I was hoping to hear from you on this thread Morfe 8o) *BE* is such a small but powerful word to me. You said it to me several times just before I left for the Women's Retreat. What I went through to get packed etc.! One damn thing after another! Felt like a Banshee was chasing me all the way up the canyon. Responsibilities of being a group leader at the retreat, my children, my grandchild, my mother who just had open heart surgery, unemployed you name it, it was in my head couldn't clear it out. Next day we were sent out on a vision quest. I was alone in nature and this magnified the chaos in my head..... peace cannot live in chaos ya know. Slowly I let my mind unwind.... the river, the mountains, trees began to soothe me. I layed on my blanket and curled into a fetal position, surrendering to mother earth. She showed me the plants that were so happy to be alive they didnt care if they were perfectly formed or what anyone thought of them, same with the trees, rocks etc. showing me how to *BE* The breeze sang a healing song over me as the Great Mother rocked me to sleep. My mind was clear for the first time in a very long time and I felt and was full of so much love. When I awoke a little chipmunk was straight in front of my eyes peeping through the grass. This showed me that kind and gentle things wanted to be near me again.... as within so without. Peace of mind has stayed with me for two weeks now.
Love Shestu
Morfe,
Don’t fret about vagueness, that was a great piece of writing of yours, real poetry. I bet most people absolutely understand and empathise with what you were trying to say. I mean, you say that for you, ancient sites ………“captured and amplified the indefinable humming 'buzz' that exists between the self and the Other”……well, that’s everybody, isn’t it? Or at least, if it’s not, then the most anyone could say against it is that they don’t feel it, not that it isn’t valid.
On a more prosaic note, although we are nearly all unified here in saying “Nature is good for you” and that we experience “something” at sites, I think it’s probably an uneasy unity. We all hang on to our own interpretations, and when we explain them we use trigger words that can cause the war to break out once again. For my part, for instance, I think the stones are mere lumps of rock, unworthy of regard per se, but nevertheless they and their surroundings stir an emotional reaction in me that I interpret as a genetic one. But “Mere lumps of rock” might well be offensive to some, as at the other end of the scale, some people act and talk as if they are of actual significance in themselves and are worthy of being revered as a consequence, and they surround them with their own symbolic trappings. Druids and pagans spring to mind. They get a kick out of the stones, just like me, but when they dowse them or dress up in front of them or leave offerings at them or use words that for me are trigger words, then suddenly we have no common ground. It’s a shame really, because people who like stones are all really just people who like stones and we all ought to have everything in common, especially since most people don’t give a stuff and much prefer Big Brother. I guess quarrelling about the interpretation of common experience is part of the human condition. Loving God doesn’t seem to bring about much unity. Nor does eating eggs – didn’t the Lilliputians go to war about which end you should open them?
I’m glad someone brought up Wordsworth at last. He banged on interminably about the effect that his exposure to Nature and Landscape had on his inner mind and he would have had a thing or two to say on this thread. I don’t think he ever went to Wayland’s Smithy, but listen:
Oft in these moments such a holy calm
Did overspread my soul, that I forgot
That I had bodily eyes, and what I saw
Appear’d like something in myself, a dream,
A prospect in my mind.
(No room for argument there, then!)