Posts Tagged ‘silver branch’

But so that I may reveal
The secret of this island
to you
inquire of me.

-The Woman of the Fortress

Do not be alarmed.

Most of us in the western world today are in trouble even before we are in trouble. We are in trouble because of the greatest secret in our society. The greatest secret for most of us in the western world is simply “who am I?” This secret causes most of the problems we have in our world.

When we are raided, this trouble is in trouble. And that is the trouble.

Put away blissful ignorance.

Put away the safety of religion. Put away petty obsessions and reckless addictions. Forget the hiding places you have sought out and furnished comfortably over the years.

It is time to put away blissful ignorance and come out of hiding.

With no more blissful ignorance, we can no longer act as if we are not in trouble. We can no longer hide. We know we are in trouble.

This, then, is our ordeal.

The beast on this island is turning, revolving. Its skin rotates around its bones. Its bones churn around within its skin.

Do not be alarmed.
Read the rest of this entry »

The second he put his thumb in his mouth, he knew it. The instant he put his thumb, burnt from the salmon of wisdom, in his mouth, he was in trouble. It wasn’t so much that Finnegas would be angry. Finnegas was too wise to be angry. No, Fionn was in trouble because Fionn was now Fionn. Fionn was now Fionn with all the wisdom of the world, with all the wisdom of Fionn. Nothing would be the same ever again. He could not stay at the river with Finnegas any longer. He could not stay with Fionn any longer. He knew too much. He was in too much trouble.

Cormac mac Airt was in trouble.

The moment Cormac mac Airt saw that mysterious youth on the green, was the precise moment when Cormac mac Airt was in trouble. The glittering branch could have been named “Troubles Herald”. Ahh, the sweet red of trouble in those the nine apples. Cormac was in trouble. He was prepared to pay any price for that trouble, the price of trouble.

Read the rest of this entry »

At times the singing voice of Mananaan Mac Lir rises above the din of the sea to reach my ears in a symphony of longing and serenity.

At other times, the din of silence drowns his voice out. At times, the noises of my thoughts chasing and bleeding into one another destroy all sounds, and strain as I might, I cannot hear the singing.

Perhaps this is the way it is supposed to be. Perhaps not. Perhaps I am on the wrong path. I don’t know. All I know is that this is the way it is, for me, currently. I have to start where I am. We all have to start where we are.

Read the rest of this entry »

It happens, doesn’t it?
The day comes when the world pushes open the door we have closed against the world.
-John Moriarty, What the Curlew Said

It does happen, doesn’t it?

That fateful day of the door crashing in on us, pushed open by the world, different levels of the world, that in one way or the other, we have been avoiding.

The fateful splintering of the door of denial, escapism and addiction. The door shattered by a reality that is larger than we imagined, larger even than we can imagine.

Thus shattered, the floodwaters of Reality come rushing in. A Reality made not of reality that we might know something of, but a Reality that is far beyond anything that even reality knows anything of. A Reality that includes, transcends and integrates. A Reality that has suffered long enough in its exclusion, an impatient Reality, a Reality needing to be on with its work of transformation, its task of becoming, its labor of emerging through us, into us. A Reality that, in actuality, amounts to little more than boundless Potentiality.

A Reality brimming with Potentiality already crashing over the edges of our perception, already straining the hinges of the soul.

Read the rest of this entry »