Having been inspired by Mark’s reading from Living Druidry the other week I went out and bought it. Read it in one sitting (sitting was the operative word. I sat up till 3am, but never mind). Have other people read it? What did they think? I was fascinated by it and had a lot of contradictory feelings. In some ways very envious because Emma Restall Orr seems to have not only a very sympathetic husband but also endless access to a forest, which would be my idea of absolute heaven. Also in some ways I was very depressed by it because it rather seemed to imply that you couldn’t really get close to the kind of intensity which constitutes real Druidry unless you could do all those kinds of things she did ie spend hours and hours and hours just being and communing and listening, alone and undisturbed by other people and their demands, and how on earth do 99 out of 100 of us manage that? At the same time, I felt very inspired, because I did kind of understand her approach and totally agreed with her ideas about Deity and her utter passion for the natural world. It made me cry. Did anyone else have strong feelings about this book?!
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I own it. I loved it. Her other book, Druid Priestess, makes me cry. In a good way.
I feel challenged and inspired by Emma’s words and by her utterly committed way of living. You have to remember she is a priestess and sitting and communing is basically part of her job. And most of us don’t manage that. But I can dream!
Inspiring me to live with my spirits, challenging me to look at my life and in how many ways it is still not consistent with my beliefs, challenging my beliefs and making me think. It is because of reading Emma Restall Orr that I am now on this path. That more than anything else. She’s awesome.
I am on the waiting list (!) to do her Living Druidry course in 2006. 2005 has been booked up forever.
Comment by hilde — 3/3/2005 @ 11:23 pm
I just read Philip’s comment in the Touchstone about what Druids believe in, and he defined a Druid as someone living fully in the here and now. For me, that sums it up quite nicely. And if I could achieve that in my everyday life, that would be great. I sometimes dream about a life where I can spend hours like Emma, but ultimately, I think the stronger challlenge is really to live here and now, and enjoying it, rather than retreating to the forest. We all have that tendency, it seems, and I try very hard to work against it. When I decided to leave Germany, I had in mind someplace in Irland or rural England, for exactly the same reasons – I wanted to retreat and listen to Nature. For the first two years in London, I actually hated the Goddess for putting me here. But now, I have understood that she did this for a purpose – I need to learn that the Land is still here, even under all the hustle and the stones, and I can listen here as well, and make a difference. That was a valuable lesson…
And even though I would leave London rather today than tomorrow, given the chance, I still love and cherish being here. There is different people for differnt tasks – Emma has found her way with Nature – maybe ours is here?
Comment by Petra — 30/3/2005 @ 4:46 pm
Hm, being fully in the here and now is really hard! I haven’t read the latest Touchstone properly yet, I’ll check out that article. A lot of the time I hate my here and now and want to drift away from it, escape it any way I can. Sometimes that’s because the here and now is so mundane and endless trivia from other people crowd in on you all the time, demanding things of you, so it;s impossible to meditate, or listen to silence.
Comment by francesca — 30/3/2005 @ 10:18 pm
Ha now, living in the present. The ever-impossilbe thing that is also the one thing I seem to have to learn. On this subject I find a series of three little books very helpful. They are by a lady who uses the name Oriah Mountain Dreamer (don’t worry, she takes the piss out of that herself!). The books are _The Invitation_, _The Dance_ and _The Call_. Especially _The Call_ is specifically on living with the here and now and not fighting what is, but letting it be, allowing it to be. I find Oriah just about as inspiring as Bobcat, without the psychic talents (so possibly more attainable for us ordinary humans).
Yeah. Being here and now. The thing with that is that here and now you can’t escape the negative feelings that might surface. You have to face them in the here and now as well. And that can be dead scary.
Comment by hilde — 31/3/2005 @ 3:39 pm
Oh I hadn’t heard of her before, Hilde, I shall look out for those books! I’ve just looked at Philip C-G’s editorial in fact, and and, have to admit that, though being in the here and now is one, very good, goal to aim for, and is compatible with love and wisdom, I absolutely can’t agree it’s compatible with creativity. Most creative endeavours require physical and mental time, space, peace, freedom to go inwards and find inspiration to compose one’s music, poetry or whatever. Hence the legendarily difficult and rather selfish temperaments of so many artists in all media and the terrible problems women have faced when they get married and/or have children and try to carry on their art too. The here and now involves other people, and you can very rarely manage to paint a masterpiece in the five minutes you might happen to have spare between getting the childrens’ tea and doing the washing up! As the saying goes – ‘The only organ Mrs Bach would have had time for was her husband’s…’
Comment by francesca — 31/3/2005 @ 9:59 pm
Sorry if that last comment went a bit off-topic – didn’t mean it to sound sexist either – just that the here and now is getting me down a bit at the mo.
Comment by francesca — 31/3/2005 @ 10:01 pm
Francesca, I think Oriah would probably say that if the here and now is getting you down that much, it’s telling you something needs changing. I know, I know. Easier said than done.
Comment by hilde — 1/4/2005 @ 8:35 am
I liked Druid Priestess too. I think living in the now means riding the ebbs and flows of the world, being attuned and in tune with the rhythms of the world around. I find I have a considerable amount of work to do to create this attunement in my own life, and I suspect this is very typical. I have most definitely found that working with the exercises in the gwersi has helped, both the Bardic grade and the beginning of the Ovate grade. In one sense I think this issue is the ’stuff’ of which all the rest of the work is made. As for creativity: I think the gwersi are remaking my notion of what creation might be. Creating beauty in the moment, perhaps that is the essential creation. And I find myself changed so that strange, highly original (for me) thoughts pop into my head at a greater frequency than they did a few years ago.
Perhaps what Philip meant was the kind of creation which is a synthesis of apparent opposites. It seems to me that the sense of frustration you feel is marking some kind of conflict within yourself. The synthesis of both sides of this conflict as part of the process of owning of the whole of yourself is one of the aims of Druidry.
Hope some of this makes sense: it is difficult to talk about clearly.
Comment by Daniel — 1/4/2005 @ 9:26 pm
I think I sort of know what you mean Daniel. And Hilde, yes I know you’re right too. It’s where to start that’s the difficulty!
Comment by francesca — 13/4/2005 @ 6:50 pm