The Final Initiation

(Image : “Druid Review”, final exam, SG, 2009)

A year or so after receiving the lovely scroll that marks the end of my formal training as a Druid at OBOD (actually you may find out that it never ends!), the final Initiation.

…I was in the kitchen, talking with Mika and Adam (the other two parts of the Earth Sanctuary Project´s coregroup) over coffee one morning, about how hard it is sometimes to maintain this land, and how sometimes we would love to travel or go someplace different, smaller, easier, – and how we couldn´t ever go back to living in a town flat, when a sudden realisation hit my brain.

I, who thought I couldn´t ever live in a town again, had the sudden vision that all the trees of the world were now rooted in my heart, and the mountains, and the rocks, and the little river, and all the animals, deer, fox, squirrels and eagles, and that I could, without batting an eye, pack my suitcase and go…anywhere!

Tears just welled up in my eyes.

All the forests of the world are now rooted in my green heart.

I have become the Grove.

Asse-asse-asseverate!

(Image : “Use Your Imagination” Journal, recycled paper bags, SG, 2010)

Couldn´t resist…

I do declare, earnestly, nay, I avow, I allege, I asseverate, that this feckless tyro, this neophyte, this greenhorn, this factitious filibuster, this facetious sassy tenderfoot, this pesky pugnacious rogue, is causing quite a pother among the class.

…Happy translating, dear BabelFish!

Don´t mind me, it´s just a pretext for uploading a new image!…

(The Lady Dragon laughing, obstreperously, of course!)

The Legacy

(Image : Revamped “Use your imagination” Journal, recycled paper bags, SG, 2009)

…Yesterday I counted them : I have created 18 journals in less than two years! Only two of them are completely finished, cover to cover.

I consider them as “works in progress”. Usually I go back and take them up, adding, changing, sometimes quite drastically. Like this one, “Use your imagination”, which I started two years back.

I´m quite happy about the results; these are already a nice legacy to leave behind to my children and grandchidren. They´re proof that I have existed in exactly this way, with a happy colouring and enthusiasm (“enthusiasm” meaning “transported by the gods”), and what a peculiar, odd, quaint and kooky way this is.

…Wait a minute! Eighteen in two years, and assuming this won´t slow down too much (given the happy-go-lucky way “the gods” daily transport me!), it means 180 journals in twenty years from now! Woah. They will have to rent a TRUCK to move “The Legacy”! …(Or make one huge bonfire!)

Hahaha

 

PS.- Not counting the 1.157.822 posts that constitute my group work in the InnerNet!

Bah, maybe the Net will crash, and good bye all good intentions.

 *sigh*

Anchoring the Light

(Image : Mandala 46, Anchoring the Light, SG, watercolours)

…Not much more we can do these days, but anchoring the Light as concretely as we possibly can.

A sense of impending doom…

(Image : “Impending doom”, soul card, collage on cardboard, SG, May 2010.)

“We do not own the Earth, we only borrowed it from our granchildren.”

(Anon)

I think I´ve mentioned this before,  I feel very uncomfortable about what is ocurring around the world, and that feeling comes through in my art lately. I see a necessary Change coming, a radical Paradigm Shift, about which some people have been talking for quite a goodly number of years now, myself included.

At the Sanctuary we´re extremely aware of the Peak Oil problem,  and how this is going to totally change our lives; we´re aware also of the climate crisis. We are downsizing and re-skilling, learning NOW how to live with less, because when the deep shit hits the final fan, it´s going to hit hard. Be prepared.

Downsizing : These last months we have reduced our plastic trash a whopping 80%, and the rest is selected, organic goes to the chicken. Yes, we have a chickencoop which gives us an average of 6 to 8 eggs a day, and we have a veg patch. That means having learned to manage chicken, and caring for a kitchen garden. We eat less, we eat better, and leave a lot less garbage. Re-skilling : Mika has learned to make bread with about every grain available. We still depend on the supermarket for some products, but are learning to make our own (basics). We are very aware of what we buy, are  buying more recicled and ecological stuff, (including second hand furniture), and we´re not going on holiday on a plane.  The house is paid for, the car as well. We have an eye on gasoline prices. All this is shorthand for : be cautious, be aware, be prepared.

Forty years back when I told my mother, let´s eat brown rice, – she told me in no uncertain terms that I was crazy. So I got used to being thought of as a bit of a zany bird, what with my eco-ideas. Now these very same ideas are becoming mainstream fast, and Alleluiah, at long last.

But we don´t know if there is much time left, we already live on borrowed time as a civilization, maybe it´s too late for the majority, and the crash will be hard. Another thing that will become very handy indeed is knowing about group processes. Believe me, friends, when the survival of your family depends on your neighbours, you better know how this functions! That´s one thing for which, as a group, we are thoroughly prepared.

When asked what he thought about civilization, Gandhi answered : “It´s a good idea”. The man must have had a dark sense of gallows’ humour.

Naa-niiiiiii!

(Image : Little Mister Sunshine, on Mamiiii´s knees, photo : Tata I-a, MDG, 2010)

“L´homme propose et Dieu dispose.” (Anon Le Grand,  ze French Anon)

Grandmothers propose and grandsons dispose, if you will pardon my French!

I told my daughter in no uncertain terms that no way do I want to be called “Granny” or anything remotely like it! So we said, OK, so Alex will call me”Ya-ya” (Granny in Catalan), but after trying it on, well, I´d rather not, ”La Yaya” is the other Grandma, thank you very much. So we said, what about “Nana” ? Mmm, nice. Nana, I can digest.

But no.

D´you know who that screech is meant to bring about running : Na-niiiiiiiii!! which means just about anything from Gimme-my-bottle-and-not-too-warm-eh? to Lift-me-up-quick-I-wanna-see-sumpthing!…Yeah. Me. the Wizard of Lothlorien. Ha.

So be it,  – Nani it is. And …Maaaami-iiiii (Mama), Tata I-a (auntie Mika) and Da-da (Adam). Awa (agua, water), Maaa-meh (dáme, give me) and other wonderful words which we have a hard time not imitating! Like in:  ”I-a, maa-meh awa”! (Mika, give me water). Family in stitches.

Silence of the Druids

(Image: The Sanctuary, 2010)

I´m ba-ack, it´s raining. *grin*

People sometimes ask me if we have written books, and what kind of didactic material we work with. Mmm…Good question. (…You mean apart from the OBOD Course? The OBOD Course is the didactic material we are working with, if somebody absolutely insists on the written word.)

Did the Druids of old send off a correspondence course around the planet by plane?

Of course not.

Ah, there is your answer. We teach by example, and our didactic material is that which people are. In other words, we may be of help to certain people who need to decipher their own Mystery, and thus we help them to look into the alive ”book” that each one of them is. See what I mean ? Difficult to express through words, lol.

As an example, one hour in the forest is a good teaching tool. Especially if you teach an urbanite who is enthusiastic about “Mother Nature”and wants “to get, you know, closer to Her, the Goddess”, and so insists on taking off her shoes to go into the the woods, which are 80 %…brambles! Hahaha

See what I mean by “alive didactic material” ? Believe me, you won´t do it twice!…

The Druids of old haven´t written books, didn´t leave manuscripts behind when they disappeared, didn´t build temples of stone (no, not even Stonehenge, which actually wasn´t built by “The Druids”, even if it has become a popular “Druid” icon!…). And they must have been silent, very silent. When you are in tune with the world, what is there to say?

And this is also how I teach, if I may say so myself. I just grin through the whole phase of approach, until the student learns his lessons the hard way.

I´m horrible, I know. But you can´t imagine how efficient, too!

Kew kew kew

(The Lady Dragon, chuckling)

Dear Reader and Friends

…I´m up to my ears in “green days”, everything in the gardens is shooting up, up, out and away, the birds that are nesting make a wonderful racket just outside my window, and I´m truly exhausted with so much sheer activity! At night I just want to sink into the cushions of my sofa, and watch some really stupid television programme, which rests my mind no end, and then go to bed and sleep like a log until the birds start their racket again the next morning!…

So, not much time or psychological space for blogging, just now.

´Scuse me, I´ll be back when things go back to normal.

PS.- Mika has started a new blog about her latest passion : ecopsychological macrophotography. (Whoah! A mouthful!) It´s…wow!

A Druid´s Eye

Dark epiphany

(Image : Shadow Warrior, soul card 122, SG, 2010)

…Sometimes when the skies hang low over the valley and it is raining,  I need to curl up in my bed, with a nice cup of English tea and a good book. I close the door to the tower I live in (yes, I do live in a tower, lol, it´s not just a metaphor). At the moment I´m reading some historical novel about the period of Henry the VIIIth, for me a fascinating period of History, don´t really know why.

I know that “this too will pass”, so I don´t worry overmuch about the general gloom. I just go with the flow, and let it wash over me…

…Been in a somber mood these last few days, and it reflects in my art.

Fierce Light

” Sparked by what Gandhi called “soul force” and Martin Luther King “love in action” Ripper spotlights remarkable individuals who are taking action from the heart. The film is the revelation of a new global “movement of movements” of positive, compassionate action. Fierce Light : When Spirit Meets Action illuminates what is possible when human beings are their absolute best …a human sunrise.”

Soul force : in sanscrit, satya graha.

Hooray, this project of ours is not a lone orphan in the human Universe! Watch this DVD, and you´ll get a unique insight about what we, the Earth Sanctuary, are all about! … Oh my goodness I should see the day when the words “Warriors of Shamballa” are pronounced in a mainstream DVD, a balm for sore eyes, and in the correct context at that!…

Fierce Light : When Spirit Meets Action, a film by Velcrow Ripper.