Clare Mulvany 15/10/2025 Clare Mulvany 15/10/2025

Along the Pilgrim Path

You can listen to this post here (5 mins)

Days dream themselves into being in the high places, and dreams dare a little deeper there. Beside the sleeping lake, the still surface reaches up at the first sign of contact. I hover my hand above, and watch her rise to greet me. We both exhale.

In the high places, along the pilgrim path, the old stories are walked along, an ancient route, thousands of footfalls worthy, of pilgrim and fox and hare and wren. These were the walking routes to silence.

We joined at Kealkil, four of us, spreading across two generations, some with more tales in our step, some with more spring.

We gather first in circle.

‘On the old paths, we walk with intention’, I offer.

‘A Sankalpa’, someone else brings.

‘It need not be said aloud, but in your heart’.

We bring our hands together, like a star, or a cross.

‘Go team’. And so we begin with laughter.

The high paths are never straight. We pass woodland, tinged with Autumn. We pass a singing river. We pass slabs, stripped-lined with quartz. ‘We are walking on millennia’, I say, and we take a step back in time.

In the high places, conversations move at the pace of breath. We walk in and out of silence, then stories. We talk of poetry and places, and of travels which served to take us home.

At the clearing with the welcome sign, we lay our picnic under ‘failte’. The rise is welcoming us. The feast multiples as we each lay our bearings.

Along the old path, there are songs, silly ones, and the one which invites brothers and sisters to come down to the river to pray.

At the river, I wash my face in her flowing waters. I drink. I joke, ‘If I die today, it is a good day to die. And part of me is not joking. I place my hand on the grass, and a bee stings my palm. It swells with the possibility. We walk on.

My friend has a chime. Every fifteen minutes it rings like a resonant singing bowl. It is a moment to pause, to come back from the story to the self, then listen deeper. I keep looking forward to the chime.

At the hawthorn tree, the berries are like congregations, offering their gifts. The silver birch, leafless now, reaches out her limbs for nests. Their wintering is a generous place. We walk on, zigzagging up the steep.

At the highest place, a lake surprises us. I sit by her waters and see the ancient deep. Here she is, settled in her nook, as her waters are forever replenished, rising and falling. The mountain breathes.

After the high places, there are low.

The hills begin to fall and curve; the path a folding current to carry us to the sanctuary.

We pass through hazel, oak, ash, like walking into the memory of the place still dreaming itself awake.

The high place, the old pilgrim path, opens to another lake, then drops to an old monastic site, upon which a chapel rests. Gougane Barra, the rock cleft of Barra. Finbarr’s site.

I do not enter. Instead, I walk to the water’s edge, and see the chapel reflected there, then turn to take the next step towards home. The path continues outwards, onwards. I do not know how long it will take to get there, but as my feet know by now, the journey is a resplendent thing.

**Hello. I'm Clare**

I'm a writer, educator and facilitator, living in beautiful West Cork, Ireland. I love to share resources and learning to help harness the transformative power of words, place and story. I hope my work offers nourishment for mind and soul. Thank you for being here. Clare x

Clare Mulvany 15/10/2025 Clare Mulvany 15/10/2025

For Manchán

In memory and honour of writer, broadcaster and friend, Manchán Magan.

Clare Mulvany 02/07/2025 Clare Mulvany 02/07/2025

Love and Ink

July days are here. I’m sitting outside as I write this note to you. A chatter of chaffinch and sunbeams join the mix. Around me, seeds I planted months ago are now in bloom; colour bursts. A parade of wild pink roses sit on my table as greeting. The year spins with petal and promise.

By July every year, I am ready for a rest, and some play. After the busy academic months and full season for organisations, summer stretches out a bit, offering some gentler rhythms and time to plan. I took myself off to Seville last week, thankfully missing the height of the heat, and switched off some of my brain for a while as I wandered narrow streets and stared lovingly and longingly at art. Now home, between swims, I’m taking stock, taking time.

I look at the world, and my heart breaks.
I look at the bloom, and my heart sings.

It’s all here; the pain and the promise, so much of both.

Often in my journal, when I am feeling a little overwhelmed or unsure, I turn to a voice inside me. I call her ‘The Wise One’. It’s the ancient elder in me, the voice which is timeless and eternal. I believe it is in all of us - a part of us that knows what is best, what is the wise course of action. But I think it takes practice and time to find her. She is below the noise and the ‘shoulds’, she (or he or they or them- or whatever you choose to call), seeks the best for us. For me, she speaks with firm compassion, sometimes so directly it stings, sometimes so subtly it can be easy to doubt her power. But there she is nonetheless, speaking her wisdom.

Maybe all this seems too far-fetched, too ‘out-there’, but for me it has been a way of really discovering what is ‘in here’. Dialoging on the page with her, I find answers my rational and logical brain does not ordinarily extend to. It takes imagination and the voice of ‘another’ to reach to ideas and pathways which my noisy, overwhelmed brain would have dismissed. But the wise voice is consistent, persistent.

This morning, trying to plan my next few months, and feeling totally aghast, once again, at the news, I asked for her guidance. This is what she said:

The sun is here for you.
And this day: a blank page.
Your pen is here. And the marriage of ink.
Your love is here, let it write the next sentence.
That’s all you’ll need:
Love, and Ink.

Love and Ink. That’s what I have. My words. My art. My offerings. It’s not everything, but right now, she has reminded me of the gifts: a blank page, a summer unfolding, and ink to write it into being.

Clare Mulvany 14/06/2025 Clare Mulvany 14/06/2025

They say it takes 3.5%

You can listen to me read this below:

3.5%

They say it takes 3.5%
to change a regime.

3.5%. How many grandmothers
is that? How many sisters?
Or brothers? How many aunts?
How many you’s?
How many me’s?

3.5% of flag, march, sail, sing.
Of boycott. Of sanctioning.
How many lives saved is that?
How many grandmothers?
How many children’s children?
How many olive branches is that?

3.5%. That’s what they say.
There are busloads already.
There are men, women,
walking to borders,
reaching out with their
olive branches.

3.5%. What percentage is a busload?
Or a single pair of feet?

Getting there.
It is getting us there.

- Clare Mulvany, June 14, 2025

Clare Mulvany 06/06/2025 Clare Mulvany 06/06/2025

With Eyes on The Future

You can listen to this piece below:

I love the pull of the days, either end, like a lever arcing towards the light. The hedgerows are ebullient in their growth, foxgloves now the flag-bearers with their purple-pink singing heads. The chorus fills with elderflower and ox-eyes daisies, flocks of white bloom, murmurating.

I hold it all with awe and tenderness, for where there is beauty, so too fragility. The song of it all hangs on a fine thread of balance, never to be taken for granted. To really witness the bloom, is also to advocate for its protection.

I see, of course, what is unfolding in our fine-threaded world. Along its fractures and faultlines — the injustices, the inhumanities. It is so hard to hold most days.

I am buoyed by witness; the advocates, the protectors, some on land, some on sea, murmurating. It’s about Palestine, and wider conflicts, of climate and our bio-diversity crisis; the eco-systems of our humanity held up against the lens.

I find myself reflecting on my years as a photographer. In schools, in hospitals, in waste facilities, along polluted river beds, on death beds, listening, mostly to the mothers. In Uganda, India, Bosnia, Cambodia, Ireland, and elsewhere, it was the women, mostly, who would look into the lens, with eyes both bright and remorseful. See me, really see me, and you’ll see what we can also be. For in those eyes, I would see mother-love strength: to hold, to care for the lives of their children, and their children’s children, and what they might become. Those eyes were on the future. Please educate, please see our resilience, please, please hold onto hope.

Hope, as advocate, as witness, I learned in those eyes, is a duty of care.

I still see those eyes. They are seared into my pen. And now, as I lay down in the grasses, my camera turned towards those purple singing heads, I notice the ox-eyed daisies winking back. A passage from Terry Tempest Williams sings in my lens.

‘The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle…’

My prayer these days is in my words, these words, and my images, and the stories I am trying to write. For story, I have also come to know, is both lens and lever. Stories can shift the dial on culture, they can alter our perception, help make the invisible visible, help us make sense, and even better, come to our senses. For under the lens of story we are asked to kneel beside the mothers, the fathers, the bloom, and we are taken inside their eyes, their hearts, their hopes.

See what I see.
Feel what I feel.

No policy document can do that. But story can.

My ink is also a camera is also a lens is also an eye on the future: saying, praying, may be see beyond our own time.

I don’t have all the answers. I don’t have all the perspectives. But I can see the witnesses, the advocates, the protectors, the blossom, the flag-bearers. Now, there is a story with eyes on the future. Look this way. Be the duty of care. Our eyes have ink in them. Our hands can hold the flags.

Clare Mulvany 27/05/2025 Clare Mulvany 27/05/2025

I want to write about Gaza but I don’t know how to write about Gaza.

I want to write about Gaza, but I don’t know how to write about Gaza. ‘About’ is already too distant. Because to write about is to already remove oneself. But writing is what I have.

So I pick up the nearest thing. It is a pencil and there is a feather stuck to its tip.

Go with wings.

You can listen to this piece below:

Trigger warning: This is raw and emotional, speaking about the genocide in Gaza and is not intended for young ears. If you have children listening, please save this for another time.

I want to write about Gaza, but I don’t know how to write about Gaza. ‘About’ is already too distant. Because to write about is to already remove oneself. But writing is what I have.

So I pick up the nearest thing. It is a pencil and there is a feather stuck to its tip.

Go with wings.

So I want to tell you that I can’t fathom what is happening. I can’t fathom how many mothers are burying their children, how many fathers are burying their children, how many children are burying their mothers, their fathers.

I can’t fathom how food is being used as a weapon of war, how civilians are being seen as collateral in that war.

I want to tell you that I am looking at the news, but the thing is, incredibly, it’s not making the news, and when it does, I see three children’s shrouds being swaddled by their mother and I can’t look. I can’t keep looking and yet I need to keep looking because if we aren’t looking, the news will go away and soon we’ll be told that the news of the day is about how tariffs are on or off or on again, and even that is making me dizzy. So I switch to something about puppies, literally puppies, but when I am in that half-dream/ half-awake place, all I can see is a mother holding three shapes which once were her children.

So I want to write about Gaza, but there have been so many words already. So many words. Still I take up my pen and instead of words, I begin to make marks. One, two, nine thousand and fifty seven, eleven thousand three hundred and seventy two, fourteen thousand. And counting.

Last week, these dots were the lives of children at risk of starvation. This week, nothing really has changed.

I want to say: I know there are histories, different sides, but what I really want to say is, future history does not have to tell this history.

I add three more dots, and think of that mother.

So, you can see, it is hard to write about Gaza, because Gaza is the worst of humanity, of how we can look and not look, of how we can turn away, of how we dare or not dare.

And the truth is, I don’t know what to do. I do know that Gaza is also elsewhere. Gaza is Yemen is Sudan is the populations we other is the refugee crisis is the climate crisis is the meta crisis.

Puppies are suddenly more appealing again.

But then there are even more dots and more counting and more shapes.

I want to write about Gaza, but I don’t know how to write about Gaza. But on my pencil, there is a feather, which once was an implement of flight. I think about where the bird came from and where the bird has gone. I think about how it can do a miraculous thing.

I want to still believe in the miraculous.

Clare Mulvany 22/11/2024 Clare Mulvany 22/11/2024

On Listening to the Dream in the Dark.

The sky is a dome of light, tinged peach, tinged purple. Dawn is always forthcoming if we can ride the night out long enough. I wake up early and light a candle. It is the quite hour, before the world has turned and sleep still settles on the hills like an innocent child, dreaming still of a better world.

We all need a place to dream, and to rest. We need a place to make sense, gather resources, build the life, harvest the life. But that is coming. First the space for sleeping, then dreaming. First the dark.

November finds its rhythms in the dark hours. Light hatched only in sketches. It is in the dark where dreams are born, twisting around a body seeking its internal bear. To hibernate in today’s world of always on, always bright, where even the dark has been overshadowed by the commercial bling of Black Friday. How about:

Less Friday

Sleep Friday

A Friday to use up the last throws of the autumnal harvest before the need for more.

Dream Friday

Soon it will be the season of giving, of festivities, but for now still, this is the season for turning inwards, turning to the dream buried in the places only the dark can touch.

You can listen to this piece here:

Less Friday

Sleep Friday

A Friday to use up the last throws of the autumnal harvest before the need for more.

Dream Friday

Soon it will be the season of giving, of festivities, but for now still, this is the season for turning inwards, turning to the dream buried in the places only the dark can touch.

I feel asleep in the afternoon yesterday. A scene I had been working on in the book I am writing got caught and it wasn’t flowing. Nor was I. So I took to my bed with a hot water bottle. As my body dropped into the unconscious territory I slept the ending of that scene. I had my directions. When I woke, there was my character knocking on my page, calling me. It came out in a swoop. The dream is an incubator. The dark is the engine that makes it turn.

I am not sure how dark has got such a bad press. The Dark Arts. The Dark Lord. Black as negated, of skin and mind and humour. The black dog. The black death.

I read an article once by Kasia St Clair about the development of black pigment. I learned that there is a material called Vantablack which is the most light absorbent substance on the planet. So non-reflective it looks like you might never come out. Look it up, but I warn you, you may fall down the rabbit hole.

Black holes. The long dark. But it is the cave that holds the treasure as the mythologist Joseph Campbell speaks of. Dark as incubator. Dark as womb.

I think many of us feel we are looking into a vantablack hole, neither able to see our own reflection or find out way out. Wondering if we ever will. But the strange thing about standing on the edge, looking in, is that we won’t know if we will make it through unless we cross the threshold. We must step across. Take the risk. It is classic hero journey arc. Only. when we get to the other side we must be willing to sit in the unknown until the treasures are caught in the glowing dark, and glisten.

What might the treasures of threshold crossing be? What dreams might have a chance to uncurl themselves, to show up on the page, the podium or the policy. The dark, I am learning, over and over again, isn’t about trying to solve the dark, it’s about embracing the space of the unknown, sitting with, learning into, being open to the dream, being open to the treasure, no matter how dark it gets. Even vantablack levels of dark.

My candle flickers, the purple has given way to sky’s winter expanse. The dark has a dent in it. The dream, it has been knocking. I am listening. I am listening. I am listening.

Clare Mulvany 06/11/2024 Clare Mulvany 06/11/2024

On the Work of Grief and Love (and the great mystery in the middle)

Take a deep breath. We have entered The Dark Times. This is a time and place when the already weak systems which hold things together begin not just to crack, but to fall apart. The bridges that united us are visibly failing. Across the ocean, a man so vile and so dangerous will continue to call for the infrastructure of our humanity to be torn apart. He will be tearing down rights: of access to healthcare, to travel, to democratic privileges, to any semblance of balanced judicial process. He will be dismantling freedoms too, of speech, of movement, of choice. It’s called misogyny. Soon it may more widely be called others things like fascism, violence, collapse. On this side of the ocean, I am grateful for the ocean, and that my own vote did not have to be in direct defence against such darkness.

Yet. Yet. For there is always yet.

You can listen to this piece here:

Yet. Yet. For there is always yet.

In times of collapse not everything is lost. But everything is up for grabs and we can take nothing for granted.

I’ll tune into metaphor for scaffold here.

While the bridges may be dismantled, there are still rivers, raging most likely, but moving and stirring and binding us together though the liquid of our being. Water is the great connector. Tears. Breath. The river is contiguous with every living thing, no matter its political agenda, social current or leanings. The river, the water, the ocean reminds us that we are always more connected than we realise. I need that reminder today too, for on this side of the ocean, it’s still the same ocean, swayed by tides, rattled by the moving storms. What happens in Dark Times on one continent can set up templates for others, no matter how fortified we think our bridges are.

On this side of the ocean, there are bridges to mend too, as their are waters to heal. There are old, cranky, inept systems which need to be hospiced well, and new ones which need to be midwifed so they are strong enough to hold not just our governments but our humanity. I purposely use ‘our’ here, knowing ‘our’ includes people who I agree with- who want to build and hospice and midwife well, and those who I don’t agree with; those who vote for the demonic and draconian. The ocean is for everyone. Its so hard. So very hard.

I draw on the work of teachers here, and models as I think about this. The two loop model of systems change, for example, from the Berkana Institute, which many years ago was presented to me by its co-author Deborah Frieze. It is a simple model of how old systems die, and how new ones emerge. Like a simple map, it helps us place navigational pins, and position ourselves too.

Along the loops, there are places of action and orientation, all necessary for change, including with the dying. The role of hospicing, for instance, helping a system to die well, is as important as the trailblazer or pioneer, stepping out of the dominant system to seed new ideas. Other roles include the connector, linking and nurturing the new seeds, then supporting communities of practice, establishing new norms and standards which may even be adopted back into the dominant system. I think of one of my dear friends, Jennifer Dungan, as I write this. A primary school teacher, with a deep passion for nature and education, and with knowledge of the emergent forest school model. For years she worked in a school, prototyping and trialling the methods, until, ten years on, she has helped to establish it as weekly practice. Every Friday is fores t school day. This year however, she felt it was time to leave, and so she has taken a sabbatical and has stepped out, with the view to bringing forest school to more people. She is training more teachers, working on a wider curriculum, and helping to build a community of practice around these nature based models. In Dark Times, it is likely the new is already being seeded somewhere, by humble and powerful people like Jenny. We need to keep our ears and eyes peeled, and place our bets on them.

The other model I am thinking about today is the work of Joanna Macy, with her model known as The Work that Reconnects. Joanna, now in her mid-nineties, has been a pioneer in leading the way for groups to gather and take collaborative action for the planet. Joanna outlines three narratives which are simultaneously at play: Business as Usual- a story of head in the sand, continuous industrial growth economics; The Great Unravelling - a story of the collapse of social and environmental systems; and finally, of The Great Turning- a story which speaks of the interconnectedness of all life, and which is oriented towards regeneration, renewal, connection. While acknowledging that these three layers are operative at any one time, within them, we have a choice; to bury our heads, to destroy, or to construct. Crucially, the latter, moving us towards the Great Turning, can only happen when we bring the change to both our inner lives, and our outer actions, which is why I am thinking of it today. Because that inner work begins with grief.

Grief may be a thing with feathers, but it may also come with hammers. There is an energy, sometimes rage, knocking and gnawing- an energy replete with so much pain that, at times, we might feel like it will break us. But the thing with grief, we must let it break us; that is, in the kind of cracking open kind of way.

I think too of a line from a Thomas Kinsella poem, where is speaks of heavily pruned trees, ‘hacked clean for better bearing’ having suffered their ‘brute necessities’. Hacking is a violent process, it can feel brutal and overbearing, but if we don’t fall into grief, into its allowance to mould us, we risk being held in shells- fragile, and in fear of breaking itself, which is exactly what we need to do. Grief is fluid as a river. Grief is a threshold which we are changed through.

From my own experience, of loosing loved ones and loosing identities, I have learned that until I experience the grief, until I let it crack me open, cry so many tears of me, rattle my world, nothing shifts. But when I literally turn to grief and say, ‘bring it on’, the pain immediately feels less acute and shifts into something less brittle. I am then enabled to move beyond reactionary territory and amazingly, into creative territory with grief as a resource, or reservoir of tenderness. There is still tendrils of the pain tethering me to the loss, but the kind of pain that is a reminder of so much love. Grief, in that sense, becomes a companion or ally, accompanying me on my creative path.

When my dear friend and mentor, another Jennifer, died last year, the grief consumed me, and I let it. I danced with it, cried so much I thought I would dry out. I moved with yoga. I swam, swam, swam. Then I painted. Feathers, ironically, at first, then scribbles, and colours, and creatures. And only then was I ready to write. Now, my creative practice includes Jennifer. I have a little altar for her in my home, with memories, gifts she gave to me, images. And when I sit down to write, I light her a candle too, inviting the creative exchange that was so alive between us to guide me onwards, forwards. Today, as we enter the Dark Times Deeper, after much plotting and planning, I begin writing book two of a trilogy I’ve working on. I’ve no idea when or how I will get it out into the world yet, but I do know it is my own small contribution to The Great Turning, for it is a story about how change can happen, and new vision, and the big mystery in the middle. It is a story written with grief, and with love.

So, grieve. Let the fury in. And the rage. Dance with it. Sing with it. Love it. Hold it. Swim with it. Let it move you, literally. And when it feels time, create. In the Dark Times, our creativity is our tool of choice. And creativity is your own gift, whatever that is to claim, and to offer.

Mine: I’ll claim mine, as a gift I seek to use wisely. So I’ll write, and teach and gather people, for I know these are mine to do. Maybe they are yours too - to write a story which is also part of the grief, or the seeds, or the buds. Or maybe it is to grow, literally, and your gift is tending to the seeds, and the saplings, then forests. Or maybe your gift is spreadsheets (bless your precious soul!), and you have a way with numbers with can procure resources and finance and data. Or maybe your gift, your creativity, is being on the streets with banner and voice. Or you are that primary school teacher, opening young hearts to wonder and delight. Or you may even be in a government office, so riddled with bureaucracy that it feels intractable, but you have a gift of finding a way, finding the cracks in the system, where yes, the light gets in.

This work is hard. But it is possible. And no matter how dark it is, we have our tears and our bones and our rage and our love. We have this thing call creativity. And we have the ocean, which right now, I am about to swim in. As I plunge into the cold waters, I will be thinking of the other side of the ocean, and of my fellow humans in Palestine and beyond , and of all the creatures, big, small, vertebrates and invertebrates, who don’t have a voice. And the trees, and the fabric of life which connects us.

In Dark Times, work is what we have. Work, that is, of love and grief, and the great mystery in the middle.

Coming up this Month

**Poetry Salon- 10 November**

A hour to gather around poetry and reflect on its meaning and wisdom. Donation based tickets here.

**Writing Sanctuary- 17 Nov**

An hour of journal prompts, sharing and connection around the power of words and the ritual of creativity. Tickets here

Clare Mulvany 25/03/2024 Clare Mulvany 25/03/2024

Mexican Wanders

There were miracles everywhere. The trees looked autumnal, flanked not with falling leaves, but beating wings, the flames of Monarch butterflies, in their hundreds of thousands, giving rise to something closer to awe I could not name. How do the Monarch’s make the 3000km journey from Canada to arrive, four generations on, to the same Oyamel forests in Michochan, Mexico from which their great-grandparents took flight on their own epic journey north? It was raining wing and mystery in those hills. My heart is pulsing differently now.

Then there was the flight of a flock of pink flamingos overhead, traveling in a perfect V, their necks elongated in elegance, traveling down the Rio Celestun on which our little kayak prevailed, just, in the deceptively strong current, granting us the privilege of witness. We paddled until we met a flock of about 60 of these long-legged wonders feeding on crustaceans from which their colour derives.

Then were was the sea waters, azul, clear, and the waters of the caves- crystalline. A terrain of limestone, much like the Burren of the West of Ireland, which, given its propensity for porosity and erosion creates the conditions for over 6000 cenotes, or sink holes, sacred watering grounds, seven of which my body felt like it pilgrimed into. Submerging, there was a sinking in, held by mother and nature, and the ever renewing force of water. Surfacing my world and understanding of magic was rebirthed.

It was a month of travels populated with such explosive beauty but not without witnessing explosive tragedy too. The Maya Train, a project of the current president, designed to bring more tourists, and therefore pesos/ dollars/ euros/ yuan to the Yucatan peninsula, a land so rich in biodiversity, and so primed for migratory species, that to do anything but preserve and restore is a devastation. But, sadly, shockingly, the railway project is ploughing through virgin forest, its wildlife scattering for cover, its people’s voice going unheard, and countless trees being felled in the name of ‘progress’. It is a scar on the landscape, not just of the region, but in our own collective efforts to preserve and reserve. I’m still reeling, and so angry, and aware of my own complicity- my presence there counted as another tick in the tourist numbers. Justification. But the wrong kind of just.

And it was in this month I encountered protest, as thousands of women took to the streets against the waves of femicide and violence against women in Mexico. There was an anger, at times rage, being lashed in graffiti against walls and monuments; a visceral aggravation to attest to the larger social fabric which at times feels like at war with the feminine. To be in that power, and that anger, felt daring and electric, which still simmers in my veins wondering where next to move.

I think the best kind of travel is as much an inward journey as an outward one, taking us to new aspects of ourselves, questions perhaps, or capacities and even challenges. Here, in meeting the wider world we encounter ourselves so we can return altered in some way, and renewed. And so, as my month of travels still churn, with colour, taste, smells, learning, I am still trying to unpack it all, giving space and shape for the words and experience to land. My hope is that it continues to shake, with wonder and repulsion, spurring me onwards, onwards, onwards, in words and in story and in action.

Clare Mulvany 31/01/2024 Clare Mulvany 31/01/2024

Burren Winter School: A Story in Layers

Over the few days of the Winter School, I see the participants getting to know each other better, and being in this layered learning together. I can’t help but play with the landscape as metaphor too. The Winter School has become a haven in the fissures of our global fracture. Here are 22 participants gathering to pause, learn, regenerate. They represent 15 nationalities. There are singers and scientists, social entrepreneurs and sociologists. There is a medic from South Africa, a young family from Afghanistan. They are from Palestine, Cambodia, Nigeria, Japan, Germany, India, Ireland. They are all people who want to be part of writing a new story: This is Ireland. This is us.

You can listen to this story below (10 mins)

The Burren landscape is full of cracks. Fractures and fissures divide the limestone, which, as we walked across the stone slabs on a cold, crisp January morning, were rendered both beautiful and dangerously slippy. The light that morning was as if Yeats himself had laid down the heaven’s embroidered cloth, but we were also were being warned: thread softly.

We had gathered as part of the Suas/ Stand Changemakers Academy, a 6 month learning programme designed to support young changemakers with the learning required to both navigate the fractures and fissures of our world, and gain skills to build, repair and advocate for a better one. I have been fortunate to be a part of the design of the programme and was now in attendance as a facilitator at their Winter School through my work with Thrive School. Our home base for the week was Common Knowledge, a regenerative learning centre, rooted in the Burren. On this wintery morning, as the rocks and cracks told their ancient story, we were being guided on a place-based learning walk with Áine Bird, from the Burren Beo Trust, another organisation which seeks to connect people to the landscape and its care.

Bearing the fossilised memory of millennia, on first glance it can be easy to read the story of the Burren as one of erosion, but, as Áine points out to us, on deeper reading, it also tells a story of protection, conservation and preservation. What we learn instead is that the system in which the landscape evolved is a complex interweave of narratives: human, ecological, agricultural, religious and cultural. To understand the full, systemic story, we must understand the relationship between the layers.

‘Live in the layers’, another poet, Stanley Kunitz has counselled, and so: the layers. When we put on an ecological lens we learn that the fissures are home to some of the rarest plants and insect life in the country. As the rest of Ireland becomes increasingly depleted of its biodiversity, it is landscapes such as this that become both habitat havens and critical species preservation hubs.

Next layer: reading the landscape as a sacred text, we learn of the large cycles of worship which have played out on its altar. From pagan rituals, to early christian oratories, from holy wells and places of pilgrimage, time and ceremony have marked meaning and myth into the stone. With eyes in search of the sacred, we see the sacred.

Then with the eyes of an agriculturalist, we learn of the complex, interconnected relationships between man, bovine, plant and place; how the landscape- this place of sanctuary for marginal and rare species only is because of relationship. Take the cow, for example. As the wintering herds graze, keeping back potentially encroaching hazel bush, so too do they distribute seeds and nutrients to enable the flowering of rare spring bloom. Wild flower meadow and cow literally sustain each other. What dies, becomes, and what becomes feeds a wider circle of life. The key is in finding a balance between the elements: hazel bush, grazers, cows, plants and the right timing of the seasonal movement of herds to enable the plant life to flourish. Here communication is transhuman- man, animal, plant and place all in dialogue in to ensure mutual flourishing.

Next layer. With the eyes of the historian, in a single frame we can see the parallel of past and present. The mounds of an ancient Fulacht fiadh- thought to be an old cooking pit, now sits adjacent to a concrete watering trough for cattle. Just out of frame, there is also a famine house, its crumbling walls telling part of the larger story of how a community faded into decline through the systemic interplay of colonialism, economy, land rights and food sovereignty.

Each layer offers more readings. Each reading, brings up its own set of questions. The landscape is a living text, only fully decoded with open eyes, open minds and open hearts. So, in a complex layered system, and particularly as changemakers, we need to ask questions which probe into each layer, questions such as: Whose needs do you prioritise? Whose wellbeing is centred? What story is given voice? Who is not being heard? Without understanding the layers and characters in the narrative, we risk telling, and preserving, only a partial story. Story, we learn, is central. Without story, we may just fall through the cracks.

We begin our days in circle. The circle is a container to hold the learning and each other, as we meet our edges and our hopes. I invite in our difficult questions, and our uncomfortable quests. How can we learn to navigate them if we can not support each other to be brave enough to ask them. Our questions are so we may learn to move through the layers of self and the systems we inhabit, to live more vitally and more fully, for all of us.

On our opening night, as the winter light falls back to a breathing dark, we light a gathering of candles in the centre of our circle. It’s an acknowledgment of the darkness in our systems, in our midst. A soulful young man from Palestine reads a poem from his people, in English, then in Arabic. The poetry travels as remembrance and witness. We leave the silence rest for a few moments, then we give the night to poetry.

The poetry salon comes into shape by way of gathering around candlelit tables. I speak a little to how poetry can open us up to insight and meaning making, which otherwise may remain out of view. I’ve choose a selection of poems which speak to the inner quest for purpose and value, and how we may travel. ‘Start close in’, came words from David Whyte, words which teach us how and where to listen. ‘To know kindness as the deepest thing inside, we must also know sorrow as the other deepest thing’, offers Naomi Shihab Nye. But let us not forget to rise, says Maya Angelou, nor forget to feast on our lives, reminds Derek Walcott. As each poem arrives, the salon participants share their responses. They speak to the questions the poems deliver or expose, and to the memories the words may evoke. Poetry is opening a door, and we step through.

Over the few days there is also project work. The participants have been assigned teams, and given challenge briefs by a range of community partners. They learn about design thinking and root cause systems work to build solution prototypes. There is an ideas to action cafe, to help them design and evolve their own personal projects too- a project which will nudge them to develop the changemaking skills they are seeking to strengthen. Then we add a buddy system to help sustain the process beyond the School.

Another morning, still threading softly, we go on a silent Imram- a mythic Celtic walk out into the layered landscape which helps us listen to ourselves and our questions more fully. ‘Everything is connected’, says a participant as she begins to see in relationship and not in silos. ‘When I am quiet, memories can rise’, says another as he gets in touch with the regenerative power of nature’s wisdom, and it’s beautifully dangerous awakening too.

Then there are games and laughter, and career talks and delicious food, and by night, we fall back to story and song. Inspired by The Moth Storytelling movement, we tell stories of rupture and relief, of courage and confidence, and even some of pure embarrassment. The stories are torches, illuminating pathways of connection. Later there is a night of song and dance, and making room for what happens when we feel free to offer whatever talents or gifts are seeking to be shared.

Everything is connected, yes, and so are we.

That winter morning as we walked down from the Burren with the light cascading in ribbons of honey and awe, careful of our footing, Yeats words came back to me, and I spoke them aloud.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

My dream, I realise, is this new story in the making. As we thread softly alongside the fissures and the cracks, as these young people, and myself, learn to listen to the layers of story, as we try to build the skills, and moral muscle to straddle the divides, I can’t help but feel expanded, connected. The dream is in the layers and in the rising. The dream is in the writing and the telling. But it’s also in the circle, with a light at the centre. And they are it. We can all be it. It’s all connected.

Letters from Clare

Stay in touch…

@onewildlife

'The year turns once more. The seasons shift. From the dense thickets of willow, birdsong spirals long with the light. We have reached the next threshold, Bealtaine, May- ‘beal’, mouth, ‘tine’, fire - a burning and a voice to

Meanwhile, in today's hedgerow news.... West Cork.

How about a midsummer evening, around a campfire with poetry, in the grounds of a 15th Century castle? My friends Jeremy and Sybil, who have been lovingly restoring @knockelly_castle in Fethard, Co. Tipperary, have invited me to host a Summer Solstic

Sharing a new creative reflection over on The Wild Edge today, with audio narration, inviting you to think about the small wonders at our feet, and the thresholds in ourselves they are leading us towards... And, if you want to take it deeper, some cr

We are soon approaching Bealtine, the next turning in the Celtic season. To mark this special time of budding and bloom, come celebrate with a special seasonal salon online, Thursday 30th April. There will be poetry, journalling and gentle creative r

Today's hedgerow news, West Cork edition: the three cornered leek are pulling a blinder.

The great unfurl of fern and curl. Spring's slow awakening. Glengarrif woods, West Cork. #nature #spring #forest

Owl Hours are invitations into quiet, intentional creative space. We gather for an hour, connect with whatever creative project has been knocking, and bring our energy towards its momentum. Simple, consistent and focused. Taking place on The Wild Edg

Follow Along