The Birth of Brigid

Midwinter 2010

© 2010 Oona McOuat

Winter still sits heavily on us during the month of February. We bundle ourselves against the cold, light candles against the dark. And yet the pulse of nature quickens.

If we live on the land, we greet the first new life of the year. Snowdrops and nettle shoots sing the sweet promise of spring.

Photo by Licht

Sheep give birth to their lambs. One of the old names for the midpoint between winter solstice and spring equinox is Oimelc, or "ewe's milk." It is also known as Imbolc, which means "in the belly."

This season belongs to Brigid. Long ago in the Celtic lands, the coming of Brigid was celebrated in early February with heartfelt prayers and songs and stories. Today, as we hunger for meaning, context, hope and connection, stories that flow forth from the natural cycle of things can help build a home and hearth within our hearts. So close your eyes and sink into a place beyond place and perhaps you will hear me telling you this Imbolc tale with my harp...

Photo by Kmax

There’s no denying it. When Cailleach Bheur woke up, she was a crotchety old crone. Maybe she was tired of people complaining about her. Maybe she’d heard enough gossip about the way she looked - they said she was old and ugly with a blue face and only one eye. True, she wasn’t getting any younger and she leaned more heavily on her holly staff than she had when she was born - already an old woman! - at Hallowe’en. Sure, she had stirred up a couple of good storms – one had even caused the roof to blow off McTavishes’ cow barn. But hadn’t these people anything better to do than sit around and grumble about the weather? They blamed her for the long, cold nights, for their barren fields and emptying larders. She was just doing her job.

Cailleach Bheur
by Andrew L. Paciorek

Cailleach sighed. Maybe she needed a change of vocation. Or a vacation? But who then, would keep the land in winter’s grasp? Cailleach stretched her aching limbs, put on her tattered cloak of decaying leaves and left the cave where she’d been sleeping curled up beside a wolf. As she walked, she tapped the earth with her gnarled staff. Everywhere she tapped, the ground froze and the grass turned to ice.

Photo by Licht

Cailleach stopped to catch her breath. She was getting weaker. To test her powers, she raised her staff and called forth a bitter, howling wind. In December, this would have been easy. But now, in early February, it nearly sapped her strength.

Braced against the strong wind, Cailleach slowly walked across the moor towards the water’s edge. With a sigh, she eased herself down upon a cold grey boulder, her ragged cloak and long white hair streaming behind her.

“Cailleach Bheur” she heard on the voice of the wind, “Cailleach Bheur, it is time!”

Then as suddenly as the wind she'd summoned had started, it stopped, and the grumpiness that had been with Cailleach since early morning was gone too. Squinting her tired eyes, she looked out upon the horizon and saw a weathered blue boat heading towards the shore. When it landed, Cailleach carefully eased herself up and waded through the shallows to climb aboard.

Wee Blue Boat - Photo by Ian Cameron

As the sun set and all through the night the boat moved purposefully to the west, as if propelled by an invisible sail, its course steady and assured.  Just before morning, the vessel reached an island covered in groves of oak and holly. Slowly, the old one got out of the boat. Her joints creaked and groaned as she walked even more gingerly than the day before to the Well that sat at the center of the island. As the first light of dawn awoke the sky, Cailleach picked up a ladle worn smooth by touch and time that lay on the ground and dipped it into the Well.

Brigid's Well, Faughert, Ireland

“It is time,” she muttered, bringing the water to her lips, delighting in its sweetness as it ran down her throat. As she swallowed, her body grew light and lithe, her skin smooth, her hair glossy and her holly staff transformed into a white birch wand. Leaning over the Well, she looked at her reflection. She was no longer Cailleach Bheur, the Old Wife of Winter. She was Brigid, the Spirit of Spring.

Brigid sprang to her feet, spinning and smiling and admiring her new white gown. Joyfully, she scampered back to the boat and journeyed across the water to the shore. When she landed, everywhere she skipped and danced the land turned gently green beneath her feet. Everything she touched with her birch wand stirred with new life. Slowly, the sap in the trees started to move. The birds in the south grew restless and felt the first pull to head north. Her breath was a warm wind that brought the people hope.

Windflower by John Waterhouse - 1903

When Brigid arrived at the village no one recognized her. They praised her youth and beauty and welcomed her in their midst. That day, she sat amongst them on the greening hills and they watched in awe and wonder as she wove the most beautiful cloth they’d ever seen.  Into it Brigid stitched healing threads that would keep their powers for as long as she was remembered.

And so in the lands where the people remember still, on midwinter’s eve, Imbolc, the eve of the birth of Brigid, they place a piece of linen or other cloth outside or on their window sill. It is said that on this night Brigid travels all over the land and if she sees this cloth she will bless it and give it healing powers with this special prayer:

              Let the cloth of life be mended.
              Let the thread be linked again,
              restored, cleansed - the forests growing,
              native plants in field and fen.

              Let the cloth of life, in beauty,
              be restored by will to be.
              People with the plants and creatures,
              tending earth and sky and sea.

 And that is my story of the Birth of Brigid.


Wishing you a Blessed journey towards Spring,

Oona

Honey and Holy Water

Now available here:

http://www.oonamcouat.com/cds.html

and on CD Baby:

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oonamcouat

Sweet and soulful, my new album Honey and Holy Water flows with urgency and wonder. The honey bees are disappearing. The oceans are in peril. It's been 40 years since Woodstock (the only cover tune on the disc). Will we make it "back to the garden" before the jig is up? From the fun and funky re-creation of the trad tune Drowsy Maggie to The Wild Ones' heartfelt plea for preservation, through the broken-open love song, Where the Emptiness is Full, this album navigates mystery and loss with purity and grace while encouraging us to cherish what might yet be saved.

The luminous cast of characters who have joined me on this project:

Jami Sieber on the cello

Desmond on vocals

Richard Lee on woodwinds

James Mutubu on vocals

Chris Bertin on percussion - this is his handmade Mother drum

Producer, engineer and musician extrordinaire Daryl Chonka & Chris jam on the didg

Zavallennahh Rokeby-Thomas on violin

Corbin Keep on cello

Join my Street Team

It's a brave new world out there in the realm of music marketing and some of you might want to help actively promote my music. You can become a member of my "Street Team"! (Best read with an excited inflection in your voice).

Don't worry - it does not involve standing on corners decked out in skimpy outfits or carrying placards. It works like this: I create a "mission" i.e.: spread my music and a "reward." For example, I could send you a link to a "widget" (don't ask) - that you can place on your website or myspace or facebook page to play my music…. The page that gets the most plays wins the prize…(I didn't make up this game but if it means I get some promotional help I will play it!)

Cilck here to join my street team and to start helping spread my music:

Photo by Kmax

Your Insights

2008-2009

"Ahhh, Oona, I'm drinking deep of all the beauty that you've shared in this message — the pictures, the words, the thoughts — so full, and rich, and wise. Speaking deeply to my heart. Thank you so much, dear friend. What a gift you've given me!"

- Mercedes, Marin County, California

"I wish to thank you for your beautifully written news letters which I have been receiving for a good number of years. You have a most wonderful way of expressing yourself, a way which is amplified in your music.

I have just moved from the winter wet of Vancouver Island to the pristine snowy conditions in south-eastern Ontario . Your news letters will keep the beauty of the west coast fresh in my mind. Keep up the good work. I’m sure that many are inspired by your messages and your songs.

Thanks again. Blessed be,"

Ed Panchishin, Belleville, Ontario

"Aloha from the Big Island. You touch me. All of me. My heart and soul, my mind and my physical body. My Spirit and All that is. Thank You for your Presence."

Iao, Kapoho, Hawaii

"Thank you for keeping me on your mail list. I really like reading your reports; they strike a deep resonant chord with me in your views of the season cycles and the way that our personal energies relate to the world. Very good, very poignant especially in this uber-electronic age, where, as you mentioned in your writing, there can be so much dis-connect from the real world of the outside, nature, weather, seasonal cycles. And so your email reports are just a great way to be reminded of these cycles...

In my own life I have strived to stay connected to the powerful, profound, and the "ultimate-reality-events" those things that the natural world just keeps doing all around us.. That is why I live where I do and am a fishing guide and spend three months of every year floating these beautiful rivers around here, I want to be a witness to the profound poetry of the wild salmon and steelhead migrations that occur all along our coastline and into the interior. A witness and a participant in the beauty.

Wading in the waters, angling for these fish, observing all that goes on in a wild salmon ecosystem, puts me right in the cradle of life and death... the bears, the eagles, the dipper, the Orca whale, the First Nations food fisher, all will die without the salmon....

So, as you do, I too am a passionate observer and experiencer of these deeply poetic cycles of life, death, rebirth - on so many different levels: internal, external, the world around us and even just what transpires in the interiors of our workshops, studios, and dwellings.

Thanks again for your thoughts..."

Todd Stockner, Kisopix Music Festival, BC

The Healing Flow

fellow lovers of the unfolding
brothers and sisters in the now
just who is doing the holding
when we hug our Oona and just how

does love shine from one so brightly
and touch so many in such a way
as to caress their souls so very lightly
that mystery is tickled enough to say

come closer to me oh nearest of ones
come closer to me farthest still
let me honour your hearts daughters and sons
and empty your minds of foreign will

see me now as here you are
and feel me as you love each other
yet I am more than the brightest star
more than the breath of the eternal mother

hear me dears sacred is your gift
and more so when you share it
in your world love creates shifts
much more than might or merit

silence knows more about me
than all the loudness on earth
and as our Oona dives into her sea
celebrate as each splash gives birth

to a thousand dolphins singing
and a million salmon returning
and hundreds of whales bringing
back what we need to be relearning

so hold her my friends a good long while
let every cell of both your beings know
that dark and light and frown and smile
all are welcome in the healing flow

Loving You Oona

Dancing Wolf
Dec 12, Victoria, BC
Full Moon Magic

Polar-ization

Winter 2009

© 2009 Oona McOuat

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost
New Hampshire
1923

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.


Thick white flakes swirl from the sky. I turn up my collar against the wind, a wind cold enough to make even the most ardent environmentalist question if the earth is really getting warmer.

Who do we believe – those who tell us that linking human activity to global climate change is a big conspiracy that will allow government to tax us into penury while paving the way for an environmental policy-driven one world government domination, or those who tell us it is a big conspiracy aimed at discrediting science and allowing the oil and gas industry to continue with business as usual?

A plethora of well-constructed and conflicting arguments, ads and editorials are available at a click of our fingertips. And this week, as world leaders make up their minds in Copenhagen, we may be tempted to take up speed reading in order to make up ours and find the definitive truth about this issue. Or if we think we have found it, we may want the other side to just shut up because after all, this is supposed to be a season of holiday joy and instead we are shivering on dark and dripping street corners holding placards announcing that the earth is getting warmer, or we are cursing the herd mentality of the greens who have no apparent understanding of how their civil liberties and right to material prosperity are about to be crushed by climate change policy.

Any way you look at it, it is enough to sour your eggnog, more “us and them” and “left vs. wrong” (or is that “right vs. wrong”?) - more polarization than there are polar bears in the North Pole.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

Stop. Take a breath. Open the door and take another. Fill your lungs with the fresh, moist gift of a west coast snowfall. The head is full of facts; the ego of beliefs. It is from the body that wisdom speaks.

Still, we are body and mind, heart and spirit and to be in balance we must decide which facts we will allow to feed or shape our beliefs. So who do we listen to? How can we distinguish one expert from another?James Hoggan, a lawyer by training and the founder of one of Canada`s most successful public relations firms, says two simple questions suffice: What are their credentials? And who is funding their research?

But how can we distinguish accurate scientific research from pseudo science? What exactly is Science, the grade 11 chemistry drop-out asks conservation oceanographer Jeff Ardron. Anyone can write a book, says Ardron– a book is not peer reviewed so a book is not science. But a peer reviewed paper published in a scientific journal is. Science, he says, is when you publish your results and these results can be reproduced by others. So scour the scientific journals, suggests Ardron, and see how many peer reviewed and published papers you find that refute and how many you find that support global climate change. It all boils down to trust, says Ardron. No one person can research every detail and at some point you need to trust that the majority of scientists out there are right.

Science provides us with facts in hopes we will act on them and if we were purely rational beings we might. But our complex and often rigid, doubting selves get in the way.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

Photo by Kmax

Last August, Dr. Robert Gifford, a professor of environmental psychology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, presented the results of an American Psychological Association task force on attitudes towards global warming. Gifford and the other participating social scientists concluded that while 57% of Americans (down from 78% in April of 2008 according to polls conducted by the Pew Research Center) do perceive global warming as a problem, numerous psychological barriers prevent people from taking action on the issue. These barriers include uncertainty, mistrust, denial, undervalueing the risks, a sense of powerlessness, and habit. Ingrained behaviors, states the task force, are extremely resistant to permanent change while others change slowly. Habit, says the report, is the most important obstacle to pro-environment behavior.

If the myriad of scientific papers Jeff Ardron suggested I leaf through are correct and human caused global climate change is real, my personal habits that most contribute to it are driving my car, heating with wood and taking long flights, usually to play music in far away places. If I were to end these habits tomorrow I would be 1) a mud splattered cyclist on an island with steep hills, erratic driving and limited bike paths 2) Poor, as sporadic, limited or non-existent public transit could not get me to most of my outside commitments including my infrequent, ill or non-paying local performances and 3) Grumpy, as my electric baseboard heaters are expensive to run, smell funny, and don't fill the house with the same soothing, enveloping quality of heat that wood does.

What would motivate me to change these habits? Not guilt, not fear, not debate about whether or not I should change, but viable, appealing and affordable alternatives. The pressing need for these alternatives offers an amazing opportunity for scientists and visionaries, geeks and capitalists to join forces and to pour money and creativity into developing and making readily available new options – non-fossil fuel reliant forms of transit, soul satisfying and renewable sources of heat and power, and local economies that provide a livelihood and a sense of being valued. It is likely that these developments, with their emphasis on cooperation and community, would heighten awareness of both our global interconnectedness and our regional responsibilities thus helping to alleviate some of the existential issues of our age - alienation, chronic overwhelm, dogmatism and despair.

And so here we stand at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, unable to reach consensus about an issue that might threaten the very fabric of our existence, deeply entrenched in both the personal habits that bring us comfort and ease and our habit of seeing the “other” as a nuisance, a threat, or an out and out nutcase. It is easy now to divide the world into two camps - those who believe that human activity affects the planet and those who do not - throwing up our arms in anger or frustration or taking up arms because we see no other way to have it our way. Can the cultural creatives find common ground with the evangelicals? Can the industrialists see the value of those who believe we must consume less and simplify our lives? Is this deep chasm simply a manifestation of too much conflicting information, too much misinformation and not enough emphasis on the still quiet center of creation, the heartbeat, the life song of this precious planet that weaves us into one?

Those who can hear her humming beneath the chaos and the noise, who can sense the earth's dance in a furious flurry of flakes – can we also see the beauty in those we do not like? The journey before us is about inner transformation as much as it is about outer change. Every act of compassion, faith, ingenuity and courage takes us one step further on our course; every step leaving a footprint in the snow.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Photo by Kmax

With thanks to Briony, Dave, Victor, Jeff and Bill.

Balanced Between the Dark and the Light

Autumn 2009

© 2009 Oona McOuat

Photo by Jeff Ardron

Each night the stag comes, only a window separating my nocturnal habit of tapping my fingers on a glowing box, his of munching on fallen apples. His eyes meet mine and a primal jolt awakens a longing to abandon my endless emails and fill my nostrils with the night scents of turning leaves and early autumn. Autumn, autumnus - the word is most likely derived from the Etruscan autu, and is related to avil (or year) and menos meaning loss.

The year is dying. And as we harvest the bounty of the fecund growing season we also prepare for its death. Today, tonight all over the planet we sit poised in perfect balance between light and dark. Tomorrow, those in the south move towards the light while those of us in the north prepare for the season of darkness. I move from desk to door to outdoors, computer-bleary and disconnected, my mind racing with all that needs to be done and a nagging worry that I might not get the harvest in before the winter comes.

Deep inhale of musky blackberry bushes and yellowing maples and a falling star, a dying star, streaks across the sky in one last awe-awakening dance before it disappears. The stag stirs and eats another apple out of necessity and pleasure, and the words of poet Mary Oliver run through my head:

"Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

And I think of growing deeper and wilder, leaping hungrily, instinctually over the moss-covered stones, waning sun on my face, berry-stained hands ripping bark from trees to find honey flowing from dripping combs. Finger to comb to mouth, everything sticky with the pollen of a hundred flowers now faded. Feasting as if the sweetness will never end. Living as if I am dying, balanced between the darkness and the light.

Blessings,
Oona

Fire on the Mountain

The Muse's News for Summer Solstice 2009

© 2009 Oona McOuat

I hear the not-so-distant whirl and roar of helicopters. In Hawaii this meant lava-viewing tourists and the pot-hunting Green Harvest. In Nicaragua it meant war. But on this dry day on Salt Spring Island, it means fire.

The mountain to the back of me is going up in flames. Or a part of it is. From my place in the valley I don't see any plumes. I don't smell any smoke. Although I do not know for sure, I figure this must mean the wind is blowing the fire away from me. Yesterday, as a tiny spark ignited on a brown, withered piece of grass or a weightless twig, the spark becoming a flame, the flame becoming a fire, I felt an odd and lingering anxiety. It wasn't until early evening that a woman at the grocery store told me Burgoyne Bay was on fire. My first thoughts were of the mountain.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Those of you who follow my quarterly musings know this mountain has been my sacred place, a place of solace and connection, a place that has been an anchor in a time of change. Over the past two years I have been naming the landmarks I pass as I wind my way up the hill: Siwash Rock, Nettle Patch, Maple with the Hollow Trunk. I revel in how easy things are between me and these almost daily companions. There are no expectations, no demands, just an all-encompassing, steady sort of grace. Now, as I stand in line at the check out counter, I can't help but wonder, the next time I see them, will they be black and charred? Will I still be able to feel their spirits?

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

The second thing I think about is my home. Is it in danger? Will I be able to get back? Is there a possibility of evacuation? A part of me feels I should rush back to find out, but I know I need to go swimming. All day I have been waiting for the lake to hold me. I want, I need, to float and think of nothing but the gentle rocking, the cradling, the sweet release…

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

So, I dive into the lake, her holy water supporting my physical and mental weight. Time and tension melt away and I am pulled into a green and dreamlike well where all is well. Being human or maybe just being me, I can visit this peace but I can't always dwell here. Neverthelss, I am perpetually in awe of how effortlessly the water can remind me of my source. At last, my cells and my psyche have been permeated in the nameless yet tangible gift of the lake, and I pull myself out, dry off and prepare to face the fire on the mountain.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

As I drive, I see telltale wisps of smoke, but no obvious roaring inferno. When I arrive home everything - except for the fire bombers overhead - seems normal. I make a quick mental list of what I will take with me if I am forced to flee: my harp, my laptop, my list of phone numbers, some photos, perhaps…. And I reflect on the twisted relationship between nature and humans - she who provides, we who screw up…

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

As much as some of my best friends are trees and cetaceans and bodies of water, I know they have every right to pull away and harbour resentment. They really would be quite justified in becoming vigilantly anti-human. You see, it hasn't rained here for over a month. I know that isn't "normal." The fire on the mountain is yet another result of global climate change. And as much as I love swimming in warm water, the lake is a lot warmer now than it's been since I've lived here. Last year it took until August to reach this temperature; this year it was balmy even when I first started swimming at the end of May.

Photo by Kmax

This morning, as I go outside to take the laundry off the line, agitation spontaneously arising as aircraft charge closely overhead, I hear a different kind of buzzing. I see a single honey bee heading for the lavender.

Photo by Sharon Lapkin

Maybe the rest are busy somewhere else, I posture, but there were lots of them last week. Or was that last month? Honey and Holy Water.… As I do an awkward, single-handed, sheet-must-get-folded-but-not-touch-the-dusty ground sort of dance, my new album title runs through my head.

The official blurb says this CD flows with urgency and wonder. And as I stand on the brown grass in the dry heat surrounded by plumes of smoke and not many pollinators, I wonder if I can use my words and music and presence as a performer to help get this message across: "Humans you can and must change your greedy, lazy, unconscious, water and earth harming ways" - while somehow embodying the wonder-full, miraculous, benevolent, luscious essence of nature herself?

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Can I let this fire on the mountain ignite not despair but desire? Desire to live fully. Desire to love completely. Desire to face the fire and say, no shout, this beauty must, this beauty can, this beauty shall prevail.

Photo by Kmax

Blessed Be,
Oona

A Midwinter Night's Dream

The Muse's News for Imbolc 2009

© 2009 Oona McOuat

The night sky is the colour of a concord grape. Glistening from its depths are a zillion pinpricks of light. Constellations so often unseen here in the cloudy Pacific Northwest flank a smiling crescent moon. As I drink in the peace of this midwinter's night, I am filled with awe at its majesty and promise. There is so much beauty and potential stretching out before me, so much mystery; so much that remains unknown.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Many of us are now sensing we are at a personal and global turning point. Change can trigger fear. Every news story seems to speak of the "worldwide economic recession we now face". As I made my way down the mountain at dusk today I reflected on this. Yes, lots of us have been taking way too much for too long from a planet that has been receiving too little in return for her giving. "Feeling the pinch" and being forced to reprioritize our consumption, values and lifestyles here in the west may very well be for the best. But being terrified that our lives as we know them may collapse, and falling into survival mode as a result will not help us make sustainable choices.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

We tend to quantify our relationships with work and objects and even people - calculating them in dollars, hours and amounts of energy and attention spent - rather than valueing the qualitative - the essence and presence that infuses what we do and create with love, I ponder, as I trek past the newly returned songbirds singing to the setting sun. Once again I am reminded that the worth of life's greatest treasures cannot be measured.

Photo by Stocks Photographs

Does the economic system support us, or do we, through our beliefs, intentions and actions, support it, I wonder as I stop to tie my boot lace. In other words, am I really sustained by the material world - thus subject to possible scarcity and loss if the market wills it so, or do I somehow interact symbiotically with the world around me, creating abundance or deficit depending upon the energy balance between us?

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

I think about the founders of Findhorn, about their ability to grow huge cabbages in poor and sandy soil because elements of the invisible realm, the devas and the faeries, were awakened and the impossible became possible. The flourishing of that first garden at Findhorn was not the result of the mythic magic of Jack in the Beanstalk. It was rooted in faith in the unseen and planted with sweat inducing, tangible physical labour.

Photo by shaneandruth

I think back to last night's sky and how it held in its vastness a knowing that so much is waiting to be embraced and discovered, remembered and reclaimed now. Each of those shining stars a tiny seed that might grow into a gigantic and amazing fruit if I have the gumption or vision to plant it.

Here in southwestern Canada it will soon be the time to plant as we cross the halfway point between winter solstice and the spring equinox. Snowdrops, dandelions and crocuses are pushing forth towards the sun's lengthening rays. In a few weeks the first lambs will be born and in the still of the night I will hear their bleating.

Photo by law-keven

This came from my friend Krista of Generacion in Portland, Oregon: "The Mayan glyph for birth means to touch the earth, and in traditional Celtic times, newborns were taken at high noon to touch their brow to the earth."

As we prepare for the season of birth and rebirth, it is a wonderful time to touch the earth and to ponder on how our lives are connected to the world around us. The nights are growing shorter now but they are still the nights of winter's dreamtime, nights of warm nest beds and bedtime stories. As I hiked up the mountain today - the hills in the distance today still covered in snow - a simple story came to me. I will share it with you here.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Once a year at precisely midwinter a strange magnetic force field encompasses the earth and causes all phone lines, satellites, electric, nuclear and geothermal power stations and generators, weapons and widgets, batteries, electronic devices and anything that runs on fossil fuels to stop working. (For some odd reason essential life support systems are mercifully spared. This phenomenon is of course experienced at midsummer in the southern hemisphere.)

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

For twenty four still and momentous hours games boys, televisions, radios, SUVs, fighter jets, machine guns, computers, DVD, CD and MP3 players, watches, cell phones and land lines, Blackberries, and ipods are cast aside and people walk to the Gathering Places carrying acoustic instruments, blankets, rugs, a bowl and a spoon, and a yam or an onion (or a gigantic cabbage) for the communal soup pot. When they arrive at the Gathering Place, large cauldrons of broth are simmering over the fire. "Stone soup" it is fondly referred to, as everything that goes into that pot comes out twice as good, and there is always enough for everyone to eat their fill.

photo by Sfphotocraft

The air is laced with the aroma of bread baking in the wood-fired ovens as families and neighbors, friends and strangers begin to mingle. For the first few years talk focused on how odd it was to be sitting outdoors by a fire in the middle of winter in a silence so vast it was almost unfathomable - no traffic, no buzz and hum of power lines, no idea of what the precise time was even….
"Just think," said one teenager, "This is how our ancestors lived all year round!"

Now, although the silence is appreciated - and there are designated intervals when all talk stops and everyone stares at the stars or into the fire and can feel the rhythm of their own beating heart - this night has become a time for music and storytelling.

Photo by SLENGfJES

At first the stories were anecdotal:

"This reminds me of lying on the hood of a car beside someone I loved on a warm summer's night in a green mountain valley gazing at the moon…."
"The greatest peace I've ever felt was swimming flank to flank with a joy-gushing dolphin…. I felt time stop then too…"

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Now, it is a night for speaking of the winter's journey - what has been lost, what has been found, what is being put to rest and what seeds are being gathered to be sown in the spring. It is understood that endless activity and consumption lead to endless restlessness and hunger. This midwinter accounting, this breaking the cycle of overdoing, this weaning from an addiction to busyness and technology begins to address an insidious yet overwhelming sense that there is always one more thing to accomplish, one more thing to buy or achieve in order for us to be happy.

Sometimes, even when the technological world is "back on," people choose to go to the Gathering Place, to build a fire and make soup, to take off their shoes and feel the grass between their toes, to touch and to talk. To remember what is real.

Photo by Kmax

Blessed Midwinter dreams to you,
Oona

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Here in the Cave

The Muse's News for Winter 2008

© 2008 Oona McOuat

Here in the cave it is cozy. A fire burns in the stove and night enfolds me like a pair of flannel pajamas. Here in the cave it is silent. The phone does not ring, the traffic stops. Mind chatter gives way to being and breath. Here in the cave it is still. I am alone. I sink into this space of solitude and watch sorrow and loneliness surface and settle and I listen to their story. Here in the cave it is dark. But there are windows, and if I pull back the curtains a perfect, tiny crescent moon fills me with her light.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Deep, deep, deep in the heart of December,
Deep deep, deep in the womb of the mother,
Deep, deep, deep where there is no other
Song but the song of my soul…

Solstice Chant © Anne Bearheart

Last Week's "Cosmic Smile" captured by Leigh Hilbert

Advent. The dictionary says that beyond being the season before Christmas it is the arrival of an important person or thing….I stop to reflect. Is this perhaps the downfall of modern humanity? We focus on what might happen, what will happen, what we will to happen and miss the moment? So, is all this frenzy of Christmas feasting and frolicking, this attachment to holiday tradition, this shopping and baking, decorating and dragging our sniffling and sun-starved bodies from one potluck or choral event to another an authentic celebration of the season? Some of it may be, but much of it may also be a way of avoiding the gift of the cave - the deep, dark, quiet of these short days and long, velvet star-studded nights.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Here in the north country, the earth grows still now as if hollowing out a cradle for the rebirth of the light. I love the winter Solstice. I love Christmas. And I know if I don't sink into the cave, I will neurotically or habitually fill the emptiness and miss the richest gifts this period of advent has to offer.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Yes, like all of you no doubt, I have been busy. This was a magic autumn spent recording with Daryl Chonka, a musical soul brother who has helped me create a beautiful thing. (I will let you know when it is ready.) The most wondrous part - all of this was done within walking distance from my home - the album photo shoot, the recording, the mixing, the mastering. Come on, I'll take you there….

Photo by Kmax

Go through the gates that lead into and out of the vineyard. Walk past the lambs who are almost full grown and no longer scurry away when you pass. Climb over the neighbor's fence. Be careful not to tear your pants. Take the trail that crosses the still dry creek. (It's been such a warm, atypical fall here.) Follow the path of soggy, russet maple leaves. Notice the sprouts covering the forest floor and the young nettles springing up as if it is spring. Wonder if one day soon the climate here will rival that of Hawaii… Pass the copse of fir trees and inhale their good, green scent. Stop when a flock of skittish starlings suddenly lights on the overhead branches and bathes you with their chatter.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Walk through the same sword ferns that filled the ohia forest on your tropical island home. Jump over the birch tree that fell in a recent windstorm. Do not take your usual route up the mountain but instead head down into the valley. Enter the yellowing blackberry thicket. Step out onto the reddish dirt road and you have arrived at the studio, the magic place where music is birthed and captured and then sent out to the world.

(And here is the luminous cast of characters who have joined me in this sonic cave...)

Jami Sieber on the cello

Desmond on vocals

Richard Lee on woodwinds

James Mutubu on vocals

Chris Bertin on percussion - this is his handmade Mother drum

Producer, engineer and musician extrordinaire Daryl Chonka & Chris jam on the didg

Zavallennahh Rokeby-Thomas on violin

Corbin Keep on cello

Eventually, soon, this wonderful music must leave the safe, dark womb of the studio and be released to the world. How, you might ask? Much of it from my home computer.

The internet has changed everything. Everything. I am beginning to wonder if it is irrevocably changing me. Yes, it creates more empathy, a sense of global connectedness. It teaches me to communicate with few words and big presence and to use instant discernment and intuition when assessing someone or something I stumble upon on there. But when I go on the net I am opening an energetic door that invites all kinds of things to come to its threshold. I wonder how much of this is actually entering me. There is something very intimate about sitting down with my computer.

As I develop my myspace site I am discovering the internet allows instant friendships to form with hundreds of people most of whom I'll never meet. We are all on a first name basis. Yes, there is connection - sometimes it stays on the surface, sometime it runs quite deep. Each friendship is like an energy thread that reaches out from my psyche. How many of these can I support before I become diluted? This way of connecting creates a speedy sort of mind buzz, a heavy-headed eye burn that must be counterpointed with walking in the woods or touch or having a bath to keep me in my body. And yet it is addictive. The flickering, seductive screen keeps the dark away.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Just when I feel I am stretched to the end of my cyber-networking capacity, I am told about Twitter - the new way to make your mark in the music world. Three times a day, I am encouraged to give short reports about where I am and what at I am doing. I can text messages from my cell phone. (What cell phone?) I can invite people to "follow" me and I can "follow" them, which means we can check our email a hundred times a day and voyeuristically discover what we're all having for breakfast.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Supporters of this site say it will fend away the paparazzi (shucks - I was kind of getting fond of them) as you are openly sharing the juicy tidbits that keep your fans hooked. They say it is a great way to make lasting connections, and that you can quickly weed out those who are authentic from those who are not, just by reading their two line "blogs" …

Photo by Kmax

And I wonder - would an authentic artist be playing her harp, musing in the woods, sitting and writing words that flow from her heart or would she be calculating that if she tells the world she is going to drive to town to buy some light bulbs she will somehow endear herself to them and sell more CDs? Don't most artists already find it challenging enough to bridge their feelings and perceptions with the world and/or distinguish the world from their feelings and perceptions without making their very lives a consumable piece of art? I can't do it. I cannot trade real relationship and true communion for cyber speak. Yes, this new way of recording and selling music is all computer based and yet I cannot allow the computer to become the center of my universe. I must balance the disembodied communication and fuzzy connection to the physical world it fosters with the visceral, the firm.

Photo by Fort Photo

So yes, the cave is a little harder to get to than it was 10 years ago before the onslaught of the World Wide Web. (Spell-check likes to capitalize this.) Even for someone who spends most of her waking days (and sleeping nights) in a tiny cottage on a small island, without company or television, heating with wood and drinking and washing with well water…

What then must I do to return to the cave of myself? Stop. Unplug the computer. Turn out the lights. Light a candle. Sit in the dark and mourn my losses, count my blessings, envision what I want my life and the world to be like. Resist the temptation to fill time, spend time, spend money, eat snacks, numb out. Be wild. Get outdoors. Get sweaty, muddy, real. Allow things to die without immediately trying to fill the space that's left behind.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

This advent, I am opening to the adventitious - that which comes from outside in an accidental sort of way. Some might call this magic. Some might say nothing happens by chance, that it is here in the cave of deep self, as we sit and strip down to bare bones and commune with the Mystery, that we call the unexpected forth. We make space for great miracles. We build a darkly rooted foundation for the great tree of Light to come.

Photo by Stocks Photographs

Here in the cave, alone and yet together, we are dreaming the dark. We are dreaming a balanced, loving world into form. May this season of dying and rebirth bring you peace,

Blessed Be,
Oona

Surrender

The Muse's News for Autumn 2008

© 2008 Oona McOuat

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

The first leaves fall, letting go of their branches, surrendering to darkness and decay.

Today there is a muted quality to the light - pearly grey, autumnal, retreating.

Photo by Wilda

Out come the wool sweaters, in comes the wood, and on goes the woodstove. There's soup in the pot - carrots, peppers, the last of the basil, the first of the red kuri squash. All day I feel sleepy, like I want to curl up and dream…

But there is so much to do. My album is the first priority. But there's a kids choir to pull together for an environmental fundraiser next month. I have been asked to prepare this same yet nonexistent children's choir to sing on the soundtrack of a documentary on Jade Bell being produced by Netwerk Records' Ash Sood. I will be performing with Victoria based Puente Theater as a a part of their multicultural storytelling troup in October. I am the guest artist for Salt Spring based Stagecoach Theater's 2008-2009 season. There is talk of creating an original play from my lyrics.....

Last night the stag returned, ambling rather ungracefully - for a deer - through my rock garden, not at all perturbed by my presence. (He had after all stood munching apples two feet from my window for hours last fall, wondering what strange music my fingers were typing and why I was so mesmerized by a small, illuminated box.)

"Welcome back," I call, "I see this year you have bigger antlers." His haunches are powerful, his air ambivalent; he smells of musk and turning leaves.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

The first part of September was golden, and in response to the warmth the lemon balm and nettles put out new shoots. Each morning, dressed in my nightgown, I gather them for tea, stuffing juicy blackberries in my mouth as I go.

Photo by Kmax

Now as I pull a second sweater on over the first, it's hard to believe that after a long session in the studio I jumped in the lake last night. The water was warmer than the air, soft and smooth as silk.

Yes, I am birthing a new CD, at long last. It was finally time, or I finally decided - this is the time - and everything fell into place. It takes energy, this process of creating - energy and trust, focus and a willingness to grow. Laying down the harp tracks is arduous and amusing as I watch an aspect of self that is rigid yet expects catastrophe try to take over the show.

Performing with Iridescence Dance Theater: Photo by Leigh Hilbert

"Watch out for those finger buzzes!" she hollers. "Don't play too dynamically or the notes will jump out!" "Keep it even, stick to that click track." "Remember the 12 measure instrumental and don't forget to go back to the bridge." "What ever you do, don't make a mistake or we'll have to go through this whole ordeal all over again…"

At some point, I let go, drop in, allow my fingers to do what they know, what they will, without the interference of fear and worry. I surrender.

Photo by Kmax

As I bring this project to life and sink into the womb, the cave - the ground floor studio I'm working in is like a hobbit house from Middle Earth - I feel removed from the world around me and yet simultaneously deeply connected to the place I am meant to fill, highly tuned to the currents and energies that want to move through me, that want to be born.

Photo by Kmax

As I think about beats and intonation, cellos and drums, part of me sinks into the universal flow of pure essence, while another part sits watching, waiting, profoundly aware of the critical place we humans dwell in on this planet at this time.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Once again, the US election falls near my birthday, and I wonder how the cards will fall, what will unfold as a result of the choices made on November 4th. A wise yet worldly presence inside me doubts that those who would practice electoral sleight of hand will let a heartfelt leader win the day.

Photo by Kmax

And if not, then what? We can't just roll back the tape, take it from the bridge and fade to finish. Any way I feel it, sense it, big things are coming. We need to think about gardens and goodness, about living from love and learning from the children. We need to release our sense of how things should be, our fear of how they could be, and trust our hands will find the right notes.

Photo by Kmax

Each of our individual, authentic songs matter more now than ever before. We need to do our dream, live our purpose as fully and courageously as possible, allowing our rivers to flow and feed, renew and revitalize the collective stream and dream.

Performing with Iridescence Dance Theater: Photo by Leigh Hilbert

As our individual songs weave in and out of one another, their dissonance and harmony, play and power will lead us skipping, swirling and hip hopping all the way home. To our hearts. To the collective heart that holds us, always, that allows us to free fall only to land in a place of perfect, peaceful surrender,

Blessed Be,
Oona

On Balance and Rebirth

The Muse's News for Spring 2008

© 2008 Oona McOuat

Last night I slept like a baby for nearly 12 hours, curled up in my comforters against the spring chill …. The kids I teach are coming down with whooping cough and scarlet fever and my body needed a good long rest to build its strength.

Yesterday was the Vernal Equinox - the point of equal day and equal night when the balance turns from the dark towards the light.

Sunball

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

I love the dark, the deep, rich mystery of the unformed. Although I often long for the sun and warmth, the turning inwards of autumn resonates with my soul. Since I was a teenager, spring has meant hay fever and a burgeoning aliveness that quickens my activity level and frequently sends me into overdrive. All of the springiness of rebirth can throw the plodding and methodical parts of me a little off balance. That's when it's time to get my hands in the dirt.

Plants have always anchored me in my body and the physical world. I remember the first spring I explored on my own as a child. I was old enough to bicycle solo into uncharted territory. I had just read Louisa May Alcott's "Under the Lilacs" and I was on a quest for lilacs. I would ride my bike past unknown houses and if I saw lilac bushes in the yard, I would creep up and bury my nose in their rich mauve, lavender, and deep purple glory. I don't remember sneezing…

Decades later I am living near the place where I grew up, striving to reclaim the grounded, gentle rhythm I followed as a child. It is spring and I've hardly sneezed at all! Perhaps I am learning to not take on more than I can peacefully accomplish as I temper my in-the world-self's tendency to mirror the quickening of nature. And so, last night, I slept for 12 delicious, restorative hours.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

As I was making the bed this morning I was reflecting on balance: equal day and equal night, the dark and the light, linear time and eternity, ego and essence…..I have jumped on the Oprah bandwagon and I am reading Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth" as I take the weekly online class. At first I registered because I thought I should be aware of what this potentially huge shift in global consciousness was all about. Within 10 minutes of being in class I knew it could help me grow. Eckhart's presence reinforces the peace inside me and encourages me to understand why and when I lose it.

So, I was making the bed this morning, ruminating about time. Last week Eckhart spoke of rooting ourselves in the eternal. I personally love floating through the unframed, unformed magnificence of eternity.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Yet there are things I want to get done here on earth. Do plants and animal know they are going to die, I wondered as I pulled the top sheet up over the bottom one. I doubt it. Is that why they can so purely surrender to their soulful and instinctual nature? Are us humans addicted to our day planners and Blackberries because we are afraid of dying? I started thinking about (I know, according to Eckhart thinking is ego based, but sometimes a girl's got to do it..), I started thinking about how anchored in linear time the cycles of nature are.

Crescent Moon

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

The Moon orbits around the Earth in 29 ¼ days; the Earth orbits around the Sun in one year. It takes 9 months to gestate a child, 6 weeks to distill a flower essence; it will be 6 moon cycles before the wheel of the year returns to the next point of balance. Our bodies are anchored in linear time; our spirits hunger for the eternal.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

I am still learning how to dance between these two points, how to live and create authentically and spontaneously while flowing down the "to Do " list like a river sure and true. I've recently decided I need to put my creative self on a schedule, dedicating consistent, structured time to her unfolding rather than letting inspiration alone dictate when I work. My free spirit balks at this, but I am so good at implementing meaningful distractions and putting more pressing commitments ahead of my personal projects.

The natural world around me moves through linear time with seamless grace. I let her ground and guide me. As I walk through the woods on a newly discovered trail that goes right from my backyard up Mt Maxwell (!) I gather young, brilliant green nettles. For five nights in a row I cook and eat them and feel wonderful. In a month or so, the nettles will be too "old" to eat this way. By autumn, they'll be gone.

I watch as the first brave snowdrops give way to tiny wild crocuses. A convention of sweet, heart-shaped leaved violets suddenly gathers under the elms. Birds whose names I don't know are arriving at my doorstep, filling the air with music. Soon the wild lilacs will appear. At Burgoyne Bay, a field of gorgeous daffodils miraculously sprouts up by the sea. I am reminded of the delight that flooded me at age four as I stood in my Nana's field of tall, yellow daffodils, surrounded by a large and happy family of flowers singing and bobbing their heads.

As I focus on the process of creation, I turn to nature to model how I can move my ego/mind self out of the way and let things take their course. My thinking self can step back in to edit, shape and form when needed, but how can a garden flourish if we are continually hovering over any new growth, pulling up anything we don't recognize and calling it a weed?

Sweet balance is helping me drop into, fall into, stumble into a place where life is full and rich and real - full of many cycles of death and rebirth, many letting go's and openings to the miraculous. Blessed balance is helping me know when to act - to say no to the garbage dump down the road or the horrendous situations in Iraq and Tibet, not because I am opposed to the horror, but because I hunger for and believe in justice, peace and beauty.

Photos by Kmax

As within, so it is without. Let me be and create what I believe in. As we work and play with, and love and heal ourselves, each other and the world, let us all remember the pure, eternal, unscripted joy of rebirth.

May Springtime, all time, fill you with a happy heart,

Blessed Be,
Oona

Carmel Point

by Robinson Jeffers

from The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers. © Stanford University Press, 1989.

The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses-
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;

No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop
rockheads-
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine
beauty Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff. -As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Move into the Mountain

The Muse's News for Winter 2007

© 2007 Oona McOuat

Maybe it's the two week long flu I am recovering from, but as December passes, I don't feel the slightest stirring of holiday cheer. There is no deep or sudden urge to drink eggnog or make sugar cookies. I am relieved that Christmas will be at my Dad's this year so I don't have to decorate or get a tree. I'm lackadaisical about gift giving. Cards seem passé.

Could it be that the grinch has got me?

Photo by Kmax

I don't think so. It feels like time is moving too fast. It's only been a few weeks since I finished picking blackberries and rosehips, and spent hours and hours slicing and drying the apples from my trees. Halloween wasn't even over and the shelves of the local pharmacy were decked out in red and green. The sooner they get us hooked, the more we'll spend.

According to National Geographic it would take $19 billion dollars to eliminate world hunger and malnutrition. Across the globe, we spend $18 billion dollars a year on cosmetics…. Food for thought. Or is that lipstick for food?... I'm lucky to live in a place with no malls and very few stores I can afford to shop in. There's no Ross Dress for Less to tempt me here.

Photo by Kmax

Bit by bit, winter is coming. We've already had two snowstorms. The branches of the trees are bare, scraping elegantly against a winter white or dazzling December-blue sky.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

On those frosty mornings when the grass and plants are glittering, hard edged diamonds,I put food out for the birds.

This fall, I've spent hours each day hiking up a nearby mountain. When I get near the top, to the place where the stone people tower over me like kindly grandparents and form caves where the Natives did their vision quests, I can feel cougars.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

One crisp morning, I heard twigs snapping behind me and felt I was being stalked. I looked at the ground and there at my feet was a pile of unidentifiable droppings. Without a second thought I grabbed a big stick, ditched the trail, and scrambled down the rocky mountainside to my car.

I am still learning about fear.

One day I climbed another mountain and told myself I couldn't come down until I had written a song. I made it out at dusk with an unusual set of elfin lyrics that seemed to come from the mountain itself. A new approach to writing, a new perspective in song, was born. Rather than rushing in to shape and order this newborn, oblivious to its holy, yet vulnerable state, (as futile as attempting to teach table manners to an infant) I decided to sit with this baby, this seedling, and see if it takes root.

This is a solitary time for me, this living alone in a one room cottage, learning to chop wood and befriend the deer and stellar jays that come to visit. I am putting aside my ideas of where I should be in my personal and professional life, while embracing and celebrating exactly where I am.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

So, Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat. Is it all about an excuse to overindulge? And what exactly are we feasting?

The Winter Solstice cannot be denied. The light will return.

The days will grow longer, but colder, until Imbolc when we'll be halfway to spring. A contradiction, perhaps, but I'm glad to know that nature has them too. It is hard now on planet earth, at this hectic, topsy turvy time of good vs. evil, us vs. them, to trust the light will return. The darkness is fairly well entrenched. Or seems to be. Perhaps this is just an illusion. Like the 40% off signs you see at the mall, or the way red Christmas lights reflected on snow make you think of fire.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Deep inside of us, big changes are happening. Beyond the world of Wal-Mart and online banking, newspapers and TV, monumental transformation is taking place. I can't name it, this subterranean flow of power and possibility, not yet, but I can sense it, buried like a patient bulb, hidden but not dormant, waiting for signs of spring.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Perhaps we all take this time we have here on earth much too seriously. Recently, I've begun to understand what my father means when he says, "The older I get, the faster time passes." When my head is full of desires and disappointments, to-dos and not-to-dos, I crowd time with mental clutter and lose the moment. When I move into the mountain, listening to my breath huffing and puffing and my beating heart, I fall into the undefined and open spaces of my soul. She speaks to me, without words, of the soft green moss, the play of light on trees, and the subtle shifts of the season that I am a part of. She gives me a place of belonging, a place that lives outside of church and school, career and ideology, a place that is rooted in cyclical change and lives outside of time.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

I will celebrate the light's returning in my own small ways. Maybe I will cut some holly from the bush in my yard and hang it over the doorway. Or make gingerbread cookies that fill the house with the smell of cinnamon and molasses. I will wrap a few simple presents for friends and family. But mostly I will use these last two weeks before the Winter Solstice to burrow into the dark and understand silence, to sit with sister stillness and recognize her peace.

There is a gift for each of us hidden here in the womb of winter if we risk unwrapping it. Deep inside ourselves we find the sparkling filament that is our individual genius and our collective truth. We find the Star of Wonder that sings to us of Love.

Bright Blessings,
Oona

Epilogue

Despite yesterday's somewhat Bah Humbug tone, today, as the snow fell, (snowstorm number three!), I decked the halls with boughs of holly and "fa la la la la-ed" a stanza or two for good measure.

Photo by Kmax

I didn't plan for this to happen. It was not on my "to do" list. Spontaneity and inspiration struck …spontaneously! Yesterday after writing the above, I dressed as a forest dweller and sat in the winter cave - a shimmering world of ice and crystals, of candles suspended in silver globes as if mimicking the sun - and as magical Shelby, who created this world, tossed her waist length poinsettia-red hair, adjusted her bejeweled crown and crinoline, and told stories to the children who sat and listened in wide-eyed wonder, I played the harp.

Photo by Kmax

I wished I could have sat there longer - till the end of February at least, but at the end of the day as the magic world was dismantled, I returned home with a carload of boughs, wreaths, and swags to be recycled for my upcoming winter solstice show.

"Just keep them on your porch," Willow advised. Suddenly my cottage was infused with holiday spirit. Today, as I hung boughs from the porch railing, and watched a flock of hungry birds scour the yard for food, I decided that this year's Christmas tree would be for them. I stood a large fallen Douglas fir branch in a bowl of white stones. As snowflakes fell, I decorated it with rosehips that looked like slightly shriveled red bulbs; I covered its cones with peanut butter and bird seed, and felt joy.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

As Bill McKibben says in his article, The Problem with Christmas: "….the second you … break out of it - the second you become one of those that exchanges used books at Christmas, or decides to follow St. Francis' Yule tradition of wandering the park and throwing seed so that the birds too can celebrate, or makes it an annual custom to serve turkey dinner at the homeless shelter- then you start sharing in the deep human secret that consumer society is set up to obscure: the things that please us most are almost always counterintuitive. We need to be out in the cold air, we need to think about others, we need to serve."

Of Dolphin, Deer,

and Harvest Moons…

Autumn 2007

© 2007 Oona McOuat

A harvest moon!
And on the mats -
Shadows of pine boughs.
Kikaku

As we sit poised between the Autumn Equinox and the Harvest Moon, a time that sings of bounty and balance, beauty and decay, I, like all good Northerners, prepare for the descent of the great Canadian winter - harvesting and conserving food, replenishing the woodpile, pulling sweaters and warm blankets out of the cupboard where they were stuffed last June… In all honestly, I do so half-heartedly, disbelieving that the cycle has come full circle again, that already the days are growing cold and dark.

Photo by Kmax

Perhaps it was more than a coincidence then, that on the first day of Fall, I took a fall as I picked pears on a rickety aluminum ladder. I had an inkling it was going to happen from the get-go, but my rational mind told me I had once picked fruit for a living, clambering up and down ladders with effortless ease. Why the trepidation? But as I got near the top, I felt a strange lightheadedness, a sense of being off balance.

In the end, it was the ladder that toppled, not me. I managed to spring off the metal rungs, holding my bucket of pears in one hand, pushing off with the other, landing on the ground on my hands and knees as the ladder crashed like a just-cut tree beside me. ("Timber!") I wasn't hurt but I was shaken as I wondered, did I fall because I feared I would? Or did I blatantly disregard the inner voice that was warning me this was going to happen in the first place?

The truth is, I am a little scared of the dark days ahead. Summer was too fleeting. The air and the lake have gotten so cold so fast. I need a more gradual transition. I need to feel like I have a choice. But the seasons will change, regardless of my will or desires, and so I am doing my best to make the best of what's happening around me.

Photo: Leigh Hilbert

Today, I picked the accident-inducing pears as well as apples, the last of the plums and blackberries, harvested some rosehips and planted a winter garden. I put kale, bok choi, gai lan, arugula, gem marigolds and winter lettuce seeds in the ground, not quite believing they will sprout and grow at this point in the year. It would have been better to have done this a few weeks ago, but today was the day and the sun will encourage upward growth until November 10th I hear. After that it's really only a hop, skip and a jump to winter Solstice…. Then it might be time for a winter vacation….

Photo by Kmax

Why all this bargaining? Why am I valuing the light and the warmth more than the coming time of rest and stillness? Is it all those years I spent in Hawaii? Am I dreading the cold or am I frightened of the inwardness it breeds - the soft, anchored-in-self focus that could lead me to the next place on my path? Are my dreams of prolonging summer - the lake swims, the picnics, the bare arms and feet - simply an exercise in avoidance?

Photo by Kmax

Despite my doubts, my less than open (and covered) arms, the magic of autumn unfolds around me. Every night a stag comes and munches apples that have fallen from the tree beside my window. I marvel at his appetite and the way he rolls the whole fruit around in his mouth as if savouring its juice before enthusiastically devouring it.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Photo: Leigh Hilbert

One night, he ate from 9:00 pm 'til 2:00 in the morning as I sat at my desk typing on my laptop, just two feet away from his feasting, listening to him crunch and munch and fart - yes - deer fart. Every now and then he would cast me a meaningful glance through the window as if to say "I'm okay with this if you're okay. Can't believe you let all these apples fall to the ground and that you're not out here eating them too. That little box you're sitting in front of must be really delicious..."

I begin to feel with this deer the kind of quiet kinship that happens with well-married couples. We are engaged in our own worlds yet offer each other steady companionship. We are separate, yet deeply connected.

Photo: Leigh Hilbert

I flashback to swimming with Pearl in Kapoho Bay, Hawaii, a few weeks ago… Pearl - the jewel-backed Great Grandma of all sea turtles. She is moving gracefully, slowly below me, flapping her fins like baby angel wings. I move my arms in unison with her flippers and pretend that I am flying. Pearl - a gentle, steady presence; no chatter, no discord, just waves of deep peace. It is so easy to find my sense of inner balance as I swim with her.

Photo: Leigh Hilbert

Dolphins are a different story. It is our first morning at Ho'okena and we stumble out of our tents to a bay full of them. As I swim out, I am bathed in a cacophony of squeaks and whistles. I am immediately flanked by two of the male scouts or elders - Cookie, who has cookie cutter shark bites on his dorsal fin and tail and Rumplestiltsken, who has a rumpled-looking scar on his left side. I send them love and they stick with me for a long time, keeping about 5 or 6 feet between us.

Suddenly, they vanish and I am surrounded by the mother and baby dolphins, enveloped by them. They are so close, I cannot move my arms, or choose my own direction; I can only swim in synchronicity with them, a part of the pod. One of the adults rolls over and shows me her silvery white belly and genital slit.

Spinner Dolphins
Photo: Leigh Hilbert

I begin to feel crowded by the dolphin on my left. For the first time ever, I want them to spread out, give me some room, but they seem oblivious to my need. My mind jumps to the sign my headlamp flashed on the night before, the one posted by my campsite with the picture of the dolphin with an open mouth and very sharp teeth that warned "Marine Mammals can be dangerous."

"What if it's true?" I think, a part of me not believing that I could even entertain such a notion, "What if the dolphin beside me snaps and tries to bite my hand off?" I know my fear is sad and ridiculous. I've been having peaceful, beautiful, life-transforming swims with dolphins for years, but on a primal, unconscious level, it persists.

Photo: Leigh Hilbert

Earlier, before the fear surfaced, I had been thinking it would be fun to see some dolphin bubbles. As if she had heard my thought and now hoped to appease me, a dolphin begins to blow clouds of little, cheerful bubbles under my fear-filled belly. At last, the group of dolphins moves away and Rumplestiltsken and Cookie reappear.

"What was that all about?" I ask them abashedly.

"This is your work now," they answer, "to notice when you are responding with fear to things that could nourish or bless, heal or delight you; to notice how this fear limits your joy and the depth of joy you allow into your life and reap from your experiences. We just wanted to point this out to you… By the way, your need to be in control of things stems from this deep-rooted fear of the unknown. The way to heal it is to focus on the joy and beauty in your relationships and in your experiences. Be with them in the moment instead of trying to second-guess the future or hash out the past."

Photo: Leigh Hilbert

Do dolphins talk? In my world they do and they have. And so, I sit and watch a deer munching apples under a near full harvest moon thinking about fear and balance, about welcoming the gifts of the descending darkness as I navigate my own internal world of shadow and light. I think about the stag. Does he trust me, or is his desire to devour my sweet, fallen fruit so strong, that it overrides or perhaps transforms his instinctual fear?

Food for thought….

I think about Pearl and the dolphins, the blessed wild creatures that have welcomed me into their world and taught me Great Love. I think about being underwater, immersed in an interplay of dark and light, the sun's rays illuminating me from above as I swim into the depths of the unknown. Perhaps autumn is a transition time, a time to gently prepare ourselves to move beneath the surface to discover our true selves.

Photo: Leigh Hilbert

May your journey be bountiful, gentle and good.
Blessed Be,

Oona

Photo: Leigh Hilbert

The Faerie Loop
Beltane 2006

© 2006 Oona McOuat

I know I have been silent. It's been a winter of tremendous change. I feel like Rip Van Winkle, like I've been asleep for 40 years, and am only now awakening to see the fresh, green leaves upon the trees.

Photo: Leigh Hilbert

My life changed last November, with the passing of my mother. I played my harp for her and sang and she left us with a smile on her face. Then I decended into sorrow and loss - a still and quiet place - a womb of a different sort.

As winter's turned to spring, the mist of grief and dream-like displacement I've been experiencing has slowly lifted. For the first time in a long while, I can feel the music of the natural world around me.

Photo: Leigh Hilbert

Today I went for a walk in a wooded area bordered by meadows. There was such a simple, undisturbed order to this place; I sensed I was the only person around for miles. The forest smelled of dry fir needles. A stag peered at me through a cedar bough, then went crashing off into the shadows. I moved out towards the pasture, sidestepping boggy areas bright with young skunk cabbage. Grazing lambs stopped and stared. An eagle circled overhead.

I walked towards the sea. The grass by the water was warm and inviting, all dappled green and mossy softness. I lay down on it and dreamed.

Photo: Leigh Hilbert

When I was ready to go, I decided to take a different route, a clear wide path that appeared to be heading in the right direction. I thought it might help me avoid the mud. And that is when I fell into the Faerie Loop.

Photo: Leigh Hilbert

I was following that clear wide path, when I noticed a trail off to the right. It was going the same direction as the path I was on, and my feet were eager to take it. As I stepped onto the trail, I was enveloped in the aroma of butterscotch and willow. I stopped to rub the leaves of a cluster of bushes to see if I could find the source of the scent, then continued on the trail in a straightforward direction. It led me up onto a rocky knoll and down again, then past a small hut used to shelter sheep. It meandered between the woods and the meadow and over the ruins of a cedar log fence, until it intersected with the wider path I had originally been on. I continued on this path for a minute or so until I saw a trail off to the right. It was going the same direction as the wide path I was on. Once again, my feet were pulled to it.

Photo: Leigh Hilbert

I stopped again to smell the sweet aroma and crush some leaves between my fingers. I climbed up a rocky knoll and down again, and passed a sheep shelter. It was all looking uncannily familiar. I walked between the forest and the meadow until; once again, I saw the very same trail going off to the right. My feet started to take it. With effort, I made them stop. I had a sneaking suspicion that I would be walking that trail forever if I didn't change my course.

Photo: Leigh Hilbert

I decided to stay on the wide path, but it seemed to be heading in the wrong direction. The sun was almost setting and I couldn't sense the ocean. Befuddled and disoriented, I started getting nervous. I climbed up onto a big rock to get my bearings and saw some power lines in the distance. I began to walk towards them. As I rounded a corner, a family of huge, longhaired bulls with sharp, curly horns blocked my path. They looked like woolly mammoths, but seemed docile enough, except for the one making a strange growling sound in his throat. But there was no turning back. I hurried past them and eventually made it back to the road, my car, and home.

Later, as I mused on the Faerie Loop, I began to see it as a metaphor. This past winter I've struggled with the sensation of having been misguided. I've hungered for the sweet and seductive familiarity of the Faerie Path. Even if it wasn't going to take me to where I truly wanted to be, its beauty intoxicated me. I wanted to be enchanted.

Photo: Leigh Hilbert

But Life had other plans.

"Wake up!" She called, "If you don't have the gumption to choose a new path, I'll do it for you."

And so she lead me to higher ground and reminded me of my power. She tested me by placing a herd of bulls in my path.

With infinite grace, she lead me home.

Oona

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