, without us perhaps they will be a little less alive. Without keeping our hearts open, without allowing them to break, we can so easily become lost in disconnection, hopelessness, and depression, collapsing into ourselves. We will no longer see the stars.

I sought solace in the sea

And was gifted with a stone heart and the eyes of a bee

Ecopsychologist Mary Good has talked about 'earth grief', writing that these feelings are “intense, vast, and utterly overwhelming, The common response is....to shut down, avoid, deny”. In attending to her own earth grief, in staying open, she writes that she has “tapped into a vast reservoir of my own resilience. I have learned to withstand and open to my own pain, no longer turning away from it in fear that it will destroy me. This enables me to allow for, and hold, my own painful feelings, while at the same time remaining open to the rest of life and the joy available in every moment”. This is so important for those of us who understand that we were made for these times, that we are the ones who are here to remember what 'home' truly means, and find it in banks of wild medicine, in wilding trees, in family and community, in the weeds that grow in the cracks in the pavement, in the tiptoe of night foxes, and the scream of badgers, in the sting of nettles and the comfort of nettle tea, in the bitterness of elderberries and the sweetness of syrup, in the eyes of our loved ones, and the clear waters of chalk streams, even when we know that they all might be taken from us. Even though we know that they might break our hearts.

How can we learn to love through it all, to keep our hearts open, to be willing to cry tears that others refuse, our have forgotten how, to cry? Mary Good writes that, “whilst earth grief can be excruciating, it can also be medicinal...it can soften our hearts to the preciousness of life.” In staying connected, breathing through the pain, we gain so much, so much more than we lose. Lierre Keith in her challenging and thought-provoking book, 'The Vegetarian Myth' writes about the Mayan concept of kas-limaal, 'mutual indebtedness, mutual insparkedness', the knowledge that everything is connected to everything else. And I believe that that is how we can continue to love; not by disconnecting, by distancing ourselves from what pains us, but by going deeper, coming closer, becoming a part of; truly we are 'fluid with columbine flowers'.

I hope to write more about my own understanding of kas-limaal as the weeks go on, about how we are in deep co-operation with the dreamlines of bees and the memory of reindeer tracks, how we are in true relationship with the apple tree and the nettle people, not as a concept but as a reality. For now, it is enough to take in that we are in relationship. We are not alone, or separate. Recent studies have shown that if we can connect to that which gives us a sense of awe, be that almost too large or too small to contemplate; the birth of a star, the slow movement of a water bear, or a million other things both unusual and everyday, that it can lead us to be more generous towards others, be that human, plant, or animal community, towards all of life. We can begin to mend the disconnections and have the resilience and the courage to challenge the disconnection in others with respect and with love. These studies have found that our sense of awe, of feeling connected to something larger than ourselves, effects our behaviour more positively than even compassion or love (although we could argue that they are all so intimately connected that they cannot be separated). It is disconnection that breaks us and it is disconnection that is breaking the planet that is our home. It is disconnection that has brought us austerity, the badger cull, suspicion towards refugees, bee decline, deforestation. And it is disconnection that allowed someone to hack down the wildly growing beings on my beloved little bank. They will grow again and, in the meantime, I will hold the possibility and knowing of their return in my heart through the winter, do all that I can to stop it happening again, spread seeds, write letters, attend to the 'hedgetemple' in the inner and the outer worlds, grieve. What those who are disconnected perhaps don't know is that hearts that are broken only become bigger and wilder and they notice far, far more stars.

Further reading and links:

From Glenn Albrecht ~

http://healthearth.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/soliphilia-and-solistalgia-my-take-on.html

http://healthearth.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/soliphilia.html

http://healthearth.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/creating-language-for-our.html

Sylvia Lindsteadt: The Gleewoman's Notes ~

http://theindigovat.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/soliphilia-or-finding-light-green-heart.html

From Mary Good ~

https://marygood.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/field-notes-june-3-7/

https://marygood.wordpress.com/2013/01/04/when-a-curse-is-a-blessing-on-becoming-a-voice-for-the-other/

How Awe Makes Us Generous ~

UC Berkeley: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_awe_makes_us_generous

From Lierre Keith ~

'The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability' Flashpoint Press, 2009