in the rhythm

How I value each comment (and like) that you made in response to my last post! So many of us are seeing and aching and wondering what to do and it was a wonderful relief to be able to have my words…my feelings…received so.

Since then, my senses have been heightened, more open than ever to directions and possibilities to take. I am feeling more anger, too, and am not yet sure if that is a good thing or not.

At Wisteria & Sunshine, we are reading Wise Child, by Monica Furlong. I have read it many, many times before. It is one of those beloved books that is both an escape and an example of how to live. And what I am noticing in its pages this time around may serve me better than anger, I am thinking…

“Maeve is wicked, isn’t she? I said at last. I was thinking not just of the wax doll but of the sad, ragged children I had seen stumbling under the weight of the tree trunk.

Juniper shrugged. “That’s not a word I like to use,” she replied. “She does not live in the rhythm, however-she uses her power for her own advantage, and that is always a pity because it does great harm.”

“Sorcerers, you mean?”

“That sort of person. It doesn’t matter what you call them. Once you start controlling other people, whatever your motive, you become a sort of sorcerer. Those people are not on the side of life, Wise Child, but they are powerful.”

“You mean–a witch?”

“That’s just a vulgar word for it that can mean all kinds of things.. The word we use is doran.” Juniper went on to explain that the word doran came from our Gaelic word dorus, an entrance or way in (the English have a word very like it). It was someone who had found a way in to seeing or perceiving.

“Seeing or perceiving what?”

Juniper hesitated. “The energy,” she said at last. “The pattern.”

I did not know what she meant, but I knew what interested me.

“Am I a doran then?” I asked breathlessly.

“You could be,” she said. “You may be one day if various things work out that way.”

“So what does a doran do, then?”

“Some of us do healing things, like me and my herbs. Some of us sing, or write poetry or make beautiful things. Some don’t do anything at all. they often stay in one place, and they just know.”

“Know? Know what?”

“How things are,” said Juniper mysteriously.

-Monica Furlong

This reading, “sorcerers” and others wielding their power means something very different to me than the literal meaning of Wise Child’s world that it has always meant before. I’ve called certain corporations and politicians “wicked” in my despair at times. Would it be more helpful to think of them as just people living outside of the Rhythm?

As is often the case lately, I don’t know.

Always more questions than answers, it seems.

But I feel heartened to continue on in all the ways that I have found to open those doors…

…weave myself in amongst the pattern…

…try to stay on the side of Life…

Just Know.

Ha! But even as I type that, I know that never feels enough at this moment in time. I am glad that in addition to the small ways which are the heart of my Doing, there will be people marching in our nation’s capital this weekend. And tho’ I am not a marcher, not yet anyway, I did create this place the day after my last post. There is not much there at the moment, but I have hopes that when I can devote some more time to it…and other people join in…it may be useful as we continue to figure out what it means to live in the rhythm…

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“My soul is in the trees
It’s in the sap that fills the wood
It’s in the rings that tell her age
It’s in the smoke that marks the days
It’s in the fire in my heart
It’s in the embers in the soot
It’s in the place I put the ash
It’s in the soil
It’s in the grass
It’s in the mouths of all the herd
It’s in the beetles and the birds
It’s in the feathers that I found one morning lying on the ground
It’s hallelujah, aye and oh
It’s where I’ve been and where I go
It’s in the people that I meet
It’s kneeling silent at their feet
It’s ever dutifully yours
It stems my pride
And opens doors”

–Johnny Flynn

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