How to convey the distinctive experience of a Gathering? Perhaps you come for a group initiation, having already performed the solo rite.
initiates and officiators, after the Bardic initiations
ECG initiated 10 Bards, 4 Ovates, and 1 Druid in three rituals over the four-day weekend.
Nearly-full moon on the night of Ovate initiations — photo courtesy Gabby Roberts
Or maybe the title of a particular workshop or the reputation of a presenter draws you. Though registration records for ECG show that each year about 40% of the attendees are first-timers, guest speakers and musicians play a role in swelling the numbers of multi-year attendees.
Kris Hughes
Returning special guest Kristoffer Hughes gave two transformative talks: “Taw, Annwfn and the Hidden Heart of Awen”, and “Tarot Masterclass”.
The first talk effectively conveyed how awen is much more than we typically conceive it. As the “Heart-song of the World”, it pervades existence, from Annwfn, often translated as the Celtic “Otherworld” but more accurately rendered the “Deep World” (which the Welsh word literally means), through Abred — this world we live in and conventionally treat as reality, and which Annwfn underpins, all the way through Gwynfyth and Ceugant. As for “the hidden magic that swims within the currents of Awen”, excerpted from the description of the talk on the ECG website, awen is available to us and links us to other beings resting and moving in the Song. And “one practice that can open these connections is to sing to things. Sometimes trees talk, and sometimes they listen. Especially when we sing to them. And we may find they sing back”, Kris remarked.
With his characteristic wit and insight, Kris illustrated parallels between the secular Welsh eisteddfod bardic competitions and the work and practice of Druidry. We want to practice ways to increase the flow of awen, whether we’re poets in a competition or living our everyday lives. “You’re Druids. You’re busy. You’ve got sh*t to do and trees to talk to”.
At the height of the bardic competition, if no poems that year meet the eisteddfod standard, the eisteddfod assembly hears the terrible cry of the Archdruid — “There is no awen here. Shame!” But in most years, when a winner does succeed and is crowned, the Archdruid “whispers a secret into the Bard’s ear, changing him or her forever. Learn what that secret is”. The “appeal of the secret” flourishes long after childhood; Kris remarked that the secret is a three-vowel chant a-i-o, one form of the “sound of the awen”, without consonants, which cut off the flow of sound. So we practiced vowels, with Kris remarking that even the word awen itself, minus the final -n, can serve very well as one form of the chant.
What of the taw of the talk title? It’s the Welsh word for silence, or more especially, tranquillity, translatable, Kris writes in a related blogpost, “as a deep inner silence, stillness and peacefulness … not simply the external expression or desire for Hedd (peace) alone, but rather how Hedd transforms the internal constitution of the individual. And to achieve this we utilise Taw“.
I took extensive notes for the Tarot talk, for which Kris relied to some degree on his Celtic Tarot book, but for this talk on awen and taw, I listened. Kris writes, “Taw is when I sit in the woods, or on the edge of my local beach, with starlight painting dreams in the night sky. Within it I sit in the delicious currents of Awen and allow it to flow through me. What sense I make of that comes later. How can I hope to bring Hedd into the world if I cannot find the Hedd within myself? If I cannot inspire myself, how on earth can I inspire anyone else? I need Taw to cause me to remember who I am and what I am”.
And he closed this talk, saying, “I’ve been Kristoffer Hughes, and you’ve been … the awen”.
Image at Llywellyn Press site for Celtic Tarot:
I include this because I asked Kris about his experiences with publishers and about where best to order the book (I like to meditate and ask if I need a particular book rather than buying it on the spot.) Kris said, “Through Llywellyn I earn about $1.40 for each book. Through Amazon, because of their deal with Llywellyn, I earn about 12 cents”. So if you’re inclined to purchase this stunning set and learn Kris’s no-nonsense and eminently usable techniques — “you don’t have to be psychic; you need to be able to tell stories, which is something Druids do” — bear those numbers in mind.
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This year for the first time, rather the ECG staff manning the kitchen, the Netimus Camp staff took over meals, freeing up camp volunteers and doing an excellent job of feeding and nourishing us.
Chris Johnstone’s Sound Healing workshop greeted us Thursday, the first day, an excellent antidote to the stresses of travel to reach the camp, and a reminder, always needed, that we never abandon foundational practices of centering and meditation, ritualizing and balance.
“pasta awen” — Druid humor. Photo courtesy Russell Rench.
Gabby Roberts’ workshop, “Energy work–Grounding, Centering and Releasing”, deepened the reminder, and gifted us each with polished onyxes to take with us. “Awareness and Connection with the Land: A Druidic Perspective”, with Thea Ruoho and Erin Rose Conner, detailed the many unconscious moments we can transform in order to be more conscious and mindful living on the earth. Thea and Erin ended their talk with an invitation for us to recycle, burn in the fire circle, or give back the “sacred crap” we can accumulate, that litters our shelves and altars, but contributes no energy.
Gathering attendee prepping for Druid Staff workshop
I missed Christian Brunner’s provocatively titled “A Journey to the Very Old Gods” due to an important conversation I needed to continue; the same thing happened a second time with Frank Martinez’s “Connecting with the Plant Community Through a Druid’s Staff”. Thus go the rhythms of a Gathering, which for me, anyway, almost seem to require a rhythm that may take you away from one or two sessions to something or someone else, calling you with imperatives all their own.
Most days of the year, of course, we’re all solitaries, whether we practice alone by choice or necessity, or enjoy the intermittent company of a few others in a local Pagan community, an OBOD Seed Group, or a full Grove. Each day we greet the light and air and season, attend to bird and beast and bee and tree, and our own bodies and lives, and listen for that heartsong. So a Gathering, camp, retreat, etc., is no panacea, but it does give us a chance to reconnect, recharge, recalibrate what we do and where we’re heading. Its ripples persist after the “hour of recall” comes at the close of a Gathering.
On Saturday, the last evening, the ECG organizer announced at dinner that this 9th year of the Gathering has seen the fulfillment of its initial goals and will be the last year. ECG has served newcomers well, linked practitioners over the years, offered a family-friendly space (which not all camps choose to do), helped us forge friendships, seeded new camps and Gatherings — including Gulf Coast Gathering and Mid-Atlantic Gathering U.S. (MAGUS), and provided a supportive venue for group initiations for those wishing that experience.
A Council is already in place to help organize a new event that will launch next year, with new energy, goals, and intentions. As the organizer exclaimed, “Watch for it!”
OBOD standard ritual closes with these words: “As the fire dies down, may it be relit in our hearts. May our memories hold what the eye and ear have gained”.
A 4:34 video of the recent Gulf Coast Gathering by M. Fowler:
C. S Lewis titles a chapter in his book Mere Christianity “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe”, and there are many such clues. Much of spirituality consists in looking and listening long enough to perceive them.
Rather than a set of don’t’s, a livable spirituality consists mostly of do’s, if only because they give us a path of action rather than avoidance. Do try out what you’ve learned, do love other beings, do test your understanding of the universe against the universe itself and see where you can improve what you do, if only for the pure pleasure of the doing. Do watch for patterns and spirals, do celebrate when you can, because much passes by, never to return. Do drink deep, because with or without you, life keeps brewing marvels.
Love and timing: two powerful ways to live which — combined — work even better. Each is a mode of dancing with life, rather than resisting it. Feel the sway of your lover’s back, note the slight change in pressure of your lover’s arms, and be ready to move on into the next steps. Part and return, part and return again. These bodies wear out anyway. Why darken the changes with unneeded stress, violence and worry?
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In a post from late 2014 I invoked Brid and Ogma for a tongue, and over time received a set of them, Hurundib and Fizaad and Hodjag Rospem, among them conlangs for my fiction, as well as impetus for my Facebook group that practices Old English and among other things right now is reading Peter Baker’s Old English translation of Alice in Wonderland/Æðelgyðe Ellendæda on Wundorlande.
Ask, and it shall be given — just usually not in the limited way I’ve set up. Make my parameters too narrow, in fact, and I effectively shut off the very thing I seek. How often that’s happened to me I can’t begin to count, even in retrospect. Sometimes (most of the time?) our prayers need escape clauses. When I learn to give Spirit room to work through its endless forms and wisdom and energy (after all, it permeates all things, not just this middle-aged Druid), it’s amazing what results and can manifest. A home in the country, time to write, healing from cancer. It just took longer, with many more twists and turns to get there, than I’d planned: read that as “expected and thought I’d constrain the energy of the universe to manifest for me”.
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Today, wind and sun and cold — a defiance of anything the calendar has to say. Yet even and especially in the darkest and coldest of times, the promise of solstice: a fire burns at the heart of things.
Hail, then, Eternal Flame! May the awen, the gift of Brighid, the truth that nourishes lives and worlds, burn bright for you all.
Highland Oak Nemeton, Fontainebleau State Park in Mandeville, LA, the magic of assembled Druids, and a sunny weekend of Gulf Coast weather in the 70s and 80s worked their cumulative spell on the 50 or so attendees of this year’s OBODGulf Coast Gathering. The spirits of the land witnessed Druids from OR, CT, VT, PA, FL, TX, LA, NE, VA, MI and other states make their way to the south-central U.S.
image courtesy Steve Cole
The workshops explored the Gathering theme “Opening The Seven Gifts” of Druidry. OBOD offers a lovely 2:30 video that presents the Seven Gifts more attractively than a bald recital could.
Our presenters kept the topics lively, sharing insights and fielding comments. Druidry needs no “outside experts” — the spiritual path generates its own.
Nonetheless, it’s always a draw to have a visiting speaker — and once again we welcomed the always-fabulous Kristoffer Hughes, one of Her Majesty’s Coroners, author, professional actor, OBOD Druid, and head of the Anglesey Druid Order in the U.K.
Kris spoke on “When the Last Leaf Falls: Death, an Awfully Big Adventure”, examining Western attitudes toward, and treatment of, the dead, and ways Druids can respond creatively and spiritually to the frequently dysfunctional nature of the Western “death industry” and its dehumanizing and ecologically destructive practices. He also urged us to bring each other in on, and discuss, our own plans for our deaths, disposal of remains, and the types of memorials we want.
Kris during his talk — photo courtesy Kezia Vandilo
Dana dispelled stereotypes of magic during her evening talk around the fire our first night, the opening ritual fresh in our memories. The following morning Richard addressed the core of Druidry — getting back in touch with nature.
Richard and Dana
Lorraine helped many meet a new animal guide, Gabby drew us to consider healing, Jacob turned our thoughts to philosophy, and I explored the awen and the potentials for inspiration. Even if [below] my gesture at one point suggests a fish story — “the big one that got away”.
photo courtesy Kezia Vandilo
We initiated three Bards and five Ovates, held opening and closing rituals, along with the Seasonal Alban Eilir (Spring Equinox) ritual, went on nature walks, and visited the Seven Sisters Live Oak in nearby Mandeville, LA.
Below is our Welsh Druid guest communing with the tree, estimated to be over 1500 years old, and below that is a more distant shot to suggest something of its size.
John Beckett captured an image of the atmospheric Spanish moss parasitic on so many trees south of the Mason-Dixon line.
photo courtesy John Beckett
Storytellers and musicians, notably Jacob Pewitt and Brian Van Unen, made the slowly cooling evenings magical around the fire.
Jacob and Brian — photo courtesy John Beckett
What better way to leave behind the 18″ of snow in Vermont from the recent March nor’easter?!
Always, always, it’s the faces, the reunions, the collapse of miles between us, and the conversations that make each Gathering so memorable.
Don’t know anyone before you arrive? You will before you leave!
The first exercise or technique in my workshop and booklet for Gulf Coast Gathering this Saturday is “Forming an Intention.”
There’s a lot of talk these days about “being intentional”. And I wonder: Did past generations somehow do it better? Did they set about what they were doing with more awareness than we do? Or is that the point: we can do better today because we somehow “get” the importance of intention? Really, I doubt both of these things. You or I? Yes, you or I can do better. “We” meaning large numbers of people? Not so much, then or now. Where to place and focus effort?
I love that when I google “intention” the first two definitions that appear are “a thing intended” (classic dictionary-ese!) and “the healing process of a wound”. I click on the link and that specialized medical usage comes well down on the list of meanings. Can intention, handled well, help with healing? Is that what intention is, one way to understand it? Healing?
What if I approach each action as an opportunity for healing? Some intentions heal, some don’t, or hurt more than they help. Would this change how I intend?
This last weekend I attended a regular “second Saturday” spirituality study group that’s been ongoing now for several years. The book we read is less important than the group, the intentionality of a monthly meeting, the ongoing flowering of awareness that comes from it, and from practice of a set of spiritual exercises together and individually that open the doors of insight. One of the group members, Bill, said something last Saturday I knew I had to include, giving credit where it’s due, in the final draft of the Gathering booklet:
Intention is a description of the limits of manifestation.
This is a fruitful theme for contemplation. If you choose to use it that way, I’d recommend you stop reading now and come back later, after you’ve gained your own insights into its reach. What follows below are some of mine.
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Outdoors, the nor’easter that’s been named Stella (the “star” of the show, that’s for sure), has begun to blanket New England and the mid-Atlantic region with a classic March snow. Right now, at 9:00 am or so, the snowfall is still gentle and steady. Later it will strengthen, and rising winds will transform the world into a snowglobe both shaken and stirred. Meanwhile, the indomitable chickadees flit back and forth between the front yard feeder and the branches of the mountain ash.
Intention doesn’t guarantee any kind of “success”. That’s not its purpose. (Why do it then? I hear myself and some of you asking.)
But intention does invite a flow, form a mold, shape a potential, and let us exercise our sacred gift as transformers of Spirit. “Spirit must express itself in the world of matter,” writes John Michael Greer, “or it accomplishes nothing. Insights of meditation and ceremony gain their full power and meaning when reflected in the details of everyday life” (Greer. The Druidry Handbook, pg. 138).
For me, even more importantly, intention sets up a precedent of balance. It’s a handshake with Spirit, a gesture of welcome. Spirit needs our individuality to express itself. It’s what we are. But we also need Spirit to work through us, or “nothing happens”.
I set the intention of flying out to the Gathering and a nor’easter may intervene, changing an intention, cancelling flights, closing an airport, disrupting human routine. Part of the skill of setting intentions is releasing them, and then navigating through what comes. (Insisting on a particular intention can sometimes and temporarily shift all the factors in one’s favor, but the juice usually isn’t worth the squeeze. Doubt me? Don’t waste time arguing. Try it out for yourself. And as the universe sets about kicking you down the road, use your black and blues as a now-personalized theme for reflection.)
If you’re still wondering what value an intention has, look again at the situation, but this time without the particular intention. The nor’easter comes anyway, and whatever else I’m doing — intentions there, too — the storm still impacts them.
So one point I draw from this? I want to be intentional about my intentions. I’m constantly creating them anyway, manifesting constantly. I get up from bed. I make coffee. I build up the fire. I may “plan my day” or “wing it” as things unfold around me. That’s what it means to “have a life”. I just may be more or less conscious as I do, and have, and am.
But intention isn’t something that only I have, or set in motion all alone onstage. In a world of multitudinous beings, intentions constantly line up or come in conflict all around us.
“The intelligent universe longs for an equal partner” (Gary Lindorf. 13 Seeds. Northshire Press, pg. 21). I can ignore the marvelous energy of intention and still live. But not as richly, as full of love, or as magically. What does it mean to be an “intelligent partner” to life? Partner: not servant, not master.
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“Intention is the description of the limits of manifestation”. Each of us has a set of experiences and talents and insights that give us a personal key to being intentional. As with most things, being intentional isn’t a matter of “either-or” but a matter of “less-more”. What arethe limits of manifestation? Do I, does anyone, actually know? We make intention experimental — something to be explored.
In the last 40 minutes — it’s now 9:43 — the snow has intensified. An-inch-an-hour is nothing new for much of the northern U.S., but each time I “have time” or “make time” to watch, it never gets old. Like watching the tide, waves endlessly arriving on the shore. Repetition builds a universe. On one scale of things, you might call Stella a very “minor” event. Take a large enough view and almost everything turns small. The weather image of the continental U.S. shows the small portion affected. What does such a view offer? On a small enough scale, it’s all-encompassing. Here in southern Vermont, a cloud moving white in every direction.
It may seem strange to speak of “non-personal” events like weather in terms of intention, but then I think that the existence of anything forms or reveals its intention. After all, do I ever see snow except when it falls, or has fallen? That’s what snow is. And I imagine — intend — living more intentionally, living like snow, being an intention of Spirit, with the added and priceless human gift of witnessing as I do.
All right — I’ll admit the title-as-opaque-acronym is at least a little clickbaity. (I do like the “dig” in the middle of it — it fits one of the themes for this post.)
But more importantly, this is the question I find my life keeps asking, in ways both small and large. What next?
Large: like many cancer survivors, I monitor numbers from regular blood tests. The slow rise I’ve seen over the past 5 years in undesirable antigens means I can’t grow complacent. “Leave nothing on the table,” counsels an elder I know who’s grappling with dementia. A life lived within limits isn’t a disaster: from everything I’ve seen, it’s the only way life happens. Nobody “does it all”. (The young adult novel I’ve got one-third finished won’t get completed on its own. It’s up, and down, to me.)
Small: a Meetup group I’ve been nurturing patiently is finally large enough to gather for an Equinox/Ostara potluck. A member’s offered her home, and we’ve got several people committed to bringing a dish to pass. One more chance to practice savoring the shoots and leaves of new growth that spring makes its specialty.
In-between: unable to afford to buy a bigger house (we opted 9 years ago for small), or encouraged by any leads to move out of state for jobs, my wife and I focused on asking how to flourish where we are. She eventually found part-time work, and we built an addition to give us breathing room. I’m getting good writing ideas faster than I can get them on paper or screen.
How to survive, yes, of course. But how to thrive, the deeper quest.
Sometimes the big picture isn’t what I need, though I thought it was. Sometimes, instead, it’s just the next step, it’s the phone call I remembered to make this afternoon, it’s the contemplation or ritual tomorrow morning. It’s the short walk that reveals sudden green beneath melting snow. It’s the porcelain hare my aunt gave me 50 years ago.
I think “half a century” and don’t know what I feel. Then I think “half a century” again, and I say to myself, “I’m still here, still wondering what comes next”. I take the delicate figure down from the shelf and blow from its pink and white ears the dust from a season of wood stove ash. The picture’s not quite in focus, but my camera doesn’t do closeups any better. A piece of wisdom: it doesn’t have to be perfect.
And I open for the 100th time the demanding draft of a workshop I’ll be giving at Gulf Coast Gathering on “30 Days and Ways to Tap the Awen”.
Well, I remind myself, you asked for them. The inward sap bucket fills, after a winter’s dry season. Now the trick of a moment (a life): to open my heart wide enough to receive.
I google “fallow” and the first entry (from dictionary.com) reads:
(of farmland) plowed and harrowed but left unsown for a period in order to restore its fertility as part of a crop rotation or to avoid surplus production
(of a sow) not pregnant
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“Befores” we’re good at celebrating and often taking to extremes. Expectation ramps up busy-ness of all kinds. (Valentine’s chocolates and flowers fill cash registers even if they don’t always pair up hearts that hoped they would.) Imbolc gave us its foretaste, the simple melody that will add a harmony at the Equinox, then turn in its own time to a full-throated chorus at Beltane.
We know how hopes and dreams have inspired countless songs, battles, marriages, investments, acquiescence to impossibly long odds, and reams of bad verse. A longed-for future, person or event feeds endless fantasy and often remarkably sharp focus. Who hasn’t hungered for what seemed a sure thing? Advertising, debased popular magic that it is, targets us squarely in our weakest nooks and crannies with images and sensations built almost entirely of non-physical energies. We’ve almost all strapped ourselves into a jet-fueled “before” and launched ourselves heavenward.
In fact, anticipation draws many of us right into the astral plane where even the least imaginative among us find our inner senses heightened. “It’s so close I can almost taste it!” we exclaim. While it’s sight and hearing that line up to deliver the astral experiences we’re most accustomed to, every physical sense has its correlate — “As above, so below, dude!” whispers the demon in aviator sunglasses at my elbow. Ghostly encounters are filled with accounts of phantom limbs brushing our very physical bodies. Touched by god or devil, we know the planes open and blur at times. The “Great Eight” yearly festivals celebrate and take advantage of this palpable fact.
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after the snow stopped yesterday
“Afters” on the other hand arrive far less domesticated. The let-down, the hangover, the next morning, the wake-up, the harsh light of day, the after-glow, after-image, aftermath — we know these well, even as we watch the outgoing tide surge past our ankles, that current that promised so richly, so gloriously, but dropped us forlorn among all the other flotsam and jetsam on the shore.
Riding the wave is a core skill that can demand a lifetime to master. We know those life-acrobats and artists who can step away from the wreckage and carry on as if little to nothing has happened. With everyone around shaking their heads in envy-tinged astonishment. We also know others who never recover. We ourselves may be one or the other of these.
Next month at the Equinox, as a portion of a Gulf Coast Gathering workshop on the awen and tapping our creative potential for transformation, I’ll take on our fallow times and dark nights and blocked intervals. Where do we find again the slow-burning love that never truly leaves us? How do we rekindle, re-ignite, plant ourselves in the hearth of the cosmos, plug into the Original Generator? Where are the embers we can blow again to living flame?
Dream chalice, spirit guide, cauldron sound, inner sap bucket, fire mirror — slowly I gather items from my toolkit, from experiment and fumble and learning, for the booklet I’ll distribute at the workshop. With time and further focus, it may become a book. I’ve mentioned several of these techniques on this blog, and will continue with them in future posts. Guard the mysteries, constantly reveal them, as the old Craft saying goes. Fallow is its own energy. Fallow is the way back. Fallow is a sure guide.
Honoring the dark times, the brooding, the fecund blackness, the inky abyss, the low and listless is a potent part of turning with the cycle. I re-learn (and re-learn) how important it is to “hallow the fallow”. Sometimes a cycle that’s finished here announces a new one on another plane. Fat lot of help that is to me here, now, I grumble. But the astral and other planes herald changes that may only show up later on the physical plane, so it’s an excellent place to look for insight, to peer down the road a little. But meanwhile the work here can be precisely to enter the fallow as completely as possible. Rather than resisting and thereby delaying the fulfillment of the cycle, acquainted with griefs and grief as I am in my 50s, I finally let myself sink into it.
I’m not talking drama or pity-me. This time, as it happens, I mourn no great tragic loss, merely the accumulation of small things that deserve memorializing and release. When my night dreams go dark as they have in the last week, and whole days find me depressed, there’s deflected grief and fallowing that begs for tending. No, it’s not just seasonal affective disorder! In the West we’re often busy enough we think we can leap from crest to crest and never endure a trough, a downturn, a rest. But then the flu, an accident, a lay-off, a family spat — something arrives to shove me into fallowing. Sometimes I even remember to make room for it instead of waiting till it insists. Slow learners, all of us.
Waning (and especially dark) of the moon says fallow. February is Hunger Moon — Full Snow Moon, one of my sources calls it. Here in the ebb tide of Valentine’s Day, after the Full Moon, riding away from Imbolc, wintering out the second half of the month, I gingerly caress a small chunk of obsidian, I blow a short deer-bone whistle*, shrill and high. I find myself longing for touch, for texture, the skin of the world.
I make entries in my gratitude journal. I run — no, I walk — through the ways I ground myself. I seek out the solace of umami, that fifth taste, the savor of earth and wintering over and time. Fish, soy, cabbage, cured meat, tomato, cheese, spinach. The Wikipedia entry helpfully informs me that many of us first encounter it in our mother’s breast milk. Umami — taste of the Mother.
“The tree by the well in the wood” in Damh the Bard’s song from a few posts back sinks its roots into the earth, drinking from underground sources. I sit in that formless darkness we all have behind the eyes. From there I gaze out on slowly growing light.
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*whistle: mine comes from the museum at Serpent Mound, Ohio.
In the last 40 minutes — it’s now 9:43 — the snow has intensified. An-inch-an-hour is nothing new for much of the northern U.S., but each time I “have time” or “make time” to watch, it never gets old. Like watching the tide, waves endlessly arriving on the shore. Repetition builds a universe. On one scale of things, you might call Stella a very “minor” event. Take a large enough view and almost everything turns small. The weather image of the continental U.S. shows the small portion affected. What does such a view offer? On a small enough scale, it’s all-encompassing. Here in southern Vermont, a cloud moving white in every direction.
Sometimes the big picture isn’t what I need, though I thought it was. Sometimes, instead, it’s just the next step, it’s the phone call I remembered to make this afternoon, it’s the contemplation or ritual tomorrow morning. It’s the short walk that reveals sudden green beneath melting snow. It’s the porcelain hare my aunt gave me 50 years ago.
Waning (and especially dark) of the moon says fallow. February is Hunger Moon — Full Snow Moon, one of my sources calls it. Here in the ebb tide of Valentine’s Day, after the Full Moon, riding away from Imbolc, wintering out the second half of the month, I gingerly caress a small chunk of obsidian, I blow a short deer-bone whistle*, shrill and high. I find myself longing for touch, for texture, the skin of the world.
A Druid Way 
