The strange invention of boredom

In the general open house of the holiday season I was visited by a dear friend and her daughter. As always our home had numerous books scattered around. Looking at them the daughter said, "You know, I have never read a book except when told to do so at school." Then her mother said, "Neither have I". I am now going to misquote something I half caught on the TV recently making it my own. "Humans are amazingly inventive. In a world full of magic, mystery and wonder they managed to invent boredom."

Goddess has given us so much, the gift of life itself, an appreciation of beauty, music and dance, love and friendship. But above all a world shot through with beauty, magic, mystery and wonder. The world is so full of these things that you could contemplate a single flower for months and be no where near understanding its beauty. In such a world it should be impossible to be bored. There is just so much mystery and beauty and if the natural occurrence of these things is not enough then so much of them have been distilled into books just waiting to be opened and read. We are human precisely because we tell stories and in telling stories touch the divine.

At the end of the year I give thanks for the delights of life, love, friends, family and work. May 2010 be open to beauty, magic, mystery and wonder.

Solstice blessings

On a dark, black night,
Love lights a lamp.
You can’t hear the voice
of the One whose love
carries your heart away.
Forests, marshes,
the deep tanglewood
where one fears wild beasts
with every breath:
those whose love is perfect
will cross wastelands, seas,
the dark forests of the heart.

Bo, this is so beautiful

Solas

Its just four o'clock in the afternoon. It is snowing and already quite dark. The days are so short now and it has become increasingly hard to get up in the morning. I'm a natural worker, I really enjoy what I do and take a delight in doing it well. There isn't less work to do just because it is mid-winter and natural rhythms are beating slow. There is a need to take care. To give thanks that I am able to do the work I really enjoy. To give thanks for a loving partner, gifted children and a beautiful grand daughter. To give thanks for friends. To delight in being able to return home tonight and sit by the hearth with a lighted candle and spend a little time communing with the Goddess.

Earlier this week I despatched some material I had designed and printed for the Goddess Temple. A small way of helping to support something I hold very dear. So many things have happened this year - most of them wonderful, the birth of a grand daughter, the marriage of a son, a visit to the Outer Hebrides. Some of them, not so good - breaking my femur and the long recovery. Though such things are a reminder of how dependent we are on the skill and care of others and how thankful we should be for the miracle of our bodies. Sadly I haven't been able to visit the Goddess Temple since January and I am missing contact with the sacred space and friends. Hopefully the New Year will see personal contact renewed.

A dear friend took the photo above while in Cornwall last week and sent it, "with great love, thoughts and good wishes for a gentle season of Christmas and Solstice and Yuletide and New Year and anything else you think of celebrating". A beautiful reminder that soon we arrive at that still point known as Solstice when the sun pauses in the sky before beginning the long climb north. If we didn't know in our bones that in six months it will be light for over 18 hours day we might hardly dare believe it. But it will be so. All will be well and all manner of things will be well.

The same is true of Copenhagen. As always the so called leaders falter and fall. But we give thanks for thousands - if not millions - of ordinary people who really do care for the future. In the word of Desmond Tutu, “We marched in Berlin, and the wall fell. We marched for South Africa, and apartheid fell. We marched at Copenhagen - and we WILL get a Real Deal.”