Woodland Bard

This year, 12 Omens after Christmas has become quite a trend  Spreading around the social media, especially Facebook. I also see there are some opportunist pop up workshops available to explain this, some of them quite expensive. I was just looking at a packet of ‘just add water’ soda bread making kit, and chuckling, because anyone who makes soda bread knows how its such a quick and easy thing to do, and with better results than these packet kits. So here is the DIY soda bread style approach to this year’s trend of 12 Omens after Christmas. So what is this ‘When Time Stands Still’ lark? It is promoted as Celtic but seems to have Babylonian origins, like most calibrated arts such as mathematics, astronomy, and navigation. Starting point of all of this is the point of Winter Solstice. The Gregorian Time worshipers rigidly stick to 21st December for this observance, no matter what Sidereal Time calculations, of seemingly Babylonian origin, present. Even megalithic new stone

While cutting onions, and their released zest bringing me to tears, I sometimes think that is an incredible image of human spiritual journey. Its as if each layer of onion is the shedding of limiting habits, routine, and guilt jangling belief systems. Perhaps ‘think outside the box’ should be ‘think outside the onion’, and I have yet to work out what ‘push the envelope’ is all about. Ahh, our journey to Clarity?  Our quest to lose baggage and disconnected gunk in our minds? Our eternal questions about ‘truth’ and ‘reality’, as if we can manicure them into a nice clean airy light glass closet in our mind. Identity? That entanglement of ideas that we work to click together like a Lego building project. Through all of this weaving we seem to know who we are but struggle to find ways to express this through words and deeds. Overall, this is the major motivation on humans to constantly make things. As I write this, it is winter, I contracted an infection that bedbounded me

It’s unwind day and leftover’s day after Christmas. USA people back to work, except civil servants. For some, it’s Boxing Day from a tradition of servants who worked on Christmas Day getting their day off,  Read on ... A day of masters and mistresses fending for themselves, and sometimes gifting their servants ... But for Ireland, and some other countries, it’s St. Stephen’s Day or Wran Day, Wren’s Day, with seemingly sinister customs that are muddled and not clear. The simple story is that wrens are, well were, killed as revenge for twittering to reveal St. Stephen hiding in the bush, who was killed and became a martyr for spreading the Christian gospels. If Christ was alive, I do not think he would be happy with a religion named after him where members killed wrens. Old folklore of wrens?  I resist saying pagan. Its vague. There is the Aesops Fable of the wren winning the highest bird award from flying on Eagle’s back then flying higher, then also winning the lowest

The darkest night has passed Light the fire, for light to last Kindling the nourishing flame within Sharing our toasting for our kin Could I share with you around a hearty table, Love, dreams, laughter as we are able To fortify against darkness, for a moment For love, joy, and escape from forced atonement Woodland Bard event dates Please support our Labyrinth Gardens work as a Patron from a dollar, a euro, a month ... Become a Patron!

The imagining, the imaging, the inspiration, the longing and the expecting All so fragile, sometimes arriving shattered But from all this escapes a dancing, beckoning, embracing light of unwrapped, untied devotion to who we are when we are naked. Anticipation, the deceptive brute that distracts our senses with its menaces gifting a blinded genesis that kills a romance And we become the villain that becomes spurned and driven to stop and bathe in love given Anticipation, awed by another being a father or mother wishing to be that secret lover we urge to discover And we become the bubble accused of toil and trouble if we bounce light when we wobble Each day, my pulse beats heartier Betraying my need for calm Tonight she comes again That darkest night has past and all anxiety becomes forgiven. I now relish every second Because her stay with me is way beyond Light that any moon can wax and form Light that calms every storm into an agonising bliss of beli

Its after 10:23pm on 21st December 2018 here, the point the whole world crosses the Winter Solstice point. Added to that is the night of a Full Moon, that many call Cold Moon after a Native America interpretation. But to many ancient Europeans this is the Oak Moon ... please read more ... It’s not the Norse-Saxon Oak word that gives this meaning, but the Gàidhlig language sound that eventually became scribed as Duir, Dui, or Drui, depending on your scribe. Like most Gàidhlig words they are not referring to things but conditions. Duir the Oak is a mediation condition balancing dark and light, overseeing accountability, and in modern terms is a doorway tree. To have the Oak Moon, Duir Moon, at the point of Solstice is so beautifully symbolic. The Oak is a kind of Janus symbol, and Janus archways should be built with Oak for us to pass through but never see the faces of past and future at each end. Solstice, the meeting of the low tide of light

The flow of an underground river Seeks to find a place to release And become a pool somewhere. A silent pool that may heal And even fulfil a thirst. The touch of a human creation, The scent of a woman blessed onto this earth, Hopefully with love to share with the sun. In silence without spoken words, In the presence of presence , Fearless trust in a weaving stillness That permits all senses to connect. Softly without inspirations through language Of all that flows through each moment The softness and sense of motion Being like the barely intruding Passage through water That conducts the fish to weave Among themselves, without thought Of where they are going , Only of each moment of where they are. The sunlight bathes in the water To charge all senses into More intense vision, but without anxiety. Through winter I long to make love with that woman But I hold patience for that journey shared The slow flow through the cavities of earth and form Until a dry

“A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, the one I feed the most.”