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Letters to Biddy

~ a weekly reflection as a letter to Biddy Early, 19th Century Irish healer from Ennis, County Clare

Letters to Biddy

Monthly Archives: January 2014

In-spire

31 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by Moira Were AM in Uncategorized

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Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Expire, Forever Young, If I had a Hammer, Inspire, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, We Shall Overcome

Dear Biddy,

The days are hot and the mornings are cool. Each day dawns with fresh air coming off the coastline and caressing its way over the ancient hills making its way to my front door.

I take a deep breath in and often find that breath followed by a heavy sigh.  Each breath finds its way out of my body and a little bit of me is exchanged with the bigger breath of the universe and the cycle begins all over again.

I rarely take a moment to give witness to this miracle every day, but when I do I recall that what I am doing is inspiring. I am in-spiring, drawing in the oxygen to fuel my body, soul and mind. Filling myself with inspiration gives me energy and joy.  Of course the opposite is to breathe out and expire; and maybe that is what happens when my breath is joined with the bigger breath or the universe.

Waiting for inspiration is learning to take a deep breath and allowing the air to flow into your lungs and fill you and in turn the inspiration will flow too.  Did you take a deep breath every day Biddy and be filled with the air of County Clare?

This past week there have been a few occasions to take in some deep breaths and allow myself to be inspired.  I have breathed in the heavy hearts of some people around me facing disappointments and disruption in their lives. I have breathed in the exquisite joys of others learning and discovering more of themselves being alive than they had known possible for some time. I have breathed in the harvest of poetic endeavours and an invitation to take another step in my own writing journey. All of these breaths in brought me gifts and I am a very grateful recipient.

Bruce, Joan and Pete

Bruce, Joan and Pete

I took a very deep breath in this week Biddy when I heard the news the Pete Seeger had died. I watched a wonderful interview last year where he talked about what he would do when he turned 100.  His wife and lifelong companion had not long gone and he was still in mourning. He said that on his 100th birthday he would have an enormous party with all his friends, music and singing and dancing. When the party was over he would stop eating and drinking and that would be it a complete and celebrated life and an expiration worthy of his life and works.  He was 94 so his dream of ending his time on this planet was not realised. But in his life he saw the end of segregation in his country and the election of a black President. He set up a not for profit to clean up the Hudson River and last year said it was now clean enough to swim in. He sang This Land is Your Land (all the verses) at the Obama inauguration. He was blacklisted with many others during the McCarthy years was put on trial and sentenced to gaol (he was later acquitted). He helped a nation find its voice and there would be no Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Bruce Springsteen among many other US (white) activists without him first blazing the trail.  He knew that things would change and that ‘we shall overcome’ is the song to sing change into being.  I loved his rendition recently of Dylan’s Forever Young singing it in his 90s with little ones.  It is a family favourite we have sung at each of our children’s birth and some special birthdays.

My personal favourite has always been If I had a Hammer that defined Pete Seeger and the American folk music activism for me.  I sing it with gusto and a lump in my throat all at the same time sometimes! It has held me through many a moment that I needed to be inspired and to breathe in.  So I remember Pete as he expires and we all get a little of his breath into ours and I look forward to seeing Bruce Springsteen in concert and am expecting a Seeger tribute to keep me hammering on about justice, ringing that bell of freedom and singing that song about love.

Pete Seeger  - Breathing in

Pete Seeger – Breathing in

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Wild Soul

25 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by Moira Were AM in Uncategorized

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Biddy Early, David Whyte, John O'Donohue, living large, poetry, Russell Crowe

Dear Biddy,

I think you were a wild soul, someone who knew how to embrace the world and allow the world to embrace you with a wildness that was only tempered by the boundaries of the elements.  To be wild is being able to live free range, in harmony with the environment. This is living large, un-contained by the usual boundaries of fear and anxiety; it is a living in trust and confidence.  Like the birds of the  air and the fish of the sea knowing that your wildness is what enables you to navigate the currents of the air and the ocean.

Once you have had a taste of living wild, it is hard to be domesticated by the rituals of routine and predictability.  The spontaneous moment is suffocated and what is an attempt to gasp a breath is subject to misinterpretation of being oppositional. Sometimes there just isn’t enough room to dance or paint and you need a bigger dance floor or canvas.  Being wild is being alive.

View from Kay Brothers, Mc Laren Vale

View from Kay Brothers, Mc Laren Vale

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.
― David Whyte, House of Belonging

I have had a deep drink this past week from the well of wildness.  Giving yourself permission to embrace your own wild soul is a response to the invitation that was always there to be set yourself free from the cages you put around yourself.

It has been poetry and listening to your fellow countryman John O’Donohue that has helped to open the door to the cage this week.  I have been rewarded at many levels and am enjoying affirmation across cyberspace.  And what an unexpected was the synchronicity has come. After being in Russell Crowe fandom last week, a number of fans have read my poem and I even got the courage to tweet it directly to a couple of the people who got a mention in it (including Russell). Who knows if the stars read it, but I do know from some of their fans that it meant something to them and gave them a glimpse of their idol from this untrained eye.

Poetry is a wild craft. Taming the free range words as they find their way to the page is to patiently wait for them to work out which ones can stay and which ones will be given their leave to return another day.

For the wildness of my soul and my poetry coming together in a happy union this week has been a divine intervention. I am enjoying the fruits – it is bliss and a wonderful confirmation of a decision I made a year ago to leave a set of circumstances where I felt caged and imprisoned. I am wild.

Tree in Scrub behind Courthouse, Willunga

Tree in Scrub behind Courthouse, Willunga

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Backstage

16 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by Moira Were AM in Uncategorized

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Biddy Early, Coffs Harbour, fandom, Fans, Giant Egret, Hide, Indoor Garden Party Concerts, Owen and Moley, Russell Crowe

Dear Biddy,

Wise woman of Clare, did you have fans? People who travelled across the country to seek you out? Or perhaps half way across the planet? I know people travelled to seek your advice, healing and help.

This week I have learnt about being a fan.

At close quarters I witnessed what it means to be a villager (someone who follows Russell Crowe on twitter). And that learning connected me to a talented team of graphic novel makers. I watched at very close quarters how fans try to get backstage to meet their idols and share the same space. My fellow pilgrim and I waltzed past groupies who had been trying night after night with ease, at the clear direction of bouncer and troubadour.

I found myself being described as a fan and was attracted like an industrial strength magnet to grab one last ticket to complete the quartet of concerts. It was quite exciting and I was thoroughly entertained by this new quality I was discovering in myself. I made some dismissive remarks about people who had travelled from the other side of the ocean to see their idol – even though I had travelled across the country to get a whiff again of the sound and spirit of two young men. Ah another contradiction revealed when criticism finds its way to my thoughts!

With the rest of the audiences, I enjoyed the unique contribution to the Crowe-Doyle collection these wonderful young men brought to the Indoor Garden Party Concerts. I was surprised and delighted with their generosity of giving us a backstage experience. An unexpected invitation to glimpse their behind the scenes lives. I was touched with the offer of a drink, an offer of a conversation, and an offer to go deeper in friendship.

Moira and Moley, Jetty Theatre, Coffs Harbour

Moira and Moley, Jetty Theatre, Coffs Harbour

I love the notions of ‘behind the scenes” and “back stage”. What is hidden from the throng, is a safe haven for pre and post maintenance for a performer. To be invited to share that space is an invitation to intimacy and not to be abused (so there is no photographic evidence of me and the superstars so you will have to trust me Biddy on that one!).

I have taken note of how rarely I invite people to come behind the scenes with me. For me to extend such an invitation is usually a sign of deep friendship or a moment of a pre-meditated inoculation strategy. Vulnerability figuring in both invitations. Our invitation had been generous, uncomplicated and pure kindness – a sign of appreciation of our efforts or maybe to demonstrate perhaps to the elders that they too had fans?

At school when I wasn’t performing in a show, I found myself very happily in the role of stage manager, conducting all the traffic ensuring all arrived at a safe harbour not distracted along the way into a performance and then steered to a place after the show to relax and take stock of what had happened on stage. Sharing the joy and the imperfections in the sanctity of backstage and not to be shared with others who hadn’t been through the process as the stage itself was its own cup and its contents unable to be sipped by those who had just watched. So to be invited backstage is a great honour. It is a recognition of the cross over from fan to friend – from audience to participant – and having a little taste of sharing the stage.

I want so much for these young men to be brought to a larger audience, so more people like me can experience their talents, humour, goodness and humility. I am therefore grateful to the big stars who invited them along for that opportunity. A master class too I am sure for the young men from the older ones in what it means to be on stage, backstage and to have fans and friends. I am trusting that as the days and nights unfold Biddy I will be able to build on this friendship and support their work so that more people can become fans.

I am reflecting about the backstage of my life. I am exploring what it means to be more trusting and invitational to the intimate behind the scenes spaces of my life. I am noticing when I am a fan and when I have fans.

(Last year during a Poetry Slam heat, one person came up to me and was so excited to meet me and praised me – I had no idea what to do! After I said thank you, I asked who he was, what he did and why he liked the poem – I was buzzed out to have a fan! A single solitary stranger who had never heard my work before and who probably wouldn’t again. I didn’t win the heat – but I didn’t care – I had a fan! Whoo Hoo!)

In this little bubble of fandom, this week, I also walked and swam, talked and listened, watched and waited. In one of the quiet moments I observed an endangered Giant Egret – a beautiful, majestic bird silently and deliberately walking on the water in the mangrove. Gliding past this feathered, regal invitation as real as any human one, to join yet another cosmic conversation.

From my privileged position, sitting silently watching from the bird hide, I was backstage with all of my fellow humans, giving witness to the wonder of creation, reflected in my photo and poem below.

In every moment there is the potential for me to be in the audience, on stage or backstage. I aim to gratefully accept the invitations to each blessed colloquia with my biggest Fan. I am humbled to have received some extra tuition from Master Egret and the young men about what it means to pay attention to fans and invite them backstage.

The Giant Egret

Strolls the emerald tinged river

Sanctifying the water with her presence

Goddess of the mangroves

Elegantly glides past me

Dispensing an invisible blessing

As I sit in the confessional of the hide.

Giant Egret, Coffs Harbour

Giant Egret, Coffs Harbour

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From the Sea

11 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by Moira Were AM in Uncategorized

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@robinhood66, Biddy Early, Coffs Harbour, County Clare, Recognise, saltwater, storm in a teacup

Hello Biddy,

Today I am writing to you away from my home. I’m on the eastern coast of my country and a lot closer to the equator, the weather is warm and humid and the smell of the tropics is in the air after an evening rain. There are flowers and frogs, sand and sea and a population of transient surfers catching each available wave.

I see in your country this week the storms have been furiously battering the coast and Ireland’s winter coat is well-worn.  The long nights and short days may have been safe harbour for conversations around your fire for the inner landscapes to be revealed. No doubt those coming for healing weren’t just bearing external wounds. The outer is often a reflection of what might be happening on the inside. I recall and have written before about a woman I knew who once her husband left so did the pain in her neck!

Mother Nature is speaking loudly as this photo shared by @robinhood66 shows. She is carrying her message to us on the sea and the wind.

@robinhoods66

Storm County Clare

Storm County Clare

When I’m in the surf, I love to feel the power of the sea, the tidal power pushing me forward, pulling me back with a steady rhythm, Sister Sea massaging me and reminding me to trust in the flow, up and down, in and out.  I wonder Biddy, if in your kit bag of care if you offered massage or prescriptions that included contact with the sea? The sea has healing powers the salt in the air, those wonderful positive ions coming off the spray on a winter’s day, the cooling refreshment it offers on a hot day among its many properties.

The power of the sea is so well known, the tragedy it can bring too – the Asian tsunami and shipwrecked refugee boats come to mind immediately. I am more interested in turning around a ridiculous refugee policy in my homeland than recreating the Titanic as is the pet project of a mining magnate politician. All of my kind (i.e. white) came to this land on a boat in the first instance, planes have replaced boats and the ships of the air now make their way through the oceans of clouds.  The arrival on this island continent of strangers has reaped havoc on those first nation peoples as destructive as any wild storm, and the effects have been relentless though across generations.  Restorative justice is still to come.

My ancestors legacy left for us to make good. One of the actions I am taking is to speak up for the recognition of Aboriginal peoples in our Constitution. For me this is a vital step and a pre-condition for Australia to become a republic. We can’t set ourselves free from our colonial past until that past recognises the damage caused by those who travelled on the sea to these shores.  I am heartened by the Recognise campaign and add my voice when I can – trusting my online activism contributes a little salve to the hurt. My individual efforts are a drop in the ocean, but every drop will build a wave.

Biddy I wonder what healing prescription you might have offered and if you too looked to the sea for inspiration and ingredients? Did you ever stir up a storm in a teacup Biddy and then see the tempest unfold?

In my part of the world Biddy you are either a saltwater person or a freshwater person – depending on if you were born on the coast or inland. When I go to the sea for advice, the power of the water element is deeply appreciated by this clay body and I am grateful for being a saltwater person.

Sunset southern ocean

Sunset southern ocean

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Gift Economy

04 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by Moira Were AM in Uncategorized

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Biddy Early, caterpillars, dualism, Hazel Henderson, Lester Brown, LETS, Marilyn Waring, Rachel Carson, WorldWatch

Dear Biddy,

I understand that you didn’t charge any fees for your healing services.  You clearly volunteered your time, talents and energy to healing. In having this arrangement with your visitors there could be no accusation that you were trading on other people’s ill fortune.

You were also offering an alternative economic model.

I am not sure if items like food and clothing were offered in return to good health you brought to your visitors. I expect there was the odd dozen eggs, bottle of whisky and useful intel a model of exchange that was both barter and currency in its own way – and all this a long before LETS was created.

Regardless of the complexion of the Feakle stock exchange, your intention was gift – a priceless transaction.

The gift economy has always been a fascination for me. I remember being  captivated by  the new feminist economics of Marilyn Waring’s  work Counting for Nothing  back in the late 1980s and Hazel Henderson’s The Politics of the Solar Age. Coupled with the work of Lester Brown’s Worldwatch Institute and encouraged by a book called Quantum Carrot by Branton Kenten, I was drawn to ideas and models that offered inclusion and dismissed dualism as an unhelpful way of understanding the present and being redundant in any sustainable future.

These influences shared a common idea old measures of economics needed to give way to new ones that factored in relationships and the environment. They heralded a message that measuring value is beyond money – time to appreciate the gift and the giver, and this includes Mother Earth, the common goods we all inherit like air and water.  Rachel Carson predicted in the 60s (The Silent Spring) long before the release of this year’s temperature results, a time of environmental challenge. Her work was both clarion call and crystal ball, demonstrating that predicting the future is a mix of reading the signs of the times; having a deep connection with those signs and times; and being able to interpret and discern what needs to be announced and denounced so that changes might be accommodated.

My hunch is Biddy, with all the people who passed through your home, you would have built up a considerable amount of data that enabled you to be the futurist some people claimed you to be, as accurate as the meteorological instruments that brought today’s news of temperatures rising.  Your advice from time to time would have probably raised the temperature too! You also demonstrated that not putting a price on a transaction made it more valuable and perhaps too was a deep acknowledgement that you were merely the host bringing the herbs to your visitors and therefore it was not right to take money as the plants would have had no use for cash.

From Nostradamus to Toffler there have always been predictions of what the future will bring for this planet and its peoples.  Predicting the future is often left to the gamblers and the elites, yet the real work comes from the collective.  The movements of people all around the world who don’t predict the future they make it. They make the future together by volunteering to build the future they want to see, who freely give their time, talents and energy to translate their values into planting trees, saving endangered species, teaching children to read, fundraising to build a hospital, mobilizing for democracy on social media.  As Paul Hawken has described in Blessed Unrest, this is a planetary phenomena of joined up actions creating one movement.

Processionary Caterpillars

Processionary Caterpillars

Once when I was in the Red Centre of Australia, just inside the Uluru National Park I saw this amazing line of each caterpillar appeared to be joined at the head and end and looked like one single living organism. Yet all were entirely separate and  confidently going in unison to their next destination. (I understand this is called processional behaviour and up to 300 caterpillars can be in one trail. The one I saw stretched about 10 metres.)

This is what I think is happening: an international collective consciousness to work together for the common good of our species and our planet and I am deeply heartened by it. We form a single entity made up of independent actions. As we grow and move together, if one of us falls by the wayside, gets eaten by a predator or interrupted by an unwelcome stick or stone, another one or even two takes our place and we keep travelling on.

We make the path by walking it and the future in the same way – it is an act of co-creation – sometimes not entirely visible to all of us. There is no monetary exchange or bodily fluid exchanges between the caterpillars and the first one in the line has no idea how many there are behind nor does the one in the middle know how many in front or behind.  There is implicit trust that all are on the same journey.  For those who came to your door Biddy I expect no one was quite sure who was before them or after them, but all held a trust in you that you knew what you were doing, based on your skills and intimate knowledge and connection with all that is animal, vegetable and mineral.  It is said that you were regularly “away with the fairies”, in my mind, you were probably consulting the invisible world so the harvest of your consultations could be used with the mere mortals you ministered too.  I am not so sure that is too different to how the likes of Marilyn, Hazel, Lester or Branten were, they consulted facts, figures, studied systems, people, practices and put their minds to matters of society and economics. By their words and works each have denounced dualism and a set of accounts based entirely on money changing hands.

The gift economy is a treasure and your refusal to accept money for your deeds of kindness and foresight offers a counter-culture to the ledger that operates in most transactions. By your actions you invite us to consider what it means to receive as well as to give.  I suspect that you received information, news, gossip, connections and had access to diverse networks and this enabled you to build up your intelligence about all that was happening in the society, politics and the economy.  As you learnt more you were able to detect trends, analyse situations and anticipate leads or threads. This accumulated and considered wisdom was your currency  It protected you when you were accused of witch-craft. My hunch is that is also fed  and clothed you in the lean times.  This was your wealth.

These days such connectivity maybe subject to monetary trade and yet never before has it been more freely given.  A question out to the twittersphere can yield contacts and results; a whole community tweeting can bring about a revolution. A high yield individual in social media is someone with millions of followers on twitter or fans on Facebook even though they may be immateriality wealthy, their influence is highly valued and if they endorse or interact in some way the value of the entire conversation is raised.  The future is being self-organised, like the caterpillars, each individual effort being added a new path is created and is revealed as the journey is made.

There are many ingredients in the gift economy – volunteering, caring, sharing, barter, exchange – they are all a part of this deepening where what is measured and valued is beyond the financial markets.  This is not news to you Biddy – you were one of the trend setters.  By not accepting money you, Biddy Early, created value and lived an ethic of giving.  An alternative economic model always scares the horses, so no wonder you found yourself in trouble with authorities from time to time.

There is no price we can put on beauty or health – it is all gift. Mediating that gift and making it visible in ways beyond the bank balance is the task at hand as our planet seeks to be healed and the healers are already at work in the dynamic and varied caterpillar trails all around the world.

Alice Springs

Alice Springs

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