The Journey Continues

 

The years passed by, many wanderings and many telling off's were endured by me, as before, did I care? No not one bit deep inside I knew what I wanted and thanks to my wanderings I knew where I could go to get it.

I grew into a teenager with all the usual teenagery things that go with it, I grew my hair, bathed in Patchouli, when I did bathe and generally make a nuisance of myself, but through everything whenever things started to get on top of me I would always go back to the one place I felt I could call home and that was out in the woods.

I would sit for hours on end practising playing my flute on my own (which was probably the best thing, you have all heard children learning to play the violin, yep I was that good lol).

With this ever growing love for the outdoors I started to spend as much time out as possible, I discovered my love for camping, I could go away sleep under the stars listening to the sounds I loved the most and felt most at home with, I still do this now over 40 years later and the sense I get whether it be a day hike or a weekend away the feeling I get has never changed.

Anyway back to the musings. While at school, I guess I was a bit of a rebel and felt happier with my own company, I had a few good friends but had no issues to being on my own at all, I discovered Buddhism. I know right? I was raised a Christian, well I went to sunday school, I never really had any great love for it or in fact believed what was being said but I did have a nice teacher and that was as good a reason to go as any. I started looking into Buddhism more as a way to be different at the time, not because I wanted a defined religion to believe in. I guess I was drawn to this more as a philosophy than anything else, I read and learnt about the buddhist way of life and spent many years practising meditation, this was in fact the best part of it for me at the time as it was a solitary exercise which is where I liked to be.

The older I got the more I began to doubt if Buddhism was really the right path for me, especially in the part of the world where I live, it wasn't easy to deal with or study pure buddhist philosophy it had become to "westernised", with groups I belonged to cherry picking the best bits. This was not for me, I found myself spending time in the woods, my safe place, thinking more and more about what I wanted, I could always get the answers I needed when I was here but never really understood why or how it happened. I then found my path had in it a fork, one way was to carry on with my buddhist studies, the other led me to a world, that, although different in some respects, felt familiar. This path as you can guess was druidry.

I left aside my buddhist studies, though not entirely as you will see, and started walking along this somewhat new path, this was the start of the most important journey for me, only small steps and minor changes initially but what an incredible sense of coming home I felt deep within my very soul. I started feeling that everything I had done up to this point from sitting under that tree at six years old with my sandwiches and juice, to still sitting under trees at fifty years old but now with mead (still a kind of juice, but somehow more satisfying) was making so much sense to me.

And so my path lay open, but this time it just felt right...................................

I seem to be going on a bit, but hey it is how it all started for me so I wanted to share it. I will leave it here for now but as always I want to share another of my poems with you. I also wanted to say that I have added two new pages to my website which I will be filling out as I go along. One is a sort of "How To..... " type of page where I share with you how I do things, this is purely my way and not necessarily the correct or only way to do these things.

I have called it Rituals / Tools, I would like to share with you how I do my rituals and the tools I have been, and will be using. It is not, as I have said, the only way to do these things as this is the part of druidry that is personal to everyone, so look on it as a place to start and maybe let me know how you do yours and we can all learn this beautiful way of life together.

The second new page is where I will be listing the books I have and love reading to do with Druidry and the path I am walking.

And so to the poem, this one came to me one night while sitting in the bath I hope you like it, its called "Old Man of the Woods"

 

OLD MAN OF THE WOODS

The old man wanders ‘cross the land

Through the woods with stick in hand

He walks through day and also night

Turning left then turning right

He seems to know where he should be

As he sits beneath his favourite tree

He sits and takes a while to rest

The beating slows within his chest

Away from streets and bustling crowd

With eyes now closed a peaceful shroud

He sleeps among the call of rook

Whistling wind and babbling brook

There he lays among the grass

And lets the time just gently pass

Then gently woken by the breeze

That swirls and dances through the trees

Their golden leaves fly all around

To form a blanket on the ground

The old man rises to his feet

Stick in hand his rest complete

He heads for home back through the woods

Where all the trees for years have stood

He bows and wishes them good day

Before he journeys on his way

 

I hope you liked this one.

As always my friends stay safe, be happy and smile.

Blessed Be /|\