Solstice: the aftermath

On Christmas Day, with a migraine, I returned to the Reserve, hoping fresh and trees would help with the head. They did somewhat.

I walked my usual route and when I reached the Goddess, I saw the the crystal was no longer in her omphalos.

I figured that a curious squirrel of corvid must have dislodged it. So I rooted around in the leaf-litter at the base of the tree. It took a little time, but i found it.

Now you might think I'd say that I put it back, or that I felt tthe ritual thing was a load of bunkum. Or that the quartz "wasn't enough". Actually, what I thought was that the ritual was now complete and that responsibility rested with me. It was no longer the job of the symbol to do the work: it was up to me. Indeed, the whole process of noticing and then searching and taking back the crystal is like an enactment of my belief: pay attention, put in the work, and take responsibility for what is yours.

Stay awake.

Don’t assume what you’ve placed will remain where you put it.

If something matters, you may have to look for it again — without guarantees.

Keep your eyes open and your hands busy.

When I sat with Kairos, I was profoundly touched by what the place offers. My thinking remains as grounded as I am, there, on the earth, back against bark. I am in the world, the world of trees and cold north-easterlies and complaining squirrels, scurrying muntjacs and conversing long-tailed tits.

Thinking-with-tree-earth-place means that I am inoculated against abstractions, generalisations and the dreams of transcendence.

As I pondered, held by the gravity of earthiness, I saw a vision of white-robed people all dreaming a dream discordant to me, especially in this place. The transhumanists who imagine a future of disembodied brains; the religious people who imagine a heaven; the meditators who proclaim the priority of a universal consciousness, with all this wood and soil as illusion. All, to me, the same.

The constraints placed on thought by being a vulnerable, dependent, embodied being are the constraints that offer the freedom to imagine grace, the sacred, the beautiful, right here and right now.