Date

I have been too busy. To my own horror, I realised that this is the sixth weekend in a row that I'm not spending at home. Somewhere, between training courses, visits to my mother and spending time with my tribe, my routine got lost. And I very much need my routine. Without it, I start to lose my daily spiritual practice and without that I soon start to feel frazzled.

I have promised myself a break, and I have vowed that tomorrow some sense of normality will return. In the meantime, from my frazzled state, I'd like to tell you a story from my last couple of months. I hope that you will enjoy it and that it reminds me of my dream and what it takes to make it come true.

Late in March, I went to the Common, as I often do. Stanmore Common is a beautiful bit of young woodland with many small paths and streams criss-crossing it. Occasionally there is a large clearing. And in one of those clearings stands my friend the Great Oak. It is a place of refuge for me. I can always rely on being safely held by the Oak tree's roots and let myself sink gently into an awareness of my connection to the Whole. The place is sacred to me, and is part of the landscape of my soul. I love it, and I dare to think it welcomes my presence.

This time, and not for the first time, I found the peace of the place disturbed. Someone had come to this beautiful place and had a party. When they'd drunk bottles of vodka and cans of beer, they decided it would be a good idea to burn their rubbish, right under the branches of the Oak, and then leave. Thankfully, they were totally inept at laying a fire and it soon went out.

Having that sacred place invaded by unthinking, unfeeling humanity in that way feels like desacration of my personal space. It makes me atypically angry.

This time, I used my anger to do another clear-up job. I'm never quite sure if that is the right thing to do, playing cleaning fairy for the feckless, but I can't just leave that place like that. It would feel like I'm leaving rubbish behind inside my soul. So I carried a couple of shopping bags full of rubbish to the bins in the car park and used the healing energy of the place to direct peace to the four quarters. But still the question burned inside me: "Whats WRONG with people?"

I decided to use the energy of that anger to make a shamanic journey to my spirit helpers. It seemed fairly obvious that what's wrong with people is their disconnection from their surroundings, from the natural world, from other people. So my question was: "Please show me the cause of people's disconnection and what can be done to heal it."

I saw the people having their drunken party. And I saw how their behaviour was a thin layer of machismo covering anger, that covered fear, that covered a deep well of loneliness. Always alone, so many in our culture are only able to connect through these alcohol fuelled games and rituals of 'fun' and 'having a laugh'.

In my journey, my Goddess came into me and we blessed every living part of the land, and through the land, the people. I was asked to give her blessing to the land in a ritual:

"I bless this land and its people.
May the people be filled
with the peace and blessing of the land."

She asked me to share that blessing with others, and I was given a simple ritual to go with it.

In addition, I need to work on my own connection with people, with an open heart, as a way to share my own sense of connection that I feel through that place and through my practice.

After a journey, I always write it down. It is part of grounding the experience and of sealing it in memory. Then I put my pen down, and switched on my computer to see how my friends were doing on Facebook. And right there, newly posted, was an announcement from PF London about their Earth Day event in Trent Park. So there I was, with this mandate to share my ritual with people, and an opportunity to do so. I figured someone was trying to tell me something, especially as it was only days after my previous blog post. So I contacted them with my suggestion and they accepted.

Three weeks later, I stood in a circle of Pagans in a London park, under a beautiful hornbeam newly in leaf, and guided them in ritual to bless that place, and through that place the people who go there. The day was warm and beautiful, and the rite was well received. I give thanks to Spirit, to PF London, and to my friends who came along to support me. I said I wanted to do ritual with people, and this I did. May the blessing grow.