“Give up longing and you will arrive ."
—Autumn Richardson, excerpted from Through The Grasses, An Almost-Gone Radiance, Xylem Books
“Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
In Martin Shaw’s book, The Night Wages, part three, which is wonderfully titled Riddles of the Net-mender, sees the man and his daughter blown up on the shore of “the islands of Britain's far North” and what they see glimmering in the distance is not the light of the moon but “the twinkle of a Tavern, a candle in every window”.
And so this section of the book marks the beginning of a series of chapters which are set in this little tavern and dear reader, I am imagining this edition of Fenland Musings to be coming directly to you from a similar kind of Tavern, a similar kind of snug, with candles, or lanterns, in every window.
If what they say is true and the teacher arrives when the student is ready, then that must be why, as I am sat here in this little tavern, and as the heavy door opens into heavy weather there is the silhouette of a Canadian standing in doorway. And that shape belongs to Tim Lilburn.
I have frequented the little table in this tavern extensively over the past several years, it’s been the “fire site” of much growth and initiatory heat. And I can tell you the table has needed frequent extensions during this time.
It started off as an intimate Bistro style table like the one you find tucked down a Parisienne backstreet, a single, tall, red pillar candle burning in the middle. And sat opposite me, with his characteristic wit and wisdom, was Parker J. Palmer.
The teacher arrived when the student was ready.
And what Parker taught me circled around the themes of wholeness, paradox, the primacy of the soul. As Parker wrote:
“The human soul doesn't want to be fixed, it simply wants to be seen and heard”.
Parker was closely followed to the table by a small band of poets, David Whyte, Mary Oliver, Gary Snyder, who, amongst other things, taught me about closeness, attentiveness, wild nature. The number of poets has expanded over time, but these three remain close companions. As David Whyte said:
“I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned.”
Hanging out with ‘Parker and the Poets’, has been the path towards belonging.
Then the door opened and in came a pair of mythologist, storytellers Michael Meade and Martin Shaw, and they have quite honestly arm wrestled for my mythological attention span. Shaw most likely having played a greater role in the development of my soul, while Meade slowly scaffolding that growth with more tangible teaching. In the end with my Tavern table now representing the kind you find in a mediaeval hallway, I've placed Meade at one end and Shaw at the other.
So, with the mythologist's at either end and a merry band of poets—which by the way when I transcribe the hand written notes to text, poets became “pirates” and I almost left it as that, but maybe, they are ‘pirates of the poetic’—sitting along one long bench, there was ample space on the other for some new folks to join Parker.
When the student is ready the teacher appears.
And so it was that Mr. Lilburn came a-knocking via a rather generous introduction from a friend.
But why now? Why is Tim Lilburn here, and why is he occupying so much of my slimly available reading time. Why is the student ready?
I have a hunch and it's to do with seasons.
It is generally accepted in Western culture that there are four seasons, but some cultures have six with one of those extras marking the short transitionary period between end of summer and start of autumn. I quite like that idea. It seems to fit with what we often see here in the UK.
And I've also heard, for example for different plants, that different patterns, though perhaps not seasons, or phases exist. Like the oak tree, 3 phases, 300 years to grow, 300 years to live, 300 years to die.
So, as I sit here in this little tavern I am thinking of seasons, phases, cycles and turnings.
In his poem ‘Distant Regard’, Tony Hoagland wrote something that really spoke to me.
“Outside it is autumn, the philosophical season, when cold air sharpens the intellect”.
Now that line took me way down deeper, especially in seeing seasons as a metaphor for life. And of course seasons cycle round, don't they, spring into summer, summer into autumn, autumn into winter, and back around into spring. It's one of the most powerful metaphors for birth, death and renewal I know. And here we're back to the old myths, especially the ones that Meade teaches.
Now I happen to believe that we have several seasons cycling in our lives at any one time, which I guess is back to paradox. Growth and decay sit alongside each other.
But life does have a linear direction to it too, so I suppose what I'm saying or getting at is this; at just shy of 45 years old I am certainly no longer in the springtime of my life—just ask the hunter in the Firebird story how that feels. Though often misunderstood, this realisation can become a weight around our midlife shoulders. Steeped in regret. So if I am not yet fully arrived in the autumn of my life I must be getting close.
Now, as I say, this isn't meant to sound morbid, it just is. And it is the most beautiful of times too. Autumn is a season of great harvest and energetically it does carry some sorrow about it.
But Autumn is the philosophical season—I just feel it.
So, I am supremely grateful that the ‘philosopher’/poet Tim Lilburn has shown up right on time.
When the student is ready the teacher appears.
Now I don't know if Tim Lilburn would consider himself a philosopher, though he does have a Masters Degree in it. What I do know is that he considers himself as “chiefly a poet”. I know this with certainly, because he told me.
If I was going to recommend any of his books of poetry I would begin with Harmonia Mundi from Xylem books. However, it is his essays that I have spent the most amount of time with, and, I choose this word wisely, studying.
But what is philosophy?
Well in his book Numinous Seditions, and his essay “Poetry's Practice of Philosophy”, Lilburn asks the question “Just what is philosophy”. He immediately replies:
“I'm not that great a fool that I would attempt to provide a full answer to this question. But I can chatter away for a while about what it roughly is in the Republic: there philosophy is a particular unfolding of desire: a sorrow awakens eros in the non-desiring man; a lavish self-emptying goes on; there are tears, a perpetual disposition to tears; there is the travel below the ground and a final homegoing. Turning around of the soul, as Socrates puts it, entirely erotic, entirely resisted, entirely desired, utterly refusable; it is a turning of the soul so that it finds itself loving the things that return it to itself.”
Lilburn goes on to compare philosophy and the work of philosophy to the journey that Odysseus goes on from Troy to Ithaca. The journey of the soul, home…
So autumn as “the philosophical season”; “a lavish self-emptying”; “travel below ground” and yes, “a sorrow [that] awakens eros”.
That feels spot on from my perspective.
The below ground journey and we’re well into initiatory territory. Is this what Emerson was getting at in the opening quote? No wonder soul and soil sound the same.
When the student is ready the teacher appears.
Lilburn continues on in his riffing about what philosophy is:
“I've said it comes down to contemplative attention: this is what’s at philosophy’s heart, at the heart of poetry, the centre of religion. Philosophy of course doesn't do this sort of thing anymore, and religion, for the most part, is transfixed by cosmology and television. Poetry alone, as I've said, still visits the old fire site.”
I have read and re-read this little passage, and the wondering I keep coming back to is this:
Is poetry the new religion?
Because I don't know about you but the idea that “poetry alone still visits the old fire site[s]”, can still take us back to the hearthside, feels really true. And if you remember from Homer's Odyssey, it is the image of the home fires burning at Ithaca, that Odysseus really longs to see from his from sea craft.
And later, upon his eventual return home, disguised as a beggar, Odysseus took his share of tending the fires in the palace:
“Odysseus took his stand by the burning braziers, tending the lights and keeping an eye on them all”…
“Tending the Lights” of the fire sites.
So in the case of Odysseus we’re talking, water and fire. two symbols that run through the Odyssey. The ancient ingredients of initiation.
Now I read books and books of poetry. At times I've wondered whether I spend too much time in the pages of books and poems and yet I come back to that phrase “when the student is ready the teacher appears”, and so I conclude this edition of Fenland Musings with another of Lilburn's quotes. Some direct teaching if you like.
In his essay “Contemplated practices, Contemplative pedagogies” there is a section on reading where Lilburn describes a lectio practice, or lectio divina, meaning divine reading. He says this about the practice.
“Lectio is the meeting with the word that looks directly at you, a line in a poem, a phrase in a memoir or piece of inspired scholarship; it is the approach of the term or remark that seems to read you, the word that, in a sense, says you, or makes room for you to imitate what it means”.
In other words it is what Lilburn describes as encountering the “piercing phrase”.
This idea of the piercing phrase is not uncommon to me but I've never heard it expressed in such a simple, penetrating way. One of my great experiences of sitting in Circles of Trust and in exploring poems is the invitation to just simply notice where in the poem we are drawn into; which lines or phrases, or single words speak to us; and as I have said in previous musings both Meade and Shaw and other storytellers invites us not to capture the whole story but to simply notice where we enter it, through which characters, which images, or where we zone out. Huge clues to the deeper journey in all of those.
So I wonder if that is why in Tony Hoagland's poem, the idea of autumn as the philosophical season has really pierced my outer layers, because it has spoken to something I was unable to tangibly grasp, but which is deeply true. Something that resides at the level of the soul.
Interestingly what Tim Lilburn invites as a lectio practice is to simply sit with some texts and read not for understanding but to encounter the piercing moment. His recommended texts are the psalms, the Tao Te Ching, and sweet glory, the poems of Rilke and Gary Snyder. There must be countless others, many sitting on your own bookshelves.
And the teacher says to the student “read in small chunks and savour”.
As a lover of trinities, I have often wondered what the third part of the Mythopoetic would be. In the Bly, Meade, Hillman trio, we had psychology, and that has interested me.
But right now, the third leg of the stool, perched at this teacherly tavern table feels solidly, decidedly, philosophical. I look forward to sharing more with you in future musings.
But for now, I am left with one final thought; is being bent over a difficult text, practicing lectio divina, waiting for the encounter with the piercing phrase, a form of initiation?
I hope you'll forgive the longer edition this month. I felt genuinely bad about last month being brief, although I strongly suspect that many of you were quite grateful for less of a ramble. Either way thank you for turning up at this little Tavern, the table is getting bigger every month, it gets bigger with new teachers sitting down as the student becomes ever ready.
Warm wishes to you and yours for this philosophical season.
Will
Distant Regard by Tony Hoagland If I knew I would be dead by this time next year I believe I would spend the months from now till then writing thank-you notes to strangers and acquaintances, telling them, “You really were a great travel agent,” or “I never got the taste of your kisses out of my mouth.” or “Watching you walk across the room was part of my destination.” It would be the equivalent, I think, of leaving a chocolate wrapped in shiny foil on the pillow of a guest in a hotel– “Hotel of earth, where we resided for some years together,” I start to say, before I realize it is a terrible cliche, and stop, and then go on, forgiving myself in a mere split second because now that I’m dying, I just go forward like water, flowing around obstacles and second thoughts, not getting snagged, just continuing with my long list of thank-yous, which seems to naturally expand to include sunlight and wind, and the aspen trees which gleam and shimmer in the yard as if grateful for being soaked last night by the irrigation system invented by an individual to whom I am quietly grateful. Outside it is autumn, the philosophical season, when cold air sharpens the intellect; the hills are red and copper in their shaggy majesty. The clouds blow overhead like governments and years. It took me a long time to understand the phrase “distant regard,” but I am grateful for it now, and I am grateful for my heart, that turned out to be good, after all; and grateful for my mind, to which, in retrospect, I can see I have never been sufficiently kind.
1. EDGEING: Archipelago: Britain’s Wild Margins
Instagram followers will remember that I found a copy of Archipelago Number Three a few months ago and was so chuffed!
And this event at the Cheltenham festival looks amazing, featuring Archipelago founder Andrew McNellie, the wonderful David Gange writer of the essential The Frayed Atlantic Edge and the enchanting music Brighton based composer Poppy Ackroyd.
I wish I could go!
2. STILLING - Poppy Ackroyd
3. IN THIS GREAT TURNING
We Shall Be Known - MaMus
Here’s a short little song to sing in Autumn.
“We shall be known by the company we keep…”.
Men, Myth & Meaning - A Gathering For Men, November 8th - 10th, Suffolk, UK.
My is heart is full, when I share that we are pretty much full for this Men’s retreat, with a group of 12 of us journeying ‘together and alone’ in exploring the territory of meaning. But if you would still like to join us please get in touch this week! We begin on-line next Friday!
2. Attending to True Self in Turbulent Times. November 15th - 17th, Amerdown, Somerset, UK.
I am also so happy to say that this retreat is also full, but do let me know if you would like to go onto the waiting list.
Grow Your Courage
If you would like to book a chat with me, you can use the link below, I would love to hear from you!
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Ah, Will, you've really packed this one!
It's eliciting all sorts of thoughts and responses in me. Apologies in advance for what is likely to be a long comment!
Firstly, on your theme of threes, we were reminded on my permaculture course that all things in nature take on the role of either producer (plants etc) consumer (animals etc) and decomposers (fungi etc).
Reflecting on multiple concurrent seasonal cycles in our lives and paradox, it reminds me how we take on these three roles in different aspects of our life and practice. We are probably all three simultaneously if we look at the whole of our life.
Secondly, staying with threes, I'm pondering your stool analogy. For me I think that (connection to) body, (connection to) place/land, and mythology make up the three. Of course, all three imply interrelate, and also necessitate community rather than individualism. The community of beings within my body, the humans and more than human creatures populating place, and the places, gods, archetypes etc of myth.
Personally I think that psychology, albeit a useful thing to learn, is limited. And overall has been far too coopted by and tainted by the systems it exists within.
As for poetry and religion, here's Richard Rohr:
"I’m convinced that the root of our divisions can only be overcome by a unitive consciousness at every level: personal, relational, social, political, cultural, and spiritual. This is the unique and central job of healthy religion (re-ligio = to re-ligament or bind together)"
I'm not sure poetry can achieve this, especially reading it as a solo venture, though I'd argue it is certainly one of the better portals into such unitive consciousness when we allow it to really get to work on us.
Thanks also for the reminder about lectio divina - a good lens on reading poetry that I'll aim to reincorporate in my life.
A deep sigh of contentment, can you hear it from over there, Will? Diolch yn fawr iawn 🌿