Earthquaker Issue 101
Thinking about spiritual practice there is a whole lot to say and not many words given to the task. So I will share just one insight. Over the many years of active searching for “right” practices to deepen my spiritual life, I found many. Not all fitted me well, often hanging loose like an ill-fitting garment, nevertheless they kept me warm and looking decent while my search continued and so I was grateful.
In later years my spiritual practice settled into a very familiar pattern of daily meditation; moving prayer (in my case yoga); working soil and growing food; spiritual study and living in community. Sounds very much like a day in the life of a medieval monastic and very much the basis of much spiritual practice.
So if this is not so new why am I bothering, or even presuming to write this short piece for Earth Quaker? It is because I now understand that these daily practices are hugely amplified and deepened by one other routine that I have only in recent years come to value as the root practice which is to rise early and walk in the midst of what we call “nature”, to encounter “the great presence” (Uile Laithreach in old Irish) in the sights, sounds and sensations of the earth community sharing my homeplace – sun, moon, river, tree, rock, rain, bird, air, cobweb, insect, song, rustle, tumble, sparkle, drip, trickle, thrum, slap, shiver and crack.
Rising early and moving outwards I am held in a pre-reflective state. Thoughts still sleepy though senses bristling with alertness, I experience a direct, joyful, unpredictable and homely encounter with the creative power of the universe, with the vibrance of the earth community, with god. Wonder, marvel, gratitude, curiosity, familiarity, love and a sense of deep time, of universe-belonging permeate this morning ritual whatever the weather and wherever the place.
And I know that this very corporeal experience opens me to a deeper mode of listening. I observe that it is particularly while sitting in this held state by river, beck, sea or ocean that the most challenging insights arrive with me uninvited. My own ancestors from the Celtic Christian tradition would have called this “eigse” – or spiritual wisdom gained beside water. These insights push me beyond my current knowing, beyond my current compassion and beyond my current courage. And they have come to be my inner teacher.
Closing my morning ritual walk with chanting in the ancient Celtic Christian tradition and building a small stone prayer cairn in the modern Joanna Macy tradition, I join the great belonging and am ready to live another day.
Clíodhna Mulhern