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.

**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 regenerative 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 23/12/2023 Clare Mulvany 23/12/2023

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

Below the blessing, with an invitation. What line would you add? (you can add in the comments below)

Here was ours, written on Winter Solstice, December 21st 2023, with participants from Ireland, UK, Spain, Portugal, US, Belgium and Switzerland.

Collective Blessing, written by Salon participants

May we allow ourselves rest in the “in between”.
May we remember that we belong to each other.
May we honour the self in ourselves and each other.
May we be the mystery keepers at the crossroads of our senses.
May we pull down the curtain embroidered by those who would keep us apart to quell our power.
May our current darkness birth life and light in the world and in us.
May the people of Gaza have clean water, shelter, medical care, enough to eat and freedom to live without bombs.
May the cycles of life fall gently on you, may your storms be few with many shelters.
May we all the remember our hearts being blessed.
May we accept the protection of our wild waiting kin.
May there be light to open humanity’s dark mind and see what really is.
May we become a sanctuary for ourselves and for others.
May we all turn towards the love in our hearts, and from this place of peace, bless love as the guiding force in the world.

21 December, 2023.

Available Now

**An Intentional Year**

Focus on what matters most, and create an intentional 2024. Guidebook and an Intentional Year course now available

Clare Mulvany 20/12/2023 Clare Mulvany 20/12/2023

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.

December is deep upon us and here in the Northern Hemisphere the days are short and the nights are long. However, celebrated around the eve of the 20th December, the Winter Solstice is a turning point in the year, where a reversal in the light happens and the days begin to lengthen. It is not surprising then that many ancient and religious festivals take place around this time of year, for the solstice represented a renewal of hope and a reminder that the light would return and with it the warmth required for the seeds of new life to germinate. As the light arrived our ancestors knew the tide of the year would turn too.

In ancient times in Ireland, this magical turning was reflected in the architecture of the day. Newgrange in Co. Meath is perhaps the best known example of this, when, at dawn, the soft winter light is tunnelled down a long passageway to light up a burial chamber. It’s a remarkable feat of science and engineering, and hints to the mysticism and magic embedded in their honouring of the natural cycles of the year.

Christmas has long been associated with magic. Santa, flying reindeer, presents left under trees are modern day embodiments of these ancient practices of honouring this time of year- a time of giving thanks, of joy, of hope and yes, magic. And yet, for many Christmas is a hard time, the financial pressures of an overly commercialised festival, the missing of loved ones and absent friends, or even the deeper struggles to find a home in the wider place in the world, can all be amplified at this time of year.

Switching on the global news headlines does not seem to help either- one would not be alone in giving oneself over to cynicism. Hope then, in these days of uncertainty and fear becomes even more powerful and more urgent.

But what does it mean to cultivate hope?

Prompts for honouring the dark:

This is a time of year when the light is beginning to lengthen again. Before welcoming the light, take a moment to honour the dark time of the year.

Consider spending the evening without the use of electric light. As the dusk settles, take a few moments to sit in the darkness.

What does the dark represent to you?

What does the dark have to teach you?

For the ancient celts, there was a deep recognition that life begins in the darkness. The earth’s new life comes only after a period of hibernation and rest.

Are there areas of your life that are still craving rest?

What aspects of your life want to hibernate?

What can you do to honour this need in yourself- is there something you can release?

Prompts for welcoming the light

Suggestion: write/ contemplate your responses by candlelight.

What aspects of your life are coming into light right now?

What do you need to shine a light on?

And prompts for cultivating hope

What does hope mean to you?

How can you cultivate hope in your life right now?

How can you help to share a sense of hope or light with those around you?

Happy Winter Solstice, and perhaps I will see you at the Special Winter Solstice Salon, on Dec 21st.

Blessings for the Season.

Clare x

Coming on December 21st…

A Solstice evening of Seasonal Poetry, Journaling and Seasonal Ritual.

Online, December 21st. 7-9pm GMT

Book your tickets below, offered on a sliding scale.

Salon Tickets

Available Now

**An Intentional Year**

Focus on what matters most, and create an intentional 2023. Guidebook and an Intentional Year course now available

Clare Mulvany 16/05/2023 Clare Mulvany 16/05/2023

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.

In honour of No Mow May, long grass, scattering seeds, biodiversity, rewilding and wrens, a little poem for the occasion.

No Mow May

I don’t want a lawn,

something tamed and severed

from its own potential.

I want daisies.

I want cuckoo flowers that sing

a capella with the wind.

I want to fall down on my knees

in the hunt for rare bee orchids.

I want bees.

I want the way my legs

disappear among

the long, wet grasses.

I want the rush of it all,

the swoosh of it, seeds scattered

to the sky on each passing footfall

of my breath.

I want to explain the sun, moon and stars

of every exploding dandelion.

I want what the wren wants:

the possibility to shelter,

then to soar.

Find out more about the All Ireland Pollinator Plan and No Mo May

@allirelandpollinatorplan #NoMowMay #biodiversity#rewilding #nature #poetry #poem #pollinators

New Writing Workshops

One Day workshops in West Cork.

Live a New Story (May 27th) and Writing Wild (June 24th) are coming to Schull! Bookings via Arran Street East.

Clare Mulvany 18/04/2023 Clare Mulvany 18/04/2023

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.

You can listen to this piece below- 5 minutes.

The Secret Worlds of Writing.

From this inner world, ink is a conduit. On paper, as words make our way to our hands, the speed of the written forms, the pace in which the letters land on the page, seem to provide pause enough for new articulations and ideas to form. I’ll forever be an advocate of handwriting for this very reason. The hand-brain connection seems to reach into that private world of the imagination and access ideas from an embodied, often more emotionally nuanced or charged place. A blank page is where the first discharge of this electrical connection of body and mind is made manifest, and those initial drafts often capture the energy of a first encounter. The first kiss of ink to page holds an erotic tension, which can birth worlds. But first, we must we willing to come closer, to make the first move, to offer part of ourselves to the page.

Once we encounter the page, craft also enters. We learn how to be playful with how we place images, and then to re-arrange them. We realise it is all a wild experiment; here we get to conjure elements out of our secret world of the mind, combine with words, and figure out what ones to amplify and what to discard. Through these twin currents of assembly and disassembly, what we choose to keep and what we select to jettison, we are emboldened with a sense of agency. We are both the breakers and the makers, and, as we create these worlds, we too are made. Here is another expansion, which again, whether we choose to share the writing or not, the very act of writing is warranted.

Writing as opposed to speaking has always given me access to ways of thinking, seeing and perhaps most importantly, connecting, which the oral tradition does not. Here, on the page, my world is formed with detail and colour; where past and present converge in an emergent conversation. On the page, even the imaginal world evidences as a tangible, seen world. The pages start to fill. The ink runs low. There is something to hold. Letters as bricks. Sentences as bridges. Words as organic matter.

Then, beyond the first secret world, there is the second secret world: the world of the reader. From page to eye to mind and heart, words are transported in a sacred covenant between writer and reader; an invisible thread that can extend beyond boundaries, time, borders, eras, ideologies, definitions, selfhood. As a writer, what a privilege it is to have ones words carried into the body of another. As a reader, what a magic it is to have access to another's inner landscape. Not all stories have to be shared, or deserve to be shared, for that matter, but the ones that are, become alive again in the reader. Some of those words even get to live on, as mirrors to the reader’s own lives, or maps or counter-maps saying ‘go this way’, or ‘definitely not that way’. Our stories, when offered to another, take up a new residence beyond which we have any control. To share our story is also to birth the potential for new ways of being, for ourselves, for the reader, and perhaps, just perhaps for the places and spaces between. Which is also to say: to write our story, and then to share our story is to birth new secret worlds.

New Writing Workshops

Clare Mulvany 23/02/2023 Clare Mulvany 23/02/2023

Grief and Gift

Spring is attendant to spring itself. After a long sojourn in winter’s dark, first the budding, now the bloom. The daffodils seem early this year, but I have been saying that for some seasons now, as time and arrivals are being re-ordered, rearranged. Weeks seem to shuffle and certain openings jump the queue.

I haven’t know how to begin this post, for how does one learn to begin again? With every new beginning there are fumblings and fallings. But as ever, we start by taking the first step, or writing the first words, however imperfect. Where it leads, it doesn’t matter, for momentum leads us to follow with the next.

I thought I had started, of course, back into a busy university teaching schedule and my facilitation world; the noise and joy of that. But then, BOOM. Life offered perhaps the greatest rearrangement of all, death, and grief has entered into my bones to shake and remould the very shape of me.

You see, just under two weeks ago (as it only been that long?), one of my dearest, most beloved, most cherished soul friends, passed away. She was my mentor, my guide, my anam cara, my soul companion, who I thought I would be walking along the creative path with for many years to come. But life and death did their own shuffling, and now our path has shifted. Her, in my heart now, pounding it to life, to love, in an ever deepening spiral of opening and gratitude. I want to write about her one day, and sing of her vast and glorious depths, but that will come. For now her passing has blown me right open, and into that chasm I dance and cry and paint and move and laugh and surrender. Grief is teaching me to step into it like a precious gift, unwrapping the layers, finding gems, even finding the parts of myself I had jettisoned to the abandoned corners of my heart. Even in her dying, she is giving.

And through all of that, spring is still attendant to spring. I pick daffodils from my back garden, and bring them to her grave. The birds chatter, busy building nests. My tears move to mist, move to rain, move to ocean. Through the mist, an emergent rainbow. Everything becomes something else. I take a step closer. It is a movement towards. Towards what, I do not know, but towards. She always pointed me there. I am here to follow.

New Writing Workshops

Clare Mulvany 21/12/2022 Clare Mulvany 21/12/2022

Wreath of Foraged Ritual

The ground had turned crisp and the hedgerow glittering with its own deep wintering. Into the early morning cold, our breaths made whispering shapes. Siobhan and I had made a foraging date to collect greenery to make some wreaths. It is something she does every year, and this year, she invited me along.

Siobhan is a very busy director of an Irish non-profit. Lots of our conversations circle the topics of strategy, fundraising, leadership, values and the constant challenge of trying to run social organisations. I learn lots and am constantly inspired by her drive and dedication. But on this morning there was going to be a different form of circling, and already it felt like those topics, somehow softening in this steady, wintery ground, could wait.

‘First you must find the right Sally’, explained Siobhan. Sally, or willow, is the perfect malleable branch for twisting and shaping into the wreath frame. Among these West Cork hedgerows it is abundant, and each of us carefully snipped a few rods to make some rings- enough, but not enough to impact the overall growth of the tree. Getting the balance right is the currency of the forage. I say ‘thank you’ aloud to the willow as I take my share.

Next, a few metres up the road, we find the long stands of evergreen ivy, which we will use later to wrap around the sally rings. Like verdant strings, the ivy will bring a reminder of the eternal cycle of life, and of the nearing Spring green, soon to bud. The ivy is in berry too, in brilliant bursts of inky black. A few pods of them will bring texture and seasonal colour to the wreath. ‘Thank you’, I say to the ivy.

And so our wintery forage morning goes, noticing the glistening in the trees, hearing the crunch of frost under foot, noticing the rising and falling of our misty breaths, aware of the robins and the wrens. Thank you to the moss. Thank you to the holly.

Soon our bags are overflowing, our hands near frosted themselves. So we sit in the car, sipping hot coffee from my flask, and tucking in to some cinnamon rolls Siobhan had made the previous evening. ‘Peak life’, I joke. It is a phase I use when I’m having one of those moments- those simple moments which no money can by, the kind of the wealth which hold both the ethereal and eternal in a joyous dance, ‘It doesn’t really get better than this, does it’, I turn to Siobhan laughing. It really is the simple things.

I think it might be a function of getting older, but the older I get, the less I care about things and the more I care about time; the less I care about presents, the more I care about presence. Here in the crisp and clear, was the gift of both time and presence; which felt like the very essence of the nature of a gift itself. ‘Yes, peak life’, says Siobhan, and we laugh.

…

Back home that afternoon it was time to make the wreaths. As I laid all the greenery and berries on the back patio, a little robin joins me. I throw him some seed, and a few of the red berries, and he sticks around, his companionship both comfort and delight. He is watching my every move, waiting, I imagine, for a wandering berry. But I wonder if he is somehow in on the ritual, sensing the gift of it too.

The first circle is the trickiest. I find a pliable rod, shaping it into a loop, then a ring. It pops out a few times, until I get the tension and the torc just right, and secure that first circle with twine. As I do, I wonder how long this tradition of wreath-making has hold. The circle of the wreath represents the cyclical nature of time. With no beginning and no end, one season falls into the next, and the next. Here in the midst of winter is also summer and spring, just a spin away in the great arc of time. And so we are offered metaphorical forage too; as chance befalls us, so too will change. In the depth of our own dark, is the seeds of the light. The circle can always spin.

After the first ring, everything else is weave. The ivy wraps, the moss is tucked in the gaps, the ivy berries give structure and depth. I decide to make three wreaths, two with berries as their headlines, one with heather and some garden herbs. Colour themes start to emerge and I notice more detail: the silvered backs of the rosemary and sage. I prick my finger on some holly. The smell of dried fennel seeds stirs something culinary inside me. My senses are alive. Yes, this is presence. When I am finished, I throw a few extra berries to robin, then find some lengths of ribbon in my Christmas decoration box, make a final bow for each. I hang one of my front door, one on my back door, and the other wreath is for a neighbour. Across the threshold, the foraged wreath- symbolic of cyclical time, makes an announcement each time I now open the door: the real gifts is in the ritual, in the making, in the presence. As I close the door behind me, my senses come alive.

Siobhan and I already know we have a date next year. She’ll bring the buns, I’ll bring the coffee, nature will bring the magic. Hopefully robin will stick around too. It may seem far away now, but spin the circle in the great arc of time, and we’ll be there in just the snip of a few seasons, which, of course, the circle always knew.