15^th October 2015 “The dwindling light of sunset in one sphere is the new hope of dawn in the next.”

Photo taken on 15^th October 2015 at Butley Priory “Gazing at the ceiling”

Photo taken on 15^th October 2015 at Butley Priory “Little dog, Big tree”

I was asked for clarity on the points I made yesterday. I love that; what did it mean? If I tell you what it means to me then that’s one thing but what does it mean to you?

It sounds depressing; that human life is a web of stories of brokenness. I don’t find it depressing; in fact I find it incredibly liberating to realize that my personal scripts of feelings of complete inadequacy and untouchability may be the reasons I feel so separate and alone but in fact unite me with my fellow humans; we all feel like that from time to time; it is the human condition. What does it mean to me as I ponder on Life and Creation at the beginning of these 9 months? It means I have to be prepared to accept that whatever is born through my creative endeavours: the metaphorical baby… is not going to be perfect. And nor will it make up for any feelings of imperfection that plague me in the dark corners of the night.

Today I heard the tale of Valhalla and that the ancients believed that upon death they crossed the ever distant horizon.  

I wonder to myself how many people would want a birthkeeper so comfortable with death as I am and yet I feel the two topics inseperable as the dwindling light of sunset in one sphere is the new hope of dawn in the next… and wait the night out long enough and that same dawn will come again in this.

Today we created together. 3 of us in a small studio, a little dog, an “abundance” candle. With no rehearsal nor preparation we just gave each other a nod and did it. An album in a day. Watch this space.

“From simply Being into human being we are by nature born into a world that believes in brokenness”

Conscious that the creative flame is alight within me the colours of the city seem to jostle for attention. The so called “news” paper tells me nothing new but, for some reason, reaches deep into my heart to try to break me with stories of brokenness. My emotions are heightened and tears are close; both of joy and pain; I meet a friend who tells me a tale of her journey through the illusions of incompleteness and damage; perfectly reflecting to me our oneness. At the supreme level all is and is not; nothing can be destroyed nor broken. In our coming from simply Being into human being we are by nature born into a world that believes that we can be broken and thus we are; our fragile frames (of body and mind) are destined to weather the trials of life; pain and death an inevitability. These trials are but rites of passage if conscious but deep suffering if not. A belief in time and the promise of future happiness at the root of our pain; the secret release in the present moment; closer to us than our very skin. At that crossroads of doing and being is the conception of Creation. The timeless time is now and the placeless place is here.

I came across the signposts in my day’s pilgrimage. How fortunate are we indeed to be able to frolic in the mysteries of birth and death for there it is we become aware of life.

“How fortunate are you

and I, whose home

is timelessness: we who

have wandered down

from fragrant mountains

of eternal now

to frolic in such mysteries

as birth

and death a day

(or maybe even less)”

EE Cummings (photo taken 14^th October 2015 at Neal’s Yard, Covent Garden)

“Dorothy Richardson (1873 – 1957)

Dorothy Richardson was the author of Pilgrimage, a sequence of 13 novels which emphasized the nature of the female experiences.

Her style of writing was called “stream of consciousness” because she wrote without regard to punctuation, sentence length and language convention to create a feminine prose as she felt this was more of an expression of female experience.

She became associated with the Bloomsbury Group and in particular was a friend of HG Wells.

She was also a journalist and wrote on a wide range of subjects as well as translating books from French and German into English”

(Photo taken on 14^th October 2015 at Woburn Walk, Euston)

At the crossroads of doing and being, in balance, creation IS...

At some point we are neither willing seed nor rich soil but an idea. We were all once just an idea. Well, not “just” an idea: from the whirling infinite colours of eternal potential came an impulse to take form. The great cosmic cogs of heaven whirr into action; Mother Earth softens and calls out laying herself fertile and the Spirit visits upon her flesh. Where there is that meeting of Doing and Being, the balance of both, thus Creation is. And whether we take this literally as the miracle of conception or whether we are entering into the gestation of our art. It all begins as an idea and an impulse from chaos into order; from formless into form; from infinite to finite, from spirit into flesh, from God into human-ness.

And thus was conceived this blog (to become a book I believe)… from a colourful mass of potential, ideas have started to take form. As I embark on training as a birthkeeper I wondered how my calling could meet my childless state and find meaning and this idea emerged. Take 9 months, pilgrim, to travel where the ancestors and the west wind guide you. From the seed of this idea what resource may emerge? I don’t know. But I embrace the journey.