coming up to Hallows, I am really beginning to feel the ancestors around me. Clamouring to be heard, to heal the line - this is my work, my purpose.
I woke this morning with the familiar melancholy that waxes and wanes and once again, the pull of the catholic faith - it makes me weep at times. I know that its not the modern church that I yearn for, but one of past times, past lives - where I see an old Abbey standing surrounded by herbs and gardens; when life was simple for me. I tend the herbs as a young novice and accompanied by bees and crows, I live out my days, full of love, full of gratitude, at peace. But, in this life, the church does not fulfil the deep longing that I carry within, oh gee, I know that from experience of many visits to the church. I cannot find what it is I am searching for, there. I go back, time and time again, only to feel stifled almost, dead inside.
Not many understand this yearning, only one friend understands this, which makes it all the more difficult to bear. Even counselling has not helped because counsellors really don't get it.
The path of a mystic can be a difficult one, at times the melancholy of yearning is difficult to live with. I know that this is part of who I am; part of my Celtic soul, this yearning and I am very slowly, learning to live with it.
so I ponder what it is that I am taking with me into the spiral of the waning season. One thing that stands out for me is the alienation that I feel in this country. Being told so many times by media and others that white people are invaders and that we do not belong to this land, I feel not welcome, not part of this land, alienated. And I don't know how to heal this. [ a deeply controversial subject this land that is Australia and who belongs here] ... I ask out loud, 'where do I belong?', if not here in this country of my birth, a land that for 7 generations my family have lived, just where is it that I belong? no one answers, because no one has that kind of answer.
I walk the land with a deep desire to belong but always feel separated from it - like a giant chasm, separates me from the land. It's a bizarre situation and I wonder if I can every settle or even heal this deep wounding. Because, it is not just mine. I carry this from many, many of my ancestors; some were convicts who were sent against their will, convicted of petty crime and banished to the other side of the earth it seems, others who came willingly but held grief for their home land. I know this, I've felt it for a long time.
I walk on the beach this morning, rocks have disappeared under sand, nature at her best, changing, hiding the landscape. I fantasize about winning the lottery and moving to a cottage on the moors or on the Atlantic coast. I wonder to myself if that happened, would I pack up and move and I found myself saying 'yes!' I would leave this birth country and travel to live over there if funds allowed - but it is all a romantic notion because I don't buy lottery tickets.
so I take a lot into the spiral, into the dark of winter, to sit with it and hopefully come to some kind of peace.
