Orkney Goddess?

Orkney Today has just reported that Scotland's earliest human figure has been found at an Historic Scotland excavation at the Links of Notland on the island of Westray. The figure is carved from sandstone and measures just 3.5cm by 3cm so it can easily be held in the hand. A pair of circles representing breasts can clearly be seen and the body carries typical neolithic crossed markings. The Scotsman adds a possible date to the story saying the figurine is between 4,500 and 5,000 years old.

Dancing at Lughnasa

Donegal, Eire

It seems a long time since I last contributed to this blog. Winter has given way to the delights of Spring and today the sun shines joyously upon newly blooming daisies. Truth is I have had a lot of work come in which in a recession has to be a joy in itself. I do enjoy my work. To be doing something creative that I love is itself a great blessing. In the midst of all the work I did manage to take time out to travel to London to see Brian Friel's play, Dancing at Lughnasa at The Old Vic.

The Old Vic is a little gem, almost two hundred years old, small enough to be intimate and now set up for theatre in the round. The stage play of Dancing at Lughnasa entirely takes place in the Kitchen and garden of a croft outside the village of Ballybeg (little town) in County Donegal. It is 1936 and the five Mundy sisters  barely make ends meet. Kate, a teacher at the local school, is the only wage earner. Agnes and Rose knit gloves at home to make a little money. Chris and Maggie have no income of their own. Catholic propriety is the order of the day in a closed world. Yet beyond the kitchen is another world that even now is breaking in. 

The play opens with the revelation that the sisters got their first wireless set that summer. "Maggie - she was the joker of the family - she suggested we give it a name. She wanted to call it Lugh after the old Celtic God of the Harvest ... But Aunt Kate - she was a national schoolteacher  and a very proper woman - she said it would be sinful to christen an inanimate object with any kind of name, not to talk of a pagan god." But this 'inanimate object' is the dwelling of the spirit of dance. It brings music into a home, into womens' lives. The music makes them dance and, as their feet leave the kitchen floor, unquenchable passions are released. 

The five sisters have a brother, Jack, a missionary priest who has spent all his adult life in Africa. In 1930's Donegal poor unmarried sisters have little status in the community. To have a brother who is a priest, a living saint who has devoted his life to lepers gives them a place in society. It is the festival of Lughnasa, harvest time, a time to dance, find a partner, gather in.

Jack returns home from the missions but all is not as it seems. Fintan O'Toole writes, "Friel spent two years between the ages of 16 and 19 at Maynooth training for the priesthood, and he later called it 'an awful experience' that 'nearly drove me cracked.'"

Jack has been sent home in disgrace and Kate is soon to lose her position as a teacher for Jack has discovered something beautiful in Africa. As the time of the pagan festival of Lughnasa plays out in Donegal Jack says, "Or maybe to offer sacrifice to Obi, our Great Goddess of the Earth, so that the crops will flourish ... we have two very wonderful ceremonies: the Festival of the New Yam and the Festival of the Sweet Casava; and they are both dedicated to our Great Goddess, Obi ... We light fires ... and then we dance - and dance - and dance - children, men, women ... dancing, believe it or not, for days on end! It is the most wonderful sight you have ever seen! ... Oh, yes the Ryangans are a remarkable people: there is no distinction between the religious and the secular in their culture. And of course their capacity for fun, for laughing, for practical jokes - they've such open hearts."

At Lughnasa the Mundy family harvest their passions and then all is scattered to the winds. Jack's 'disgrace' means Kate loses her teaching job. A new factory opens and home knitting becomes a thing of the past. With the family income gone Agnes and Rose leave to find work in England. Jack longs for pagan Africa and dies within the year. Yet dance has brought with it true humanity, blessed freedom of spirit, the release of passion, the blessing of the Great Goddess of the Earth. The play ends with these words, " When I remember it, I think of it as dancing. Dancing with eyes half closed because to open them would break the spell. Dancing as if language had surrendered to movement - as if this ritual, this wordless ceremony, was now the way to speak, to whisper private and sacred things, to be in touch with some otherness. Dancing as if the very heart of life and all its hopes might be found in those assuaging notes and those hushed rhythms and in those silent and hypnotic movements. Dancing as if language no longer existed because words were no longer necessary."

Remembering how to move

Joy, a group of us are spending the whole Samhain weekend exploring sacred dance. For me dance is liberation, it is subversive, it is passion, it is magic.

Time and time again authorities of one kind or another have tried to regulate or even ban dance. They have claimed it is immoral, that it is wrong for women and men to move together. They have shunned the body and denied its beauty and grace. They have feared the renewal and change that dance brings. They have recoiled from the idea that creation is danced into being and have tried to convince us to accept the unchanging word incised in stone instead.

If dance was denied me I would do everything I could to subvert that law. I would sway with the trees, move with the leaves, dance with my eyes as I watch the butterfly. I would dance with my very breath. In utter stillness I would be one with the dance of the genes within me.

The mistrust of dance in the major religions of the world is a symptom of the fact that they have, by and large, forgotten how to move. If you dance you move, adjust, change, discover new ways of being, new patterns in the world. Inerrant scripture and fixed law deny the truth that we live in an ever changing universe where all life is constantly adapting, changing, evolving. Our genes are not fixed. If they were we would stagnate and die. Thankfully they have not forgotten that they were danced into being by the Goddesses and Gods and they will continue to dance until the end of time.

And here is the heresy major religions fear. As we dance and move and change with the Goddesses and Gods our imaginations expand and we touch the mystery of being, of divinity of sex and creation. In so doing we become free to re-invent the Goddesses and Gods as they link hands and bodies with us in the dance of life, wonder, magic and renewal. Dance opens us wide to new possibility.

And the bird sang

This morning I settled down for some quiet meditative time. Very soon the sound of a single bird singing drifted through the window. My first rather selfish thought was that the quiet had been broken but then the song was strangely beautiful. Soon the song became the focus of my meditation. I have no way of knowing what it must be like to be a bird. Yet the bird's song was entering my heart. 

Then the thought struck me. This bird was being utterly true to itself. It was singing its own song. It was singing with all the grace and beauty, talent and gifts at its disposal. It was proclaiming its life to the world. I am here, alive, in this place, on this morning and it is good, it is very good.

Surely this is what the Goddess asks of us all. That we sing our own song, dance our own dance of life. That we do it with grace and beauty. That we are thankful for our gifts, for our freedom. That we rejoice in the present moment and the present place - not only because they are all we have - but because they are very good.

And so I thanked the bird for all she had shown me and my heart flew.

Keeper of the Hearth

Brighid of the Mantle, encompass us,
Lady of the Lambs, protect us,
Keeper of the Hearth, kindle us.
Beneath your mantle, gather us,
And restore us to memory.

Mothers of our mother,
Foremothers strong.
Guide our hands in yours,
Remind us how
To kindle the hearth.
To keep it bright,
To preserve the flame.
Your hands upon ours,
Our hands within yours,
To kindle the light,
Both day and night.

The Mantle of Brighid about us,
The Memory of Brighid within us,
The Protection of Brighid keeping us
From harm, from ignorance, from heartlessness.
This day and night,
From dawn till dark,
From dark till dawn.

Walking the labyrinth

Last Saturday dawned bright and clear in the gentle late January light. Now is a time to look forward expectantly to the beautiful festival of Imbolc, sacred to the Goddess Brighid. High on the Howardian Hills to the north of York there lies a turf labyrinth cut in the traditional seven circuit Caerdroia pattern. I love to go there and walk the labyrinth as a journey with the Goddess, a little act of love. The journey to this remote spot was truly evocative of Imbolc. Snowdrops in full bloom dotted the verges. They look so tiny and vulnerable but they possess such spiritual strength. The first willow katkins were bursting from the branches and the light was truly beautiful. Blessed be the Goddess for the sheer beauty of this season. May we all be touched by Brighid as we welcome Her to our hearth and home.