News From the Hill

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I subscribe to the mailing list from the FIndhorn community because sometimes what I receive is simply lovely, as it is today -

Be very, very simple, very un-complex, very natural, like very small happy children, undisturbed by what happened yesterday or what may happen tomorrow, but living and enjoying the ever present Now to the very full. Never try to possess anything, never try to hold on to anything, because when you do, you cannot be simple and childlike, for you are full of fear, you are afraid of losing that which you are trying to cling on to. When you can open your hearts and share all the good and perfect gifts, which I pour down upon you, holding on to nothing, then you know the true meaning of the freedom of the Spirit and you really are free. When all is out in the open and you have nothing to hide, what a glorious feeling it is.

One of the co-founders of the Findhorn Community, Eileen Caddy, received guidance from the “still voice within” and shared it with others in the community for more than 40 years. Today they continue this tradition by printing her guidance in the community’s weekly newsletter and by sharing it with the wider world through a mailing list.

If you feel inspired just go along to their site and sign up for the newsletter, you will get a little good news in you inbox every now and then.

Living on the hill we don’t get trick or treaters wandering past our door on Halloween night so I very much enjoyed this little story sent to me by a friend who is living in Toronto, Canada -

We had one gang of trick-or-treaters tonight, a bunch of girls (I think), aged about eleven or twelve. They were costumed very impressively as a scarier version of Kiss, with the full-blown face makeup, very well done. No instruments or giant platform boots, but the face makeup must have taken ages to apply.

There was a fifth one bringing up the rear, dressed in a startlingly incongruous manner. She looked like a mummified hag draped in seaweed. I said, “Wow – you don’t look like part of the band!”

She said, “No, I’m the groupie…”

Hilarious!!! Extra candy for her!

I don’t tend towards exageration however I have to say that we are on the edge of environmental disaster here in the North West of Ireland. We are about to allow a few large shale gas mining corporations, using hydraulic fracturing drilling methods, to waltz in here and destroy our watertables, our aquifers – in fact we have given them licence to do just that, we have given them a licence to frack our local environment.

I know that we have been asleep, these licences were given some time ago and most of us never noticed. I know now that in many parts of the world ordinary people have had their lives disrupted, their farms destroyed, their livestock sickened and their own health damaged by shale gas extraction in their areas.

Rivers, streams, ponds and lakes have been damaged so that fish and other aquatic wildlife die. Watertables are damaged so that drinking water wells are now unusable, people are having to buy bottled water in order to cook, wash, water their vegetables, water their livestock etc. In some areas the tap water has become inflammeable – you can light it on fire!

The threat to our environment is overwhelming in scale and I am having great difficulty in coping with this new element in my life. In the past I was a very angry teenager and young woman, in my twenties and early thrities I was able channel that anger through involvement in certain environmental and community activism. To be an activist I found that the anger I felt was put to good use, it was useful to be angry, it gave me the energy to be commited in campaign work, it helped me to feel motivated and I was passionate about the issues in which I was involved.

Everything changed in my mid-thirties, my life was thrown upside down and I began to work on myself, I began to heal the anger. It was a long and hard journey at first and as anyone who has been on a recovery or healing path knows – nothing remains the same, the pain eased and the anger became explained, I could see why it was there and I could work on not needing or feeding it anymore. I am still on that path, I still work hard at being emtionally healthy, having healthy relationships with myself and others.

Now I have a life partner and we are making a home for ourselves in a beautiful unspoilt part of rural Ireland. We are building our home using our own hands and constantly learning new skills along the way, both life-skills and building skills. I am fortunate in having soul sisters (the word friends doesn’t quite cut it), with whom I have very good relationships and we support each other in very honest and gentle ways- that took hard work too. I have a life that I never dreamt possible, it’s a simple life, it’s not easy, we have very little money and face many challenges and I would not change it for all the money in the world.

It has changed now.

These changes are outside my control – as life is. I need to find a way to challenge what is happening to our environment without loosing myself. I don’t want to go back to living with anger in every cell in my body, I have to find a way to live with what is happening and how I feel about it without becoming lost in it.

I have a lot of work to do…

At last the rains have come…

May the sun bring you new energy by day,

May the moon softly restore you by night,

May the rain wash away your worries,

May the breeze blow new strength into your being,

May you walk gently through the world and know it’s beauty

All the days of your life

Apache Blessing

We have had a wonderful week of sunshine and the wildness around us is bursting into life again. Everywhere I look there are beautiful yellow flowers and seeds.

Open Willow Seed Head

Closed Willow Seed Head

Yellow Daffodill and Narcissus

Narcissus

There are a few amazingly large bumble bees flying around our heads from time to time, however I have not yet been able to get a good photo so apologies for the bad quality of the shot below.

Irish Bumble Bee

Apparently there used to be 18 species of bumble bee in Ireland at one time, sadly there are not many to be seen these days. When I do get a good photo I will hopefully be able to identify which species of bumble bee it is.