Wild Ethics

Here is a wonderful and beautifully constructed website to share, The Alliance for Wild Ethics. The home page contains only these words,

"We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human."

The section Why Wild? begins:

"Wildness is the earthy, untamed, undomesticated state of things - open ended, improvisational, moving according to its own boisterous logic. That which is wild is not really out of control; its is simply out of our control... beyond our ability to fully map with our theories or fully fathom with our thoughts"

The section Why Ethics? begins:

"Although 'ethics' is commonly equated with a set of rules or principles for right conduct, for us ethics has more to do with a simple humility towards others - an attentive openness not just toward other persons but towards the inexhaustible otherness of the manifold beings that compose this living world."

See why I am excited? Lots of essays and resources to explore in quiet moments - bliss!

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.

A walk in ancient woodland

It is good to take a walk in ancient woodland, a place where light and vision are filtered by the presence of trees. Here is beauty aplenty. Here is the surge of life nurtured by the very Earth Herself. Here is a deep ancient presence. For all the beauty ancient woodland remains a wild place. The bears, wolves and boar may be long gone but wild energy remains as strong as ever.

Trees have a very special presence which is immediately apparent as you walk beneath their overarching branches. To pass under the shade of some trees is to find a place out of time where all seems different. It is as if the whole of reality is here mediated by the tree.

I love this picture I took recently of fallen trees like guardian spirits. The wild garlic turning their leaves in adoration and filling the air with the fragrance of their incense. Such scenes are an important reminder that there is much that we cannot and should not control. A reminder to ask permission to step into the presence of such ancient energy. A reminder to honour the spirits with prayer and offering.

Truth is we need to honour boundaries and accept that we are totally dependent upon the fecund power of our Earth. Our lives are bounded by womb and tomb imaged in our own homes by threshold and hearth. Humanity has overstepped so many boundaries, destroyed so much woodland from the cedar forests of Lebanon to the rain forests of South East Asia. We have become so addicted and dependent on the oil left by the forests of deep deep history that we would kill our grandmothers and deny our grandchildren life in order to obtain our next fix. But the ancient woodland has the power to bring us back to reality if only we look, listen, feel, face our fears and let the guardian spirits touch our imagination.

Present in the present

February has definitely been a month of changes. The temperature has risen as high as 17C and has fallen as low as -9C. There have been sunny days with bright blue skies and barely a breeze. There have been days when thick dark cloud has rushed along the skies as if they expected no tomorrow. There have been times of incredible beauty; especially after several days of sub-zero temperatures. Days when every tree and bush was adorned in sparkling white array. Every day there has been some new sign of life. An earlier sunrise. A later sunset. Crocuses and daffodils and the first signs of green.

To be alive is to be open to change. To live with the Goddess is to be utterly present to change. To be aware of the changing patterns of the moon and the planets, the hours and the seasons, cold and heat, light and colour is to delight in Her. To be conscious of the effects of these changes - small and large, change within change, in a myriad complex patterns - on my own body is to honour Her in my very self.

Some speak of past paradise. Some speak of future heaven. But we are present in the present which is the gift of the Goddess. The present is full of wonder and beauty and magic. It is ever changing, ever unfolding. It is utterly sacred to Her. It is Her present to us and She expects us to delight in it. To align my spiritual practice with the cycles of nature, life and my own body is completely natural. It feels absolutely right. It uplifts the spirit and makes me want to savour every single moment; to dance in joy and thanksgiving. 

Awakening Earth

On Saturday my wife led a day of sacred dance to celebrate the awakening earth. There is something unutterably beautiful about dancing with others to honour the sacred. For me dance is the herstory of creation; In the beginning was the dance and the dancer was a woman. Sacred dance heals, empowers and brings unity and joy.

The world and faith seem to have been seduced by the word. But the word divides - Credo, I believe - but what of those who don't? What about the guilt of not believing it all yourself? The word takes away our freedom by codifying dogma. The word makes us passive as we sit quietly and listen.

Dance unites - it unites those who dance together in the circle, it expects no credo other than a belief in our common humanity, it takes us back through generations of mothers and fathers to the first outpouring to the sacred tens of thousands of years ago. Dance makes us free, it carries no dogma, it brings profound power and healing. Dance makes us active in every sense as we embrace space and time with our whole bodies.

It is so sad that the patriarchal religions of the word are so suspicious of dance. Maybe they cannot abide the freedom and empowerment it brings? Maybe deep down they still see active, moving, raptured bodies as sinful? Maybe it is that women have always been the real power of dance? But that is their loss and I embrace the freedom, the grace, the beauty, the power and the rapture that dance brings. The sense that we are all divine parts of the one circle of life I know as Goddess.