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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

Tag Archives: John O’Donohue

Mothers to Be

21 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by Moira Were AM in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

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Biddy Early, birth, Equinox, John O'Donohue, mother, Mothers to be, parenting

Dear Biddy,

Thirty-four years ago today I became a mother. It was 1am of the equinox before she was born after virtually 24 hours of labour and delivery an emergency caesarean. The babe had gone into shock and the beeps and buzzers were letting us know the heartbeat was stopping and starting. What a trauma, she came out in one beautiful and complete piece relaxed and rested as if there was nothing to worry about at all. A couple of minor challenges faced her immediately, but they didn’t seem to faze her at all and within a week we had started life together away from the prying eyes of doctors and nurses in a bungalow on a busy inner eastern suburban thoroughfare.

All beginnings are marked with some ceremony and this beginning confirmed love, hope, peace and joy. The anticipation of waiting for a child can really stretch your patience, each day beyond the due date seems like an eternity for expectant parents, grandparents, family and friends.  You imagine what the child will be like, and what their future will hold, and what kind of a family you will make together. Before the babe is born you are called an expectant mother – quite appropriate really – you are expecting to become a mother with the birth of the child – and indeed you do once the labour is over and the child delivered is held in your arms. You fall in love so deeply and completely that you have eyes for no-one else.

I was blessed to have four occasions of motherhood and I can only imagine the soul destroying emptiness you would have felt with the loss of your one and only child.

Parenting continues long after the birth. My own mother says she hasn’t finished parenting yet as she heads into her eighth decade. I agree with her.  I am very grateful for the gift of motherhood and having been able to share the parenting with their father all these years.  I still think it takes a village to raise a child and am grateful to many others along the way who have mentored, coached, loved, cajoled, entertained and supported our offspring and continue to do so.

I would like to call on a Blessing for a Mother to Be from your fellow countryman John O’Donohue as I want to join that experience of expectation with the relief you feel not just on the night that your child is born, but on all the other nights when they come home safely and regardless of their journey that day. Whether arriving has been traumatic or without incident, you trust they may easily find their way to be in your arms for real or virtually. Expectantly, you long for the echo of your life to be sounded in theirs and for their own song to ring out as clear as any bell or buzzer that might have been sounded the first time they saw the sun.

Mother to Be

Mother to Be

Nothing could have prepared

Your heart to open like this.

 

From beyond the skies and the stars

This echo arrived inside you

And started to pulse with life;

Each beat a tiny act of growth,

Traversing all our ancient shapes

On its way home to itself.

 

Once it began, you were no longer your own.

A new, more courageous you, offering itself

In a new way to a presence you can sense

But you have not seen or known.

 

It has made you feel alone

In a way you never knew before;

Everyone else sees only from the outside

What you feel and feed

With every fibre of your being.

 

Never have you travelled further inward

Where words and thoughts become half-light

Unable to reach the fund of brightness,

Strengthening inside the night of your womb.

 

Like some primeval moon,

Your soul brightens

The tides of essence

That flow to your child.

 

You know your life has changed forever,

For in all the days and years to come,

Distance will never be able to cut you off

From the one you now carry

For nine months under your heart.

 

May you be blessed with quiet confidence

That destiny will guide you and mind you.

 

May the emerging spirit of your child

Imbibe encouragement and joy

From the continuous music of your heart, so that it can grow with ease.

 

Expectant of wonder and welcome

When its form is fully filled.

And it makes its journey out

To see you and settle at last

Relieved, and glad in your arms.

Anne Geddes

Anne Geddes

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Sound and Silence

15 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by Moira Were AM in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

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Airleke, Ane Brun, Biddy Early, Billy Bragg, Emel Mathiouthi, Halleljuah, John O'Donohue, Polly Higgins, Simon Sheihk, Tim Hollo, Urthboy, voice, Womadelaide

Dear Biddy,

Using your voice to say what needs to be said is one of those basic human rights as you knew so well.

At WOMADelaide last weekend I was treated to many a performer, who through the use of their voice, brought their message of justice in a nonviolent way, to our ears.

Listening to Emel Mathiouthi was something special. She was the voice of the revolution in the Arab Spring – the songbird of Tunisia – started with a song in Kurdish and somehow craftily made the transition to Halleljuah by Cohen connecting all the audience in heart and soul.  The drums of PNG appeared in many of the bands and united in songs of justice with Airleke, their lead singer talked about music as his weapon of choice in their freedom fight.  Hearing Billy Bragg, the proclaimed bolshie bard of Britain, sing of union solidarity, how fascism is never fashionable and a call to arms for men to end their sexism, was pure bliss!

democracy

It has been a feature of my life to be part of what I call the ‘democracy gig’ – finding ways to help people have their voices heard, ways for their private pain to be recognised in public policy or to join with others to make what is invisible visible.  With the conservatives in government it is a full time gig with no end of issues draining activists and the list of rights being whittled away for those who have the least is palpable.  The voices of dissent in the music and the arts are needed more than ever.  I am relying on them to sustain me.  (It is no accident that the word voice and vote come from the same root.)  This week I saw Urthboy’s new Don’t Let it Go about Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers and went to a couple of the Planet Talks at WOMADelaide. I was deeply encouraged to hear from Simon Sheihk, Tim Hollo and Ane Brun about musicans and the music industry generally as role models in the digital age especially with Gen Z.

When you loose your voice in reality (as one of my offspring has done this past month) or metaphorically – it is a deep loss. Not only for you but for those of us who then don’t hear it.  Hearing all the voices is part of coming to understanding about our diversity and sharing what we have in common and celebrating our differences.  The fear of the other, is the bedrock of justice issues and dualism the oxygen. Pluralism is crying out to be embraced and our Earth is straining to be heard.  She is speaking to us with a spluttering and gasping for air, using all the elements at her disposal to help us hear her voice.

I love listening to the late Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue who says that the proof that God loves diversity is that almost everything in creation is actually completely unique – there are no two trees exactly the same, no two people exactly the same, no two rocks exactly the same – and what more proof to we need to know that diversity is God’s will.

The experience of exclusion is a useful training ground for any activist, however it is also  depowering and for those with the least is a descent into hopelessness. It is therefore the responsibility of those of us who have a voice to speak up and be in solidarity with those who can’t speak for themselves. This must not be patronising though and we need to listen carefully to be faithful to their needs and not appropriate.  I also like to put myself to the Bonhoeffer test:

First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out.  Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.

I am pretty confident Biddy that you weren’t afraid to speak up for yourself and those that came to you may well have found their voice.  I love the story of you being accused of witchcraft and no one stepping out in the town square prepared to testify against you.  Silence was a powerful noise that day.  It seems to me that you did not discriminate against anyone who came to your door, and by not accepting money for your healing was your way of pointing to a higher power and you were merely the custodian of that gift.  So too it needs to be with us who have a voice, we are the custodians of that gift of being able to speak out and we have people knocking out our doors asking to be heard and welcomed in, it is up to those of us who can speak up to open that door and welcome the other – that is our gift.

Speaking up is part of being on the right side of history as has been shown over and over again – from Wilburforce and the slave trade, Mandela and the anti-apartheid movement and now in my time we have many leaders rising up for human rights and rights for our planet (e.g. Polly Higgins).

Natalia Rak Mural Folk On The Street – Białystok, Poland

May all the artists and singers, songwriters and poets continue to give us the words and sounds so the voices are heard.

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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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