Dearbhaile Bradley

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 Wrote this on Saturday so it’s a few days out of date!!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