Hello friends - just a little offering before I return in a fortnight to think into the notion of Romanticism, less as a historical movement more a conjuring name for a long mythic road that’s slipped in and out of the centuries for the last couple of thousand years.
Happy Easter from St Illtud's, Llantwit Major, where the bells are ringing out this bright glorious morning, (yesterday I was up in the bell tower,) where a 13thC Mary Magdalene is gazing down on the pews, resplendent in red, holding her shimmering pot, daubed on the plaster wall, where the ancient Celtic crosses are quietly holding their own reverie as shafts of golden light hit their knots and scrolls, where once learned holy scribes taught the likes of St David and St Patrick, before he set off in his coracle, some say he was kidnapped from St Illtud's by Irish pirates, or was that the laudenum filled dreamings of Iolo Morganwg, who knew my ancestor in laws in the Vale, (he had his shop in the same street), at the same time Robbie Burns was scratching out poems for my old Grandpa Brown up in Dumfries. Happy Easter from the Golden Vale.
Speaking of rolling rocks, I have just emerged from the inner chamber of West Kennett Long Barrow, where I had chanced upon a very old lady with long white hair burning frankincense in the gloom. I sat with her awhile in silence, then emerging into the red setting sun over Silbury Hill, and looking back at the barrow the huge stone at the entrance to the chamber seemed to leap right up. I noticed her car parked next to ours in the layby, a large drum and a large wooden cross on the back seat! What a day indeed
Thanks for your rich words and blessings to chew on. I have just completed a week long pilgrimage to the Holy Island on Friday carrying a cross with a group of Christians all more devout than I. I wanted to walk the old paths of the early Celtic Christian Saints to hear the same songs of the birds and rivers that they would have heard all those years ago. To walk contemplating the deeper story of Easter and Holy Week in the Christian tradition. The tradition & religion that has done more to shape our western worldview than any other this past 1500+ years, for good and ill. There was an original purer message that brought light and hope in a time of darkness building on the riches of the older traditions your dream so powerfully invokes. The blackbird and the bell. It feels as though there is a new weaving needed an invitation to reimagine the future. This Easter in the thin place that is Holy Island that feels more possible. Ephphatha, ephphatha, ephphatha- may we all finds ways to overcome the blockages holding us back individually and collectively at this time.
"Breathe on us the scent of Yeshua, sweet as the dance of a hundred swallows"— this has stopped me in my tracks with beauty, and with a kind of bodily nod of truth. But I've been totally taken out today by the cry of the High King Conchubar, upon hearing of Yeshua's death, that horrible
"no no no" and -- "why did he not call for me, a king?" I mean, this has me weeping, a great warrior king of Ireland and what he would have done for his Yeshua. How he would have come. Thank you so much for such heart-piercing matter today. sending Easter blessings xx
Thank you Sylvia - I couldn't agree more, the tremors of the Christ eruption banging and wheeling and keening its way into the Gaelic world pretty much floored me when I came across the old story.
Thank you for these beautiful words, what fresh aliveness to imagine receiving yeshua as one who has never heard such a story before.
Thank you for helping me remember that this story is so much bigger than our modern western understanding of it.
Also, thank you for following the truth of your heart, and for stepping out and writing about things that aren’t so popular in our modern lexicon.
I found your work quite recently, and was completely blown away by your storytelling, and was so touched by the way you spoke of the wild, and the old stories.
It was a wild alignment when you started writing about your experience with yeshua, as over the past couple years I too begun having revelations of yeshua, and have recently prayed to encounter new expressions of this.
Thank you yet again for the beautiful imagery—and yes , “Let all our rocks be rolled away, and something vast emerge,” and may we be blessed to hear the “hymnal of the wild.”
Thank you for this Martin - it illuminates both Easter and the time when Christian spirit was embedded with land, sea, animal, bird and story. I understand it in that context rather than the modern church version. What a simple and deep prayer - I too pray to be safe from the banshee on my back and the wolf inside, watching as I walk home. Power to you.
Happy Easter from Wānaka , in the Southern Lakes of New Zealand, where a crystal blue sky frames the body of the Wahine (Te reo Māori for woman) lying prostrate as an immense alpine chain. A real mountain Mama. The bays'guardian. Place guardian. Gate keeping guardian. Her long hair spills into the water, and the contours of her body recline with ease and balance reflecting shadows that are uniquely beautiful to April's flaming hold. She rolls rocks all the time. She's smiling and welcoming both your blessing and your request as I read them aloud. 'Tell us'. Indeed you do. With gratitude, have a blessed time during Easter and across to the next fortnight, Martin.
Thank you Martin for your Easter blessing on our parish and a Happy Easter to all. May any hard, crusty, literalist tendencies in our hearts be drowned in the green bottle ferment, so that our hearts may become a fish, swimming with a gold coin in its mouth, a coin that hatches into kindness and generosity of spirit.
What a bold and crackling prayer Matthew, that could adorn any prayer book I may have. The heart as a fish, heading for stream to creek to river to ocean.
What I love about this is how jarringly specific it is to time and place. How you burrow in. The address thing. It's such a gift of yours. And for me, aspirational - to encounter the same Cosmic Stirring in my own gritty, condo-stacked, yet earth stratified neighbourhood. The best of Easter offerings. Thank you, Martin.
Thank you Maggie. I have a very mischievous hiding spot in Santa Monica where, after a breakfast at Patricks Roadhouse, I slip across the road and sit and sit and gaze at a trillion curly sea waves.
Ah, Martin, once again you meld wondrous images of the Galilean Druid and hymns of the wild. Indeed, this one of terrible mercy and a love so strong it turns the stars, whose words are white ponies running in the rain. The women knew, the carriers of his stories... like their magic people and even Conchubar, they knew as Earth groaned and even before -- time and space are no barriers to the Galilee arch-druid, then and now! Thank you as you continue to spin the stories, as you say, Stretch us, tender us, toughen us. Tell us of the Lord of the Elements, of the generous host and pummelling freshness of the Holy Spirit. Easter blessings!
:-) Thank you, and to you! I see in an earlier entry you have taken up Wallace's book When God Was a Bird. When I started in on it myself, I remember thinking "too, bad, another academic feeling a need to justify himself to peers," but the deeper I got the more I marveled at the array of not only plumage but furry and other beasties he incorporated. And I marveled that I had never noticed any of this, and me being seminary trained and all.... I did however, know about Muir, and I appreciated Wallace's accounting (while not apologizing) for Muir's unfortunate racist take on indigenous peoples - an odd thing, it seemed to me in light of Muir's understanding of sacred creation.
I don't know if you are aware of an outfit in the states that has taken on melding the ways of Yeshua and those of the wild, including myth and deep eco-psychology. Call themselves, Seminary of the Wild. One of their intentions is to reclaim the original wild Christ. I was in their first year-long cohort. Good stuff!
Good gravy Marie, you've undone me. Thanks for that. Blessings and benedictions—many, many good words—on your reflections and thinkings on Romanticism.
Happy Easter from St Illtud's, Llantwit Major, where the bells are ringing out this bright glorious morning, (yesterday I was up in the bell tower,) where a 13thC Mary Magdalene is gazing down on the pews, resplendent in red, holding her shimmering pot, daubed on the plaster wall, where the ancient Celtic crosses are quietly holding their own reverie as shafts of golden light hit their knots and scrolls, where once learned holy scribes taught the likes of St David and St Patrick, before he set off in his coracle, some say he was kidnapped from St Illtud's by Irish pirates, or was that the laudenum filled dreamings of Iolo Morganwg, who knew my ancestor in laws in the Vale, (he had his shop in the same street), at the same time Robbie Burns was scratching out poems for my old Grandpa Brown up in Dumfries. Happy Easter from the Golden Vale.
Fabulous storytelling, thank you!
Speaking of rolling rocks, I have just emerged from the inner chamber of West Kennett Long Barrow, where I had chanced upon a very old lady with long white hair burning frankincense in the gloom. I sat with her awhile in silence, then emerging into the red setting sun over Silbury Hill, and looking back at the barrow the huge stone at the entrance to the chamber seemed to leap right up. I noticed her car parked next to ours in the layby, a large drum and a large wooden cross on the back seat! What a day indeed
Thanks for your rich words and blessings to chew on. I have just completed a week long pilgrimage to the Holy Island on Friday carrying a cross with a group of Christians all more devout than I. I wanted to walk the old paths of the early Celtic Christian Saints to hear the same songs of the birds and rivers that they would have heard all those years ago. To walk contemplating the deeper story of Easter and Holy Week in the Christian tradition. The tradition & religion that has done more to shape our western worldview than any other this past 1500+ years, for good and ill. There was an original purer message that brought light and hope in a time of darkness building on the riches of the older traditions your dream so powerfully invokes. The blackbird and the bell. It feels as though there is a new weaving needed an invitation to reimagine the future. This Easter in the thin place that is Holy Island that feels more possible. Ephphatha, ephphatha, ephphatha- may we all finds ways to overcome the blockages holding us back individually and collectively at this time.
Ah Justin, would I wish to have been with you all there. The blackbird and the bell, thinking of old Moriarty at such a moment.
"Breathe on us the scent of Yeshua, sweet as the dance of a hundred swallows"— this has stopped me in my tracks with beauty, and with a kind of bodily nod of truth. But I've been totally taken out today by the cry of the High King Conchubar, upon hearing of Yeshua's death, that horrible
"no no no" and -- "why did he not call for me, a king?" I mean, this has me weeping, a great warrior king of Ireland and what he would have done for his Yeshua. How he would have come. Thank you so much for such heart-piercing matter today. sending Easter blessings xx
Thank you Sylvia - I couldn't agree more, the tremors of the Christ eruption banging and wheeling and keening its way into the Gaelic world pretty much floored me when I came across the old story.
Beannachtaí Ná Cásca oraibh.
As always, a joy.
It is still cold here somewhere around 32°f/0°c and snowing again.
I will read these to my neighbors, the sparrows, red squirrels and ravens in the morning.
Slán agus beannacht
Ah, thank you for moving those sounds out to our beloveds out and about in the chilly light.
Thank you for these beautiful words, what fresh aliveness to imagine receiving yeshua as one who has never heard such a story before.
Thank you for helping me remember that this story is so much bigger than our modern western understanding of it.
Also, thank you for following the truth of your heart, and for stepping out and writing about things that aren’t so popular in our modern lexicon.
I found your work quite recently, and was completely blown away by your storytelling, and was so touched by the way you spoke of the wild, and the old stories.
It was a wild alignment when you started writing about your experience with yeshua, as over the past couple years I too begun having revelations of yeshua, and have recently prayed to encounter new expressions of this.
Thank you Meghan. Well here we both are, getting glimpses of this deeply mysterious electrical storm we sometimes call Yeshua. I'm glad you're here.
Thank you yet again for the beautiful imagery—and yes , “Let all our rocks be rolled away, and something vast emerge,” and may we be blessed to hear the “hymnal of the wild.”
Happy Easter Martin. A growing pleasure it is to have my Sundays enriched by your full flavoured and poetic writing
And a very, very happy Easter to you! Thanks for brigthening ours, with your Presence 🤝❣️
Thank you for this Martin - it illuminates both Easter and the time when Christian spirit was embedded with land, sea, animal, bird and story. I understand it in that context rather than the modern church version. What a simple and deep prayer - I too pray to be safe from the banshee on my back and the wolf inside, watching as I walk home. Power to you.
And back David, and back.
Happy Easter from Wānaka , in the Southern Lakes of New Zealand, where a crystal blue sky frames the body of the Wahine (Te reo Māori for woman) lying prostrate as an immense alpine chain. A real mountain Mama. The bays'guardian. Place guardian. Gate keeping guardian. Her long hair spills into the water, and the contours of her body recline with ease and balance reflecting shadows that are uniquely beautiful to April's flaming hold. She rolls rocks all the time. She's smiling and welcoming both your blessing and your request as I read them aloud. 'Tell us'. Indeed you do. With gratitude, have a blessed time during Easter and across to the next fortnight, Martin.
I love to hear of Mountain Mamas. Thank you Catherine, and many soft and respectful waves to the guardian.
Thank you Martin for your Easter blessing on our parish and a Happy Easter to all. May any hard, crusty, literalist tendencies in our hearts be drowned in the green bottle ferment, so that our hearts may become a fish, swimming with a gold coin in its mouth, a coin that hatches into kindness and generosity of spirit.
What a bold and crackling prayer Matthew, that could adorn any prayer book I may have. The heart as a fish, heading for stream to creek to river to ocean.
What I love about this is how jarringly specific it is to time and place. How you burrow in. The address thing. It's such a gift of yours. And for me, aspirational - to encounter the same Cosmic Stirring in my own gritty, condo-stacked, yet earth stratified neighbourhood. The best of Easter offerings. Thank you, Martin.
And to you Tama, your name so close to the grand and enduring Tamar river that flows between beloved Devon and Cornwall.
Blessings from LA where Easter and the other festivals still fill us. Yeshua a Druid! what a gift… and (with a palm to my forehead, of course!) Awen…
Thank you Maggie. I have a very mischievous hiding spot in Santa Monica where, after a breakfast at Patricks Roadhouse, I slip across the road and sit and sit and gaze at a trillion curly sea waves.
ooh hello + blessings to you in LA !(my hometown) ..i used to sneak ciggys as a kid in that same hiding spot..
Hot damn.
Ah, Martin, once again you meld wondrous images of the Galilean Druid and hymns of the wild. Indeed, this one of terrible mercy and a love so strong it turns the stars, whose words are white ponies running in the rain. The women knew, the carriers of his stories... like their magic people and even Conchubar, they knew as Earth groaned and even before -- time and space are no barriers to the Galilee arch-druid, then and now! Thank you as you continue to spin the stories, as you say, Stretch us, tender us, toughen us. Tell us of the Lord of the Elements, of the generous host and pummelling freshness of the Holy Spirit. Easter blessings!
I will do my very best Eric - strength to you.
:-) Thank you, and to you! I see in an earlier entry you have taken up Wallace's book When God Was a Bird. When I started in on it myself, I remember thinking "too, bad, another academic feeling a need to justify himself to peers," but the deeper I got the more I marveled at the array of not only plumage but furry and other beasties he incorporated. And I marveled that I had never noticed any of this, and me being seminary trained and all.... I did however, know about Muir, and I appreciated Wallace's accounting (while not apologizing) for Muir's unfortunate racist take on indigenous peoples - an odd thing, it seemed to me in light of Muir's understanding of sacred creation.
I don't know if you are aware of an outfit in the states that has taken on melding the ways of Yeshua and those of the wild, including myth and deep eco-psychology. Call themselves, Seminary of the Wild. One of their intentions is to reclaim the original wild Christ. I was in their first year-long cohort. Good stuff!
Much appreciation for all you do.
Glad you "liked" it, Pheobe... a lot there, anything in particular?
Good gravy Marie, you've undone me. Thanks for that. Blessings and benedictions—many, many good words—on your reflections and thinkings on Romanticism.