when the body’s ecology changes So often healing is seen as ‘getting back to normal’. Didn’t we hear that during the height of the pandemic? And yet, we know that nothing ever works in that direction. I’m never going to have the terrain of my 25-year-old self before four caesarian sections, three work place assaults … Read more
wonderings on rain, relationships and connection This year began wet — drenching, howling wet. As though the world could not shed enough tears. How could any of us? The world grown strange and terrible, as the wise have been telling us it would for decades… and are still telling us: Nobody likes to be reminded … Read more
a month with comfrey There is a strangeness to spending a month with a herb that cannot be taken internally. Cannot? An extraordinary tissue-healing herb, he contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids (associated with liver toxicity) so currently EU (and other places) restrict it to external use. Certainly he is a knitting herb, so I’d be wary of … Read more
of attention and hospitality For centuries we have known thin places where the boundary between the quotidian world and the other feels permeable. We call it atmosphere, spirit, genius loci, presence. We sense it along ancient pilgrim paths, on small islands and mountain tops, beside holy wells, in forests or along remote shorelines. We feel … Read more
To turn towards devotion I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.I do know how to pay attention, how to fall downinto the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, writes Mary Oliver in the poem ‘The Summer Day’ On Wednesday we were in the path of a solar eclipse. The partial phase began … Read more
because life is irreducible Outside the window overlooking the orchard, the apple trees, impossibly green, foliage riotous, first fruit held high to ripen, a chorus of voices blackbirdwrengarden warblerchaffinchsparrowgoldfinchnuthatchrobinchiffchaff Sparrow and blackbird competing for the solo parts above another chorus line, human voices drifting from the tourist gite along the path into the forest, the … Read more
when urgency falls away We have reached the season of Lughnasadh, the first harvest, corn being cut. In the fields John Barleycorn, who laid with the Lady in the woods at Beltane, has aged, bearded and head bent. The Sun has transformed him, green to gold, and his time to leave this life of earth … Read more
a month with self heal Self healHeal allAll healWoundwortHook healHeart-of-the-earthCarpenter’s herbSicklewortBlue curls I have spent this month with Prunella vulgaris, Self heal. She is a member of the mint family and all about adaptability. She likes shade, but will grow in bright sun. She loves well-drained, loamy soil, but will grow in a wide range … Read more
on choosing integrity over boundaries Hawthorn flowers when hawthorn flowers.Oak rests when oak rests.Mistletoe fruits in winter. We think of integrity as moral uprightness, even as a kind of rigidity, but the root of the word in Old French is about innocence and the Latin integritatem speaks of soundness and wholeness, as in an integer … Read more
cooling summer fire Summer heat entering the body. Not simply warmth, something on the edge of discomfort, a feeling for overstimulation — the body held too close to the surface of things. Sleep lightens. Patience thins. Moisture — in the mouth, the skin, the breath — recedes almost imperceptibly. I am reaching for cooling herbs … Read more