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.
A Winter Blessing
Under candlelight and flicker, guided by the spirit of poetry, and the tradition of Celtic Blessings, a group of Poetry Salon participants created a collective blessing for the world. In an act of daring, gentle beauty, as each participant was reading their line aloud, I imagined the ripple effect of their compassion and care spreading out, illuminating pathways through these dark times.
Below the blessing, with an invitation. What line would you add?
Here was ours, written on Winter Solstice, December 21st 2023, with participants from Ireland, UK, Spain, Portugal, US, Belgium and Switzerland
Winter Solstice Prompts
But what does it mean to cultivate hope?
One of the origins of hope is pause. To sit still in the fullness of our lives and give ourselves back to the magic of joy, generosity and to the dream of better days to come- for to be hopeful is to have belief in the possibilities of the future, as individuals and as a collective.
The word solstice comes from the Latin, meaning, Sol (sun) + Sistere (to stand still). And so, I invite you to take a few moments of pause, to sit with the questions of the turning of the season, still honouring the dark while calling in the light, a way to cultivate your own sense of hope in these turning times.
No Now May
In honour of No Mow May, long grass, scattering seeds, biodiversity, rewilding and wrens, a little poem for the occasion. Find out more about the All Ireland Pollinator Plan.
The Secret Worlds of Writing
Writing happens in the confluence of secret worlds. The first is the world of our head, where memory, language, images and experience, together with the internal cadences and rhythms of our inner voice, collide. There is a solitude to this world which, when we allow ourselves the time and space to explore, we find is as vast and rich as any landscape. We speak differently to how we write- how we tell our story on paper, as opposed to telling our story with voice, is a layered, textured encounter. Before utterance, there is the invitation to explore the spaces and places which comprise our inner landscape, and in doing so, expand it. This expansion alone warrants the writing, whether or not we choose to share or even develop what gets written.
Letters from Clare
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