Keeping it real – Reading for 2021
After a difficult 2020, the ramifications of which have spilled over with us into 2021, the key to navigating this new year lies in the realm of emotions, imagination, and dreams with the Five of Cups. As a five, this card is not comfortable or cosy because it disturbs the stability of the previous number four, shoving you out of your comfort zone and into the inevitability of change. The only thing that doesn’t change is change right?
As the subtitle suggests, when you lose the comfort and pleasure brought by anything you love, whether that’s people, jobs, relationships, ways of life, or spiritual beliefs, you can be overwhelmed by loss and disappointment.
Confessions of a wounded healer
We all have unhealthy patterns of behaviour that we’re prone to fall into, and it’s frightening how quickly these can take hold and become routine. Even when we’ve spent years working to release them, I was reminded recently just how easily and insidiously they can worm their way back in.
I’m usually very careful about keeping balance in my life and setting aside plenty of time for self-care. When your job is to help others then you have to make sure you’re in the best shape possible to do that as effectively as you can. But the changes wrought in our lives by COVID took away several of my established self-care rituals.
The past is a present for the future
I know there’s still a very long to go, but since the Autumn Equinox I’ve felt and witnessed a strong upsurge of creative, innovative energy. So many new projects, organisations, collaborations, and community enterprises leaping into life. It’s not going to change things overnight but it’s giving my natural optimism and faith in the future a welcome boost.
I watched a TV programme yesterday by a historian who was comparing the impact and effects of the Black Death, a pandemic which ravaged Europe during the medieval period (and indeed on and off through to the 19th century).
Descension; a poem
I meet the sighing sink and settle,
Restless Spirit recalls home and
Burrows deep in fleshy pillow, hollow bone.
A daily Autumn turn to inner dark
Of neutral nothingness yet everything,
Where I can know entirety of self
With unreserved honesty and love.
Deep Mother’s arms encircling me
And all my fears, my nightmares, hates,
My still unconscious, unfelt hurts.
Language as a vision of life
I’m learning to speak Welsh, something which has been a long time coming. Since I moved to West Wales two and a half years ago I’ve been hearing the language spoken locally all the time, and it has rekindled my love for and curiosity about it.
It started as a child coming to Wales often for family holidays, being fascinated by the musical-sounding place names and feeling intrigued enough to find out what they meant. Even at that young age, I think I could sense the deep interconnection between the Celtic naming of places and the land; a sacred honouring which reflected our ancestors’ sense of belonging to the earth. An honouring which was to become central to my way of living and finding meaning in the world.
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