Equinox Balance

Today is the Autumn Equinox.  The word Equinox - as I'm sure you've heard before - comes from aequus, the Latin word for "equal", and nox, the Latin word for "night". All over the world day and night are of equal length. Perfect balance.

Today, walking in the wet and misty morning song of this equinox morning, it seems to me that balance is the thing we need to attend to more than almost anything else.

We live in a society that's so wildly out of balance it's keeling over. We almost all know it now, even those with their heads deeply buried in their own comfort and convenience are being delivered the unwelcome news via mainstream media which at long last is starting to speak about 'climate emergency', 'mass extinction' and 'global heating'. 

To me, the major source of our imbalance can be boiled down to our ignoring of the notion of 'The Honourable Harvest' - this is most eloquently expressed by the Native American elder, scientist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer. She calls the Honourable Harvest "a covenant of reciprocity between humans and the living world. A very sophisticated ethical protocol." It's the way I was taught to forage and it's a way of seeing the world, that were we to adopt it as a universal truth, would completely change the way we lived our lives. 

"One of the firs steps of the honourable harvest is to understand that the lives that we are taking are the lives of generous beings, of sovereign beings. And in order to accept their gift we owe them at least our attention. To care for them we must know what they need, and at the very minimum we should know their names. And yet the average American can name over 100 corporate logos and ten plants." I'm reasonably confident your average Brit could do a little better, but how many of us really know the names of our more-than-human neighbours?  How many of us address the plant before we harvest it, asking permission and listening until that permission is given, not taking if permission is not given, speaking with the Spirit of that plant about our gratitude and acknowledging our responsibility in the cycle of life? Not many.

I'm fully aware that not everyone has the privilege of being able to go foraging, to collect food directly from source. But everything we have is part of Earth's generous giving, whether we picked it from a hedgerow or bought it in a shop. Life supports life, life feeds life, and Life is not a 'product' to be momentarily fashionable and then thrown away. No part of it should be. In the democracy of species that is the world wide web of life everyone is equal, not in stature or strength for sure, but in their importance to the interwoven, interdependent whole. We all have our part to play. Most of life is doing the best it can, but in the West humans are careering out of control in a centuries long frenzy of over-consumption, with no respect for the needs of anyone else. Imagine if we refused to buy those things that had not been honourably harvested. I suspect the choice would be pretty limited on a supermarket's shelves... but what if we didn't shop in supermarkets? What if we found local producers, local growers, makers, bakers...




































Implicit in the honourable harvest - and the first rule of foraging - is the instruction to never take the first plant you see. This means that you will never be accidentally taking the last one, leaving nothing to make seeds for next year. And making sure that you only ever take a small percentage of what is there, so that others - human and non-human, may have a share in the harvest too.

These ancient instructions tell us to harvest in a way that does no damage to the plant and use to everything you harvest. Waste is an insult to the life that gave so freely.  If you have accidentally taken more than you need then share. In fact - just share anyway: It's so good for us, to give, to share, to participate, to feel ourselves part of community. To also be the generosity of the abundant Earth.

The last part of the honourable harvest is gratitude. To be grateful for what we have been given and to express that gratitude to the plant that gave the gift. Spreading seeds and singing songs are my favourite ways. What's yours? Imagine if instead of always wanting more... a new one, a better one, another one, the upgrade, update, up-with-consumerism and down-with-any-sense-of-enough one, instead we sat with our gratitude, really felt our gratitude, felt how it pours into our hearts and makes us feel rich.

I can think of very few instances in life where the protocols of The Honourable Harvest could not apply, and would not make Western Culture a better place to live. If we remembered a world where we honoured the gifts we are constantly being given by the generous Wild, if we shared those gifts with each other and with the more-than-human world. If we remembered that there are a finite number of leaves and berries, hips and haws, on any given plant, and that everyone is entitled to their share. Everyone entitled to enough. No-one taking more than what Satish Kumar calls "an elegant sufficiency" - I've always loved that phrase.

That's balance.

I wish it for you this equinox, and for all of us.

About Time

Invitation 

Oh do you have time 

to linger

for just a little while 

out of your busy 

and very important day 

for the goldfinches 

that have gathered 

in a field of thistles 

for a musical battle, 

to see who can sing 

the highest note, 

or the lowest, 

or the most expressive of mirth, 

or the most tender? 

Their strong, blunt beaks 

drink the air 

as they strive 

melodiously 

not for your sake 

and not for mine 

and not for the sake of winning 

but for sheer delight and gratitude - 

believe us, they say, 

it is a serious thing 

just to be alive 

on this fresh morning 

in this broken world. 

I beg you, 

do not walk by 

without pausing 

to attend to this 

rather ridiculous performance. 

It could mean something. 

It could mean everything. 

It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote; 

You must change your life.

Mary Oliver, From the collection 'Red Bird' 

Once upon a time I had my head in a box of 'to-do' lists; stressed, my mind running from job to job on an internal hamster wheel accelerating exponentially, breathless with my busyness, but also perhaps just a little self satisfied. Busyness surely means business is good? Surely it means I'm doing it right? "Busy" is currently the correct answer to the question "How are you?" - is it not?!

Please don't get me wrong, I absolutely love what I do - and it's not the doing of it that has been the error of my ways: when I'm actually working I'm connected to Life, to the task, to The Spirits. It's glorious. But when I'm thinking about all the things I need to do and have not yet done - then comes tiredness, sadness, stress. When I'm 'busy',  when my thoughts are rampaging around my head, I'm not connected to the delicious abundance of the sensual world. 

Suddenly this weekend, in the midst of far too many cortisol inducing plans, I found myself heading for the sea, and just by lucky chance, towards the sound of small waves lapping against the sides of small boats - which is one of the many sounds of utter tranquillity for me.  It speaks of a time in my childhood when everything was pretty good all things considered - the sun was shining, the sea sparkling, and all those with the power to ruin a day were in a consistently fine mood. 

To be in tranquillity and listen to the waves, the wind, the songs of birds or the whispers of trees, even to engage in conversation with just one very persistent sandpiper - is to step outside of time - or perhaps more accurately it is to step outside of chronological time and into wild time. Anything is possible here. I am present to this moment so utterly that I lose contact with the to-do lists and all the stress slides away. I am not living in my head, or the box of babble around  it (this box mostly contains 'The Inspector' - that one who goes around pecking holes in everything to see if it's been done right and then criticises it for being full of holes!) I simply Am. We Are. Connected. 

Chronos, God of Time, keeper of clocks, eater of days and ravager of beautiful youth, has at his side (in my personal view of him) The White Rabbit; constantly running around with a watch in his hand, terribly sorry - dreadfully late, pursuing a work ethic strict enough to make a sixteenth century puritan proud. He's not very friendly but he's completely reliable. Won't let you down, won't stop ticking by, won't let you out to play. 

When I step fully into presence, in the breath between tick and tock, into the feral - moments can seem like hours and hours pass in a moment. The way a pebble turns and twists and changes colour as the tide pulls it along the beach can be observed in a millisecond, but truly felt only in a now that has no end. This is the place in which I can hear water speak, feel tides turn, know what it is to be wholly holy human. In this timeless time I know myself to be Earth-daughter, air-breather, sister to salt and stone, weed-wife, mother of men, kin to everything with blood, everyone with leaves, all who move, all who are still. I am life-lover, joy-drinker, utterly interwoven, interconnected, interdependent with all else that is. 

Sometimes, the only thing to do is this:
Be.
Here.
Now. 

May your day be full of beauty. May you linger a while to listen to the birds sing. 

A Conspiracy of Ravens

I haven't been here for a while - It's been so hard to know what to say. In the face of so much destruction around the world, so much sad news, so much grief.  Also much busy-ness.

In the end (or perhaps it was the beginning) I went to The Spirits for a conversation about what I'm doing, or not-doing, here. I had become becalmed, motionless as all around me environmental devastation and disasters filled the news, the Amazon being the one that really undid me. I couldn't find anything useful to say, and to write my anguish or my anger at what is happening didn't feel like the right thing to be doing. More than anything it didn't feel remotely useful. I write a blog because I was asked to by 'Them'. And until I embarked on this conversation I had lost sight of that, forgotten that I had been asked to share my love of the natural world, to share my experiences of a reciprocal world in which we all know ourselves to be part of a sacred, sentient, ensouled, whole. Speak the truth.

I walked away from this reminder straight into a Conspiracy of Ravens. I could hardly believe my eyes and sadly hadn't brought  my camera so you can't see. There were 32 Ravens (at minimum - that's the number in the air at one time, there may have been more on the ground) all kraaking and twirling, soaring and diving, flapping and floating in the soft late summer air. Mostly in pairs (ravens mate for life) their wing-beats filled the valley with the sound of air under five foot of feather, air supporting over two and a half pounds of bird flesh, air that is never more unexpectedly loud than when a raven's wing plays upon it.  What an incredible blessing, their savage beauty and wild grace held me still in the morning light, this time not feeling adrift, but high on the tumbling air and simultaneously tethered to the good green earth. I was so happy, so utterly peaceful.

Then suddenly, shuddering with tears, with unspeakable joy, for the Raven is one of my dearest friends and in being with so many I felt as if I had found my way back from the brink of utter despair and into hope. In walking to the top of the tor I also walked out along silver filaments into the blackness of the ravens eye, her wing, her wildly beating heart. I moved upwards and downwards and within. I am everywhere and everyone. I am no-thing and I am nothing. In the few seconds it takes to form these words hours have passed, suns have risen, shone and been obliterated, lifetimes have passed, aeons of time have faded into the darkness.

Ravens - so reviled, so beloved. Our history and theirs has intertwined for millennia. They are the battle bird, blood bird, death delighter, feaster on corpses. Bird of augury, teller of futures, I remembered:

Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transformed.


There will always be love.
There will always be hope.
There will always be now
And some sort of strange tomorrow.






So may it be.
And so it is.