Dearbhaile Bradley

Whoa have I had a powerful Beltaine. When it comes to Beltaine there is no better place to be on the entire planet than Glastonbury – well if you’re a pagan that is. Read more »

Hi – just about made it for January. Wrote this on Saturday so it’s a few days out of date!! love and light Dearbhaile

First I want to thank all of you who asked me to keep blogging. I am so blessed to have such a circle around me and I am deeply grateful that throughout this challenging time, I’ve had your support and encouragement. The wheel is turning now. From the task of reflecting, now we turn towards the future, as the plans that emerge from the reviewing of the lessons of the past are becoming clearer. Everything is fresh, refreshed. That’s why spring cleaning feels so great this time of year. And checking out what’s happening in the garden!
Living in the Great Turning Times, there is something both comforting and restorative about embracing the turning of the year’s wheel and knowing that as we engage in the sacred practices that our grandparents and their grandparents and their grandparents found sustaining, we can find our way forward into a way of life that is more in tune with the calling that is always in our hearts. This way we find the treasures we know in our bones.
So this Samhain’s journey was everything that the descent to the Underworld promises to be. I have found succour in the story of Inanna. The PhD I was intending to do in San Francisco was on the power of the story of Inanna’s descent to the Underworld as a counselling tool, as a story that provides powerful psychic containment, a positive path through pain, grief, anger, despair. Through engaging in the process in a way this culture, this unhappy chapter in the human story, does not support or value, we find treasures beyond price, wisdom that this foolish world of ours needs.
It’s seven years since the community of Glastonbury put on my play “The Descent of Inanna”. What I realise now is that I couldn’t tell the story of her ascent properly then because I hadn’t walked the path back to the Overworld myself. She gathers the sacred Me as she goes back through the seven gates to the Overworld. She has lost her innocence; she has stepped into her power.
It’s not news that resting in the depth of my heart is the love I have for my son, both the man he is now and the baby I handed into the care of others believing that it was the best I could do for him. I wish I could have done it without breaking my heart in the process but that’s how it is. Counselling, the counselling that the 2005 Adoption Act provides to birth mothers, feels a bit like rearranging the furniture – it’s hard work and I’m not sure what difference it can make. But here I am, writing for the first time since I fell apart after my encounter with another birthmother. I am a lot better than I was at Solstice. I am on the return journey and with Imbolc, the whole flavour of the time changes.
What a relief it is, this shift from the reflective energy of Samhain to the excitement of this time of Brigid. It’s time to hunt out reeds and have a go at making a Bridget’s cross. They are easy to make in that it just involves holding two reeds in a cross and then folding a reed over one arm, turning the cross a quarter and doing the same thing again until you’ve folded three reeds in each direction so each arm is seven reeds thick. Any child can do it, I loved making them when I was little. Making one that looks good and keeps its shape as it’s drying is another kettle of fish – every year I do better but rubber bands were the best innovation yet (you’re meant to use a reed to tie them).
I have the house to myself these days. It’s not Oakfield. How crazy is it to be sitting in a home you own feeling homesick? I ache for the feel the land under my feet, the scent of squesh, the slanting of pale sunlight across the table in the afternoon, the glowering clouds, the singing wind and stinging rain. Ah it was hard to return, to leave something I love so deeply but find hard to put a name to. I was blessed to be there. Tonight sitting here with the lovely yang-yang scented candle burning in my “Maya” candlestick, with Django Reinhardt playing in the background, is also a blessing.
I’ve had a great day today. I watched one of my favourite films of all time this afternoon. I’ve seen “Galaxy Quest” so many times that I am now noticing all the little jokes in the background because I know the main ones so well! But that film IS my sense of humour. I just love the innocence of it and it is the most perfect, perfect send-up of Star Trek. I don’t know. Maybe you have to have spent years watching Star Trek with my brothers to enjoy it as much as I do! Having felt so bleak for so long, it is delightful to find that it’s not as difficult to “get happier” as I thought it was! It’s been the foggiest of times and that’s why I abandoned this blog. Last year I’d a focus – bardism. Now I’m not that sure I want to keep playing that game. I read the poetry of Mary Oliver and honestly I’d rather read good poetry than write bad. And there are such magical words out there.
The one thing I’ve got in the pipelines is “Soul Sharings”. I love the Radio 4 programme “With Great Pleasure” and what I want is for a circle to gather to share words that give us pleasure – that includes jokes, stories, poetry, song – but it is not performance, it is sharing in a circle the pleasure we find in the magic of words to make us laugh, cry, sigh, nod. I haven’t asked Transition Glastonbury yet but I’m hoping to offer it as a TG heart and soul group activity.
As a child I remember hiding from “the session” when everyone in the circle contributed something to the evening’s entertainment. Then my Mum taught me “You are old Father William/ the young man said” and that was my “piece” until I decided to do a bit out of “Winnie the Pooh”. Years later when I was in Galway and doing a residential course in biodynamic massage, I discovered that everyone still had their piece and we had wonderful evenings together laughing, singing, telling jokes, stories and reciting familiar poems. That’s what I have in mind and I really think it could be a lot of fun.
So I’m going to send this link to all the people I imagine might be interested. If you’d like to keep getting notifications of what I’m up to, let me know and I’ll sign you up. You can always check the website if you ever want to catch up to but I’ve to sign you up if you’d like to know I’ve posted a blog. I’ll keep blogging so long as you want me to and as I said to begin with, thank you for wanting to read the random thoughts of Dearbhaile Bradley.
It’s an exciting time Imbolc, first stirrings. I wrote a lot more about Bridget last Imbolc so if you want more, you can always read that. Enjoy the fresh breezes of spring and the shoots breaking through. Love and light to you all,
Dearbhaile

Dear friends,

I actually wrote this blog Solstice eve and then didn’t post it because there were so many things that needed to be done – but then I’m assuming that your own lives have been similarly hectic. So I guess I’ll wish you all a happy new year as now we’re past solstice and Christmas and Yule is well underway the next marker is New Year itself. Read more »

So dear friends it is Sunday afternoon following my return to Glastonbury and I have (on finishing this) realised that this is my last blog before Christmas so I now wish you all the best for the celebrations of the season. Read more »

Sitting here listening to the wind whistling, rustling, grumbling and the rain splatter as if someone is scooping up and throwing handfuls of water at the windows. Inside it is quiet, candlelit, soft, home. My batik is on the wall opposite where I sit. It has been hung in every home I’ve had since Maya gave it to me twenty eight years ago. It is all I need to make any room my home. But even as I arrived and this sweet little space was all sad and forlorn, I felt the welcome of the Brigid’s Cross over the door and the beautiful elephant bookends that now enclose the books I brought with me.

And this room has proved a kind home. It is completely free from accusation – it never says “The dishes aren’t washed. The place is a mess. What are you doing now? Why haven’t you finished that? What’s that doing on the table? What time do you think this is? What’s that racket?”

It’s not perfect. It’s not, truthfully, madly comfortable. I’ve given up on the chairs, other than as somewhere to deposit bits. And I live entirely in this little room as the space upstairs is uninsulated and therefore freezing. I’ve made up a nest, with a bit of foam and cushions that is where I sleep at night and work in the day. Why do I love it so much?

Because it’s like the hug of a true friend who knows you’re hurting and that there ain’t a damd thing they can do to make it better beyond that holding but they’ll go on hugging you for as long you need it. I am deeply grateful for this kindness. I am afraid of what will happen me when I leave it. It took me two weeks to get from weeping to words and now that I’ve found flow, I want to keep going. I don’t know if I can keep going once I am no longer held in the gentle undemanding caress I’ve found here.

In terms of what I imagined I’d have achieved in my time here, I thought I’d do a 100 yard dash and discovered that the starting line is a 5 mile hike away. But now that I’ve found my stride I wish, oh how I wish, I could live here, just like this, and spend my days reading, thinking, writing, revising. The rate at which I produce work is slow, painfully slow it feels sometimes. But it’s all I want to do. I don’t want to go from here and lose the gifts I’ve been given here.

I have worked on this paper for the Bardic Council seminar like I used to write papers to present at academic conferences. Only then I was spinning a dozen other plates, teaching, counselling, supervising, parenting. How I love this process! I am in my element, pinning down the ideas and opinions of others on a map so I can then locate myself and say here, this is where I stand. And what I love about the “bardic path” is the way it demands the integration of emotion and intellect, passion and scholarship, the heart and the mind. I have far more to say about the awen than I could possible cover in the limited time I have available on the 13th December but I am happy with what I’ve written. I know that what I have put together is as good as you’d get on a post-graduate academic course, because I used to teach on them.

I should be an academic. One of the things that reduced me to tears was finding the PhD proposal I was working on 1992 when I was teaching at Durham. “Counselling and the Planetary Crisis” I called it and what I wanted to consider were the implications of our emotional responses to the various global threats for counselling theory and practice. So far off the map then, I couldn’t find a supervisor. Now it’s called eco-psychology and I read books by other people covering ideas I thought about twenty years ago.

And now it is the glooming, time to close the curtains. The wind has died down so that now it is all whisper and hush, but the rain is louder, no longer intermittent, a quiet backbeat. I have been indulging my insatiable appetite for books on CD, borrowing from two libraries here. Fionnuala sent me a box of books on CD when I’d the operation on my eyes. I spent those early weeks, when my eyes were recovering, listening to stories and developed an addiction to listening rather than reading. One of life’s greatest pleasures is listening to a good book well read.

Here I’ve listened to Stephen Rea reading Seamus Deane’s “Reading in the Dark”. It’s a book I’ve already read three times but to hear it read like this has been heavenly. What a powerful story and such exquisite language. He’s a poet, Seamus Deane, yet another wonderful writer from Derry. The precision and lyricism of his language are pure delight. I swear there is not a word, not a word, out of place. There’s one scene where there’s a bunch of men talking at a funeral. It’s like a Greek chorus, a sort of chant, every phrase is perfect; this is exactly how men here talk at funerals. Stephen Rea’s Derry accent is faultless as he brings out every nuance of meaning in the words. Brilliant, just brilliant. I’m talking Jane Austin good here. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and I will never for the life of me understand how it failed to win. I now know what I want, what I really, really want is a man with a dark chocolate voice who loves to read aloud to me, as Mark did, lifetimes ago.

And now it is Sunday morning. The symphony of rain and wind that has lasted three days and nights is over. It’s cold, bright, sunny. I’ll finish my coffee and walk the lanes before heading into Galway city to post this blog. It has been wonderful here, a perfect retreat. How blessed I am.

Love and light to you all,

Dearbhaile

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
Mary Oliver

This question has stayed with me ever since Autumn Equinox when in the final session of the Council of All Beings weekend I found myself with too little time left for the exercise I’d prepared and used Mary Oliver’s question to focus the “Going Forth” section of the weekend. I thought I was here to write but…

Oakfield

I am here to be quiet.
I am here to forget what time it is.
I am here to breathe fresh air,
to listen to birds,
to sit on rocks and be thankful,
to let my tears water the earth.
I am here to live slower.
I am here for stones, space, silence,
to discover how moss comes in different colours,
the perfect crimson of a single bramble leaf,
how beautiful a thistle is.
I am here to look at clouds,
to see a convocation of dragons where the peace dove was.
I am here to be quiet.
I am here to forget what time it is.

Things here have not turned out as I imagined. I visualised a routine of writing, walking, revising, cooking. Instead I’ve felt like “an unsuccessful pot/ wavering into shapelessness”. It’s a seasonal process this confrontation with grief, loss, disappointment and failure. Samhain is a fitting season for facing up to challenging truths; it is a time for re-assessment.

This is the perfect setting for such unravelling. The cottage is a cocoon, a sanctuary. It’s little and dark and often cold but oh, so quiet. No-one knows me. I’ve no definition, no expectations to live up to. Fail again and it is only my own heart that’ll break. No-one is affected by my despair or how I am with it. I know none of us know how long we’ve got left on this planet but the combination of space to reflect, and the series of events that lead up to it, have turned this Samhain into a confrontation with mortality. Mandy’s death reminds me of the other people I’ve loved who have died early of cancer. My name’s now in the lottery and death is my buddy who helps me focus on what’s important. And as far as I’ve got with this question, the question of what I’m doing with this one wild and precious life, this guide-rope on the rickety bridge, is that what I want is authenticity, to be real.

Given that I am me and subject to turbulent internal weather, I am in the right place. I love the barren russet drumlins and glowering clouds of Connemara. I wander boreens in sight of Lough Ross, elusive as the rainbow’s end. When I stand still, silence embraces me. I wish I could properly convey the delight to be found in clouds. With the thyroid eye disease I couldn’t look up so was effectively missing the top half of my visual field. Now I’ve been given back the sky.

My second day here, I drove over the hills to the coast. They may be a pleasure to look at, these bare hills and lovely lakes, but you can’t eat the landscape. It’s easy seeing why Cromwell drove the Irish into Connaught; he let the land save him the bother of slaughter. And this was a “famine village”. There are ruins everywhere which I imagined might be remnants of that time until I read “Connemara after the Famine” a journal written in 1853 by Thomas Colville Scott who spent five weeks here surveying the “Martin Estate” which covered most of Connemara. The people lived in clay and wattle hovels not houses as we’d recognise them. The journal is a fascinating read. It is touching to see how his humanity breaks through his prejudices as the suffering around him challenges his stereotype of the indolent papist Irish. Now this area is known as “G4”, famous for the huge ostentatious houses that sit uneasily next to ivy-coated rubble, rock and scrub. The old post office of thirty years ago may be remembered but it appears that earlier history has been forgotten.

I am saturated with poetry. I am not longer sure if I want to attempt to write at all or simply to appreciate what others have written. I am stuffing myself with images and ideas. I’m reading the collected poems of Patrick Kavanagh, another acquisition from Oughterard library. I’d forgotten how bitter his wit can be or how uneven his writing. For all he wrote some outstanding poems such as “Epic” and “The Great Hunger”, some of his work is hardly more than doggerel. Tatamkhula Afrika’s collection “Nightrider” is awesome . He was a South African poet who died in 2002. I don’t think many people outside of Africa have heard of him but his work is superb; beautifully crafted, compassionate, honest, full of the authenticity I crave. Reading his poetry, I am often moved to tears and I am never left with the thick-headed frustration of not understanding what the poet is on about that I’ve experienced at times reading Heaney, Muldoon or Plath. Here was man who spoke truth beautifully, simply and directly.

Africans value the social importance of writing rather than its purpose as individual expression. So do I. In the debate on what makes a poem bardic, I argued (not as clearly as I would wish) that social importance is a key criterion in determining if a piece is bardic. A poet does not necessarily speak for any particular people. In contrast, a bard belongs to a tribe, a community. I dreamt of bringing the magic of bardism beyond the confines of Glastonbury but once I’m no longer in the community who so honoured me, I am left questioning the appropriateness of continuing to call myself a bard. This reflection has been influenced by encountering someone recently who advertises themselves on the internet as a “spiritual teacher”. There are certain titles that I don’t think we can claim for ourselves and “bard” is one of them.

And I’ve been thinking about those mad Irish bards who spent days buried in underground chambers in hope of imbas (the Irish word for awen). This retreat was undertaken with a similar aim to their more extreme incarcerations. I’ve remove the usual props of my life to create a space in which I can find out what holds true without them. It certainly feels akin to sitting in the dark waiting for possession.

So dear friends, internet access is problematic so I don’t know when I will actually be able to post this. Love and light be with you all,
Dearbhaile

Samhain night,
Night of magic, night of spells
Night of the thinning of the veils.
Night of portend, night of signs
Night when the dead can walk again.

We are here to remember
All those who have passed over
Friends, relatives, older ancestors.
All those whose love we know
Guides us from our spirit home.
Hail and welcome, all ye beloved,
Hail and welcome all ye wise,
Hail and welcome, guiding spirits,
Hail and welcome this Samhain night,
Night of magic, night of spells,
Night of the thinning of the veils.
Night of portend, night of signs
Night when the dead can walk again.

Reveal yourselves to we who wait
Patiently this special night.
We are the tribe who would live
In rhythm with the seasons.
Join us freely if you choose
As we gather here in love
This samhain night,
Night of magic, night of spells
Night of the thinning of the veils.
Night of portend, night of signs
Night when the dead can walk again.

Cutting back and letting go.
The year begins in ending.
This turning of the wheel of life
Is death preparing for rebirth
So let’s begin our year with celebration,
As Lord of Shadows and wise woman Goddess
Stand by this threshold to winter,
To bestow on us the gift of wisdom
In all its bitter-sweetness
This Samhain night,
Night of magic, night of spells,
Night of the thinning of the veils
Night of portend, night of signs
Night when the dead can walk again.

As the darkness deeply holds
And nurtures seeds of life,
We hold strong our intention
For the healing of our world
In these days of waxing dark,
Time of dreaming, Samhain season.
Night of magic, night of spells,
Night of the thinning of the veils
Night of portend, night of signs
Night when the dead can walk again.

We shall remember and love anew
Meet again and know
All those we hold in our hearts
This Samhain night,
Night of magic, night of spells
Night of the thinning of the veils.
Night of signs, night of portents,
Night when the dead walk among us.

Samhain greetings my dear friends,
Last Samhain, ah, last Samhain underneath the full moon and stars at the foot of the Tor, I shared this poem round a huge fire with people who totally “got” it. A glorious experience of belonging, of being fulfilled, of a dream, oh a dream held in my heart many lonely Samhain nights of scrying, coming into being. I belonged. I was understood. I was with “the tribe who would live/ in rhythm with the seasons”. I’d been living in Glastonbury seven years and it had taken me seven years to find myself here. Ah, sure it was a night such as any Bard would rejoice in, full of Awen, a circle gathered to entertain each other and give due honour to those only some of us can see when the veils are thin. I count this night among my riches, the silence that followed this sharing a moment when I felt that I was absolutely where I was meant to be and doing what I was meant to do.

Each year has its own flavour, each Samhain is different. Always it is the opening into the new cycle of becoming. Each new dream is harvested from the past. Samhain is not just the night we celebrate; it is a season, a time to reflect, to dream, to be with the dark that “deeply holds and nurtures seeds of life”. This year, this sweet New Moon Samhain, is a calling to find stillness even as I am travelling. This year there is no gathering and I am alone “cutting back and letting go” preparing to enter the silence of the writer’s retreat that I felt so called to this Lughnasadh.

I have time to remember the rituals of my childhood, the delights of Hallowe’en when we were allow out in the dark where you could meet ghosts for real. Hallowe’en meant making turnip lanterns and ghoolish decorations. It meant Dad stringing an apple from the kitchen ceiling and taking turns to try and bite out the sixpence Mum put in it. It meant rings of laughter as we dunked for apples. It meant dressing-up and saying our party pieces and playing with sparklers. It was fireworks and the spinning Catherine Wheel on the shed door sending out rays of colour. And best of all, it meant the fortune-telling apple tart with the bride’s ring, the bachelor’s button, the pauper’s penny and the bishop’s half-crown waiting to be found.

The room I am in is beautiful. The walls of the room are a dance of blue, green and white swirls. On the ceiling are CDs that make rainbows of the light, and in the morning play with the rising sun. I have the space to light a candle to honour the dead, to spend some time thinking of all the people that died this year. Samhain is reflective, a time for contemplation and completion.

I made a pilgrimage to visit Mandy’s grave on my way here. I found Liam in the lovely little café he runs with his girlfriend Lindsey on the beach at Llanfairfechan. I remember him best from the days when Mandy was working and I picked Liam up from the local primary school every day. He was a sweet child and he’s now a man any mother would be proud of. “The Beach Hut” is a lovely café with home-made food and fresh feeshias on the table. Liam was so kind, filling me in on Mandy’s story, describing the celebration of her life that I would have been part of if I could and giving me precise directions as to how to find her grave at Boduan, the green burial site on the Llyn peninsula. It was quite a trek, as it’s not far from Pwhelli but you drive along in sight of the sea for much of the journey and Boduan itself is a patch of woodland seeped in peace. I felt Mandy’s presence before I saw her grave. I talked with her and sang to her and put my tears on the earth. I watered the oak tree her grandson planted by her grave with Chalice Well water. Then I sang to all the ancestors and asked once more, as I have often asked before, that their wisdom might guide us.

And so for the month of November I am focusing on writing. I am back home in December when I am going to be hosting a seminar on the nature of Awen as part of the Bardic School that Nathan’s organising. Tim Hall and Dreow are hosting the first one in November (not sure what date but it’s in the Library of Avalon) so I’m not going to be able to be there. Those of you who subscribe because I’m supposed to discuss Bardism should definitely check it out. As for the second one, I’ll put it on my schedule once I’ve clarified when exactly it is on.

Please let me know you’ve read this and comments are very welcome although don’t expect a speedy reply as my access to the internet is severely limited for the next month.

Love to you all,

Dearbhaile

.

Mandy from her son Tom's website tomsimone.co.uk

October 3rd 2011 Mandy Simone died of cancer. I was at Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Station at the time, making what feels like a pathetic and ineffective effort to prevent a large number of people becoming ill with cancer through my participation in the blockade. It’s a day that left me disheartened and disillusioned. But hearing that Mandy has died has taken me to a much more heart-broken space. I can only discover the thoughts that the emotion carries by weeping and any of you familiar with grief’s gifts will know the fear that if you start crying you’ll never stop.

I haven’t seen Mandy in years. I don’t know anyone who knew her anymore. That’s hard. I want people to know something of this special woman who was so important to me, who was such a loving and supportive friend throughout the most difficult and challenging of times. I don’t know how I’d have got through those years without Mandy. Now she’s gone I can’t thank her but I want the world to know how grateful I am that I knew her.

I don’t take photographs, never have. What I have instead are mental photographs, a camera in my head that retains images from different moments in my life. A collage of images of Mandy has surfaced in this last week as I’ve been thinking of her, of Mandy’s special magic. The first is of her sitting cross-legged in a circle of people with an infant on her lap. She is beaming, a smile of radiant joy, a smile that captured the beauty of the spirit Mandy Simone embodied in this world.

A full moon towards the end of 1984 I’ve worked out it was. I know it was full moon because every full moon I could, I participated in the sacred sweat lodge on Ynys Môn and I know it was ‘84 because when I came out of the sweat lodge to see Mandy sitting in the circle in the hall where we gathered, her younger son was only weeks old. Prior to that night I knew Mandy slightly, well enough to know her name and that she’s had a hell of a journey through pregnancy but that was the night we connected, the occasion of our first “proper” conversation.

I don’t know if our friendship would have blossomed beyond the enjoyment of her company when chance brought us together if she and I had not become neighbours, if I had not moved to the village where she lived. I was pregnant myself when I moved and the second clear, strong picture I have of Mandy is from Aries Full Moon 1986. I know that it was that night because my son was born the next day. Most of you don’t know I have a son because he was adopted at birth. Mandy, lovely true Mandy came round that night when I started in labour to give me a foot massage. She was trained in (and indeed taught me) the Metamorphic Technique. I can still see her in the candlelight, concentrating intently on my feet. Here it is her compassion and understanding, the sense she gave me of being held, of unconditional love that I recall. You can’t go through a pregnancy unnoticed as I would have wished to under the circumstances and to have a child adopted was far more controversial in the community I then lived in than an abortion would have been. People were not slow to judge or to air their opinions. Mandy, in contrast, was just there for me, one of the small circle of women who saw me through the pregnancy, birth and adoption of my son and the death of my mother that December.

In the years that followed as I lurched from crisis to crisis, there are a myriad of images, memories that are harder to pin down to specific dates and times. Mandy’s welcoming smile and ready laugh, conversations and cups of tea, an endless stream of “calling in to Mandy’s”. Her door was always open and she had many visitors. When my daughter was little, anytime I became fraught, anytime it all got “too much” for me, I’d sweep her up in my arms and we’d head down the hill to Mandy’s. Mandy Simone was just about as open-hearted, generous, warm, kind and caring as it is possible for a human being to be. And if that wasn’t enough, she was also intelligent, wise and knowledgeable, a source of fascinating stories, an inspiration, a force to be reckoned with.  The one occasion that does stand out from these years is the morning my daughter (not yet two years old) went missing and after a frantic search I raced down to Mandy’s to discover her there. She’d made her own way down the path and across the road.

How could I have lost touch with such a great woman? Eh? I moved, she moved. I had a breakdown in which I lost contact with most of the people I’d known prior to that time. Now I see that I was ill but at the time and in the years that followed I treated it as a shameful secret. What I’d say to you is that if you have great people you once knew and have lost touch with, take heed, and make the effort to re-connect. I want to thank Mandy for so much that she did in those years. I want her to know the extent to which I am alive and well because I knew her, because she helped me on every level from the practical to the spiritual.
You can look up pretty much everything on the internet. When I heard Mandy had died, I put her details into a search engine to discover that she and a friend set up One Heart, a charity to help homeless people in North Wales following the death of a destitute man in the grounds of Bangor Cathedral. It is so in character for Mandy to be involved in initiating a project to help others even as she was dying herself.

The world has lost a wonderful woman. May she rest in peace.

I suspect she’s about ten, the girl in the top bunk. Her little brother is asleep on the bunk bed below as she looks out the gap between the curtains at the dying rays of a summer’s sun.

I don’t know how exactly she has become aware of nuclear weapons and the reality that the world can end in three minutes but that is what she’s thinking about as she listens to the birds singing the sweetness of the evening. She slips out of bed and stands by the window looking out at familiar trees.

“I promise, I promise myself, that if I find I am to die with everything else in a nuclear bomb that I will know that I did everything I could for this not to happen.”

I had no difficulty imagining what it would be like, this melting into light, and the terrible crescendo of grief, the cry of all life dying together.

Recently this moment has returned with startling clarity, as if I can smell the dusky evening, breathe it in. I was always making promises to myself. This is not the only one I remember. I think it is the intensity with which I made these childhood vows that makes them stand out in memory and sometimes I think they have played quite a role in the shaping of my life.

In the years since, the possibilities for the end of life on Earth have expanded and grown more complex. The threat of nuclear war remains but the evidence that nuclear power is a major threat to our future is now over-whelming. In the destabilisation of weather systems the potential for accidents has dramatically increased. It is great to have something that I can do about it however little it is. I would almost be relieved if I found myself arrested tomorrow at the Hinkley blockade. I am convinced that they will seek to demoralise us, to render the day as meaningless as they can, arrest, if at all, those most likely to be ‘scared off’ by such an experience.

I have no fear of arrest. I have been in hand-cuffs before. I approached every stage in my brief career in NVDA (non-violent direct action) with curiosity and openness and found this way of learning about the criminal justice system fascinating. Some of the moments of highest irony I have ever lived, things that happened that were as funny as any fiction, happened because I scratched the perimeter fence at Capenhurst BNFL causing an estimated 64 pence worth of criminal damage.

Prison, Styal, when I got that far, was fine. I’d taken the line “No crime. No fine” so in refusing to pay the £120 fine and 64 pence damages, I ended up in prison when I was five months pregnant. It did me the world of good physically to be stopped from working myself to a standstill so I couldn’t think about how badly I’d managed to fuck up my life – again. But going into prison – oh, the things they do to humiliate prisoners as they are “being processed” are shocking. Still I’ve a stock of stories that amuse me, if not others, when I relate them. So not even the ultimate sanction of prison would stop me one second for doing what my conscience dictates. Been there before, bit like boarding school if you ask me.

Because if I am arrested, I won’t accept a caution. I won’t accept a caution because I am crystal clear that in participating in this protest, I am carrying out my civic duty rather than committing a crime. If I threw a brick through a window in order to rescue you from a fire that you didn’t know was happening, you might be furious with me for the damage I’ve done your beautiful home. From where you stand, I look like a complete lunatic but is that any reason to stop trying to save your life?

I don’t know if doing this, I will get a chance to explain to someone who doesn’t agree with me that I am trying to alert everyone to the “real and present danger” that nuclear power so clearly is. I know when I arrive at Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Station tomorrow, I sit down on the road with the support of all the people I’ve met who’ve explained why they can’t physically be there themselves and have said they’ll be thinking of us. They are at my back. Each person there represents a host of others who were unable to turn up on this particular occasion.

I am grateful for this opportunity to do something constructive with the burden of being able to imagine all too clearly what’s happening in Japan right now. When I was in prison for my participation in the Snowball Anti-Nuclear Campaign, I read a book about the effects of the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is the only time in my life I could have coped with reading such a book. I wept buckets but it was bearable because the reason I was here was because I was trying to get people to see the connection between the nuclear power industry and the production of nuclear weapons.

This time is simpler. Building nuclear power stations is pure insanity. Radiation poisoning is a fire none of us can see but only some of us seem to recognise the use of nuclear power constitutes a serious threat to life. I like to think that all of us who show up tomorrow understand that we need to reduce the demands we make of this world; to develop and put into action “energy-descent plans” individually and collectively. I am so excited by the potential for community-based micro-generation of energy, particularly here in Glastonbury. It’s an example of us “learning to meet our needs/ without destroying the Earth that feeds us.”

So us’uns gathering tomorrow have a chance to see who we are, who the team are. It is just one action in a campaign that will grow and get stronger. Tomorrow we get to experience the State’s response to our objecting to the government acting with such total disregard for the safety and wellbeing of the people they are supposed to represent.

Somehow tomorrow feels like keeping the promise I made to myself and that feels good. Not enough, not by a long chalk, but a beginning.

Love to you all,

Dearbhaile

My dear friends,

Hard to believe it’s two weeks since I sat in that wonderful circle at Roscahill. I missed out a blog entirely. First time this year that I’ve done so but it’s been quite a month. So I since I last blogged I’ve worked with a circle in Kinsale (where the Transition town movement was born), another in Roscahill, and yesterday here in Glastonbury to prepare for our day at Hinkley Point on 3^rd October. I’ve also put in a couple of performances – at Uncivilisation and then at Transition Glastonbury Harvest Supper on Friday night. Tomorrow Richard from Seeds for Change and myself are facilitating the day long training at Compton Dundon.

It’s all been so magical, so inspiring, so affirming of my decision to follow the path of heart. I am learning to allow my destiny to unfold and here it is!

So Kinsale, ah what a wonderful, wonderful group of people I met in Kinsale, bless you all in the work you do. Jeannie from Transition Town Kinsale got together 15 people in a community venue for free, whoa, what a gift. I know how much work that involves and meeting Jeannie was like seeing a dear friend again rather than meeting someone for the first time. The feedback that stays because it made my heart sing was the person who said “I thought it was going to be all doom and gloom but that was great. I feel so full of hope.” I included my Great Turning Times poem and they loved it. Whoa just thinking about them I can feel again the magic we shared. What was amazing about the space Jeannie booked was that we had a perfect space for the Elm Dance and Milling and then another space with the chairs in a circle and the gorgeous altar she build in the middle.

That was Thursday and then on Sunday, thanks to Maria who like Jeannie did sterling work so I got to work with another great circle for a whole day in Roscahill. Whoa you guys just blew me away!! I am SO excited about getting back to do the Council of All Beings there. The location is TOTALLY perfect.

This is an illustration of what happens when you “Hold your vision”. In the years when the physical limits set by the challenges of having a whole load of illnesses simultaneously meant I was unable to do much more than lie in bed dreaming I dreamed of the life I wanted to live, what I wanted to offer the world and I wept because I couldn’t do it. It took more than three years for the vision of doing the Work that Re-connects in Ireland to become reality and I am weeping with gratitude right now for the harvest, the wealth of gifts shared and honoured, for all the wonderful people I encountered.  Bless you Jeannie and Maria for calling these circles together and all of you who came along and joined in.

Roscahill. Well Maria said “get the driver to drop you at the Old Post Office in Roscahill.” So I was prepared for the idea that it wouldn’t be a Post Office anymore. But when the bus driver drove out the other side of Roscahill and dropped me in the middle of nowhere I started walking back towards the village thinking he’d forgotten to let me off at the bus stop. But no, this is Ireland. The “Old Post Office” hasn’t existed for about thirty years and the bus driver had dropped me exactly where I needed to be. Where else could you have a landmark that isn’t actually there? It just made me feel so much at home.

And that was what I wasn’t prepared for at all. My feet are hungry for this land. It was such a joy to spend time with family. I met such open-hearted special people and had powerful sharings with them. I came back and ended up sitting in my favourite seat in the Abbey Grounds bawling my eyes out because I want to go home. I haven’t felt a “calling” like that in a long time and it threw me! So that’s why there was no blog, I was totally shattered on all sorts of levels – including physically. I’m putting the bits together now.

Living in Glastonbury is great. I love so many people here. I know my “Why I’m Wealthy Every Way that Counts” poem is a bit twee but when I say

“I have friends whose tenderness
healed pain far beyond the pain they witnessed
so I am now in the whole of my health
and believe me, that’s miraculous.”

you know who you are!

And it was great Friday night at the Camino, the beautiful warm space that Koko has created to be celebrating harvest with people I love. I risked poems I’ve not risked before and the quality of attention was so sweet. And it was talking with Rachael (Strange Sisters Rachael) that helped me see that I can, for now, keep a foot in both camps and work out how to split my time between here and home. In doing the Work that Re-connects it is always important for me to make my own connection with the land itself and at Oakfield, I felt belonging in a way that, much as I love Glastonbury, is not part of my experience of being here.

So if all that wasn’t enough, I’d the NVDA training yesterday and another training day tomorrow. The world of activism has gone through a revolution since I was last doing this stuff. Richard’s a sweetie and a damn fine facilitator to boot. Oh what a joy it is to co-facilitate. And how happy I am to be using the expertise I’ve gathered over the years for creating peace. We know; we who are taking the first steps on this journey towards sanity know we are here for the long haul. For me anyway, this is not just about stopping the building of new nuclear power stations. The price we pay for squandering our world isn’t worth it. Our children’s future is worth more to us than cheap electricity. What I want is for Britain to follow the example of other countries and recognise that nuclear power is a thing of the past. My awareness of the suffering of the Japanese people that no-one is talking about is fuel to sustain me.

So lots of wonderful gifts I am harvesting here. The Blockade at Hinkley is going to be a chance to see who is already awake to the stupidities of Nuclear Power. Beyond that, I have the Eco-psychology day at Braziers on the 8^th October. And I’m involved in putting together some great material for a course provisionally titled “Money in Transition” with a taster session here in Glastonbury 19^th October.
Love and light to you all,

Dearbhaile