In
last week’s post,
I explored the importance of finding ways of living and being your
authentic self. I suggested that there were at least three pathways to
doing this work: the Path of the Moon, which is the quiet path of living
one’s principles and showing the
what while not necessarily discussing the spiritual path or
why.
This is a good path for those who feel restricted in sharing their
spiritual path fully in various contexts of their lives; there are ways
of still living one’s path while being very implicit about your inner
spiritual life.
The path of the sun!
Today, I’ll explore the second path, shining path of the sun. The
sun path refers to us being more being more out and open, more explicit,
about the fact that you are a druid—radiating this truth in the world
like the sun on a warm summer day. As I mentioned last week, both paths
are useful to understand to do the work of integrating our outer life
with our inner spiritual paths, but both are inherently different kinds
of work. Today, we stand in the summer sun!
Path of the Sun: Coming Out and Radiating Brightly
I think there is this idea that certain people are out, radiantly
and brilliantly so, all the time and in every way. And while it is true
that some folks manage this, the degree to which druids are “out” and
open about who they are seems to fall along a wide spectrum. Few of us
are blessed with having life circumstances that allow us to be out fully
and unabashedly, at least here in the USA. Truthfully, I know of very
few druids or who are out and free in every aspect of their lives.
Rather, I have found that being out is a matter of degrees. Maybe you
are out to a select group of friends, or your family, but still “in” at
your workplace. Or maybe you are out and publicly known in the broader
druid community, but life in a conservative community means you keep
your beliefs quiet around town. Or maybe you feel you cannot be out at
all, you are new to the path or exploring on your own and aren’t ready
to defend practices you are still beginning to understanding (if so, my
post last week
will be relevant to your position). In acknowledging this spectrum, I
acknowledge that each of us must find our own place along these paths.
I think that it is, however, important that at least some of us take
up the “path of the sun” work. Given that, I’m now going describe two
reasons for doing so.
The Path of the Sun for the sake of the land. At
many points of human history, spiritual considerations of the land and
its sacredness were are the forefront of public discussions. Here in
the USA today, and in many other parts of the world, this is no longer
the case. And I think that being more open, and public, about the
sacredness of the land can help us, on a larger scale, shift things. I
spoke about this extensively in my “
earth ambassadors” post from last year: how the land needs ambassadors, full of knowledge and rooted in a sacred relationship, to speak.
Being hidden about our spiritual practices means we are not able to
engage in dialogue, discussion, and action on issues of the land from a
directly sacred and spiritual perspective. I believe that druids and
other earth-centered folks are in a good position to do this work and to
support others who are already doing this work, but only if we are
confident and able to find our voices, as humans and as druids. This
directly leads me to my next point.
The Path of the Sun for the sake of our traditions. I remember being present for the dialogue between Philip Carr-Gom (Chosen Chief of
OBOD) and John Michael Greer (then Grand Archdruid of
AODA) on the differences between druidry in the USA and druidry in the UK (you can listen to this discussion on Druidcast (
Episodes 68 and 69)).
Philip shared stories of how UK druids are now consulted to bless
forests and parks and to be a source of spiritual guidance when it came
to human-land interactions. Meanwhile, in the USA, we have far, far to
go. I think so many folks stay quiet about druidry here, at least, for
fear of rejection, intolerance, or misunderstanding on the part of
others. And this is a serious, real fear. I recently spoke to several
women at a Samhain celebration here and town who shared stories of how a
small magical shop had bricks thrown through the windows and quiet
threats–it forced the shopkeepers to close. Certainly, being out and
open as I now am, I do wonder and worry about these challenges myself.
Sunflowers embrace the sun!
However, for those who are seriously considering how far down the
Path of the Sun they want to travel , I want to point to the many social
justice movements of the 20
th and 21
st century
for perspective. It was only through being willing to be “out” and fight
for equality that we finally saw tremendous social progress on a number
of issues (racism, gay rights, Native American rights, and so on).
Now, I’m not saying that any of these issues are “solved” but we have
certainly seen major social movement over a period of time because of
the willingness of people who belong to these groups, and their allies,
to stand and be seen and heard. I believe education and advocacy on the
part of druids and other earth-based spiritual paths, like other social
movements, is a necessary part of the work we need to do in the world. I
believe that if at least some of us are not willing to be out, we face a
longer, harder road towards social acceptance, which harms us all.
Cultivating broader public understanding is a really critical issue on a
number of levels; and the lack of understanding affects all of us in
different ways. I’ve spoken to many folks who have difficulty getting
their holidays off (with employers seeing them as not legitimate), to
folks not able to wear symbols of their faith while other religious
groups can, to issues of child custody in court cases based on religion.
One key issue, in my mind, in addition to those I listed above has to
do with the core spiritual practices and experiences that we have as
druids. Many of the spiritual experiences that are validated,
acceptable, and important in our druid community are considered to be
mental health issues by the broader establishment. And yet, many
spiritual traditions all over the world see and hear spirit
communication; its just the present one I happen to live in that utterly
rejects this and instead sees it as pathology or worse. Some
good writing on this topic has come out recently
from the shamanic community, but it is very far from the mainstream.
There’s a reason I don’t talk about my work with plant spirits to most
people (although people certainly know I’m a druid, but they don’t know
the details about what I do).
The Path of the Sun for the sake of ourselves.
Beyond the reasons that we might engage in the Path of the Sun for the
sake of the land and our traditions, there’s also the inner reason:
living an authentic life. Its important for many of us to feel like we
can be open and accepted for who we are, that we can be free to express
our spiritual paths and not stay hidden. When I think about this issue,
I’m reminded of the line from the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby song, where
Eleanor Rigby “Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a
jar by the door, Who is it for?” Many of us don’t want to have a face
that we wear that we keep in the jar by the door (or at the edge of our
grove, the edge of the spiritual gathering, wherever that edge is). I
think this is particularly important to those of us in certain Western
cultures where the current of individualism runs strong. For certain
people, being anything less than exactly who we are, title and all,
resonates with an inauthenticity that we cannot abide. For these kinds
of people, the Path of the Sun represents the only possible path towards
wholeness of body, mind, heart, and soul.
Walking the Path of the Sun
Now that we’ve established some reasons we might want to walk the
Path of the Sun, how can we do so? This next section offers some
suggestions for the process of coming into the sun. I’m drawing a lot
from my own experience here, and the slow movement I had from being
completely quiet, to moving into the Path of the Moon, and later, into
the Sun in many aspects of my life.
Coming out is a process. Coming out is not a single
process that you do one time and then is resolved; rather, it is a
continual process that we are always cultivating. Timing is so critical
with this coming out process; once conception of time in ancient Rome
was “kairos” which loosely translates as the ‘right time and right
place’ for a particular thing to occur. And so, as we think about
coming out more fully into the sun, we need to attend to the process and
timing of doing so.
I’ll also add that a lot of the process of coming out as a druid
comes down to issues of our own identity: who we are, who we want to be,
and who we socially construct with others (the face in the jar by the
door). This has a lot to do with how comfortable we sit in our skin, and
how that comfort changes based on the contexts in which we find
ourselves. Each moment, we make decisions about who we are going to be,
how we share our path with others, to come into the sunlight and shine.
Each time we have an opportunity, we choose to act upon it or not to act
upon it.
Having Key Conversations. One of the ways I believe
that the sun path is most effective is in key conversations with
individuals who are open to such conversation. I like to show people
that I’m not some [enter your stereotype here] fringe lunatic with a
crazy spiritual path, but rather a typical person with a job, a home,
and the same hopes and dreams and fears as everyone else. This is why
timing is so important; I rarely come out and say “I’m a druid” in big
bold statements when I first meet people, but I also don’t keep it a
secret. I find that its easier to have conversations with people after
they get to know you just as a person, rather than someone who has a
weird spiritual path (which may color their whole perception of you).
Once those conversations are ready to take place, framing and
definitions are critical. Most people completely and totally lack a
frame of reference of who we are and what we do. If I tell people
“druid” they think I might be a World of Warcraft character. The
questions immediately begin, “Is that like a witch or something?” “Is
that some kind of video game thing?” or “Are you a pagan?” The person
asking the questions is trying to fitting new experiences and concepts
into their previous sets of knowledge and experience bases (it is how we
learn as humans). This means that, if you come out or someone finds
out you are a druid, the very first thing they try to do is to fit who
you are and your path into their existing knowledge base. However:
it is extremely likely that they don’t have an existing knowledge base that is an accurate representation. Simply allowing them to fit what they understand of my path into their own knowledge base
encourages and perpetuates ignorance.This
is because we don’t have spiritual paths or practices that are well
understood; recognizing that people’s existing knowledge base either is
absent, or it is present but insufficient, is an important part of
moving beyond stereotypical or absent knowledge bases.
The Path of Druidry
And here’s the thing: if you don’t fill this void, then imagination,
representations on television, or their own limited experiences are
likely to do so. So, if you see this happening, you can say, “hey, I
know you are trying to fit this within your knowledge base, but the
truth is most people don’t have any idea of what I do. But if you are
interested, I’m happy to sit down with you over a cup of tea and talk to
you about it so that you do understand it more. And I’m delighted to
hear more about your path and what you do.” This kind of strategy can
lead to productive conversations and mutual understanding.
Of course, key conversations often begin with those closest to us. I
remember the difficulty of the first key conversations I had with my own
mother, whom I am very close to. They occurred just after I felt
empowered by placing the Awen stone in my office as my first act of
“coming out” (see last week’s post). I sat her down deep in the woods
and spoke to her about my spiritual path; I showed the parallels between
her own Christian path (which involves praying in the woods each day
and seeing signs from God in nature) and my own path (which involves
meditating in the woods each day and seeing signs from the spirits in
nature). She was very quiet, and afterwards, did not say anything for a
long time. I didn’t push it, and finally, nearly two years later, I
asked her if she had anything to say. She looked at me and said, “I
didn’t say anything because I didn’t know what to say.” After that, the
ice was broke and I was able to occasionally share things with her that
had seemed impossible before. Still, even into my second decade as a
druid, the conversations with my family are still challenging, and the
process of coming out to my family, still presents a lot of difficulty
because of the issues I raise above–people think they know all there is
to know about me, without ever having a single conversation about me,
and it is difficult to find how to fill that gap.
The Quick Statement. A second part of the key
conversations, I believe, is what I will call the “30 second elevator
pitch.” Imagine yourself in an elevator, and someone comes up to you
and says, “Hey, I heard that you are a druid. What exactly does that
mean?” I have found it helpful to prepare–and practice–a 30 second or
less response to this question. This will require massive
oversimplification. But a simple, yet accurate description is better
than a winding and complex description that is hard for someone to wrap
their heads around. Mine goes something like this:
“Druidry is a path of nature-based spirituality that honors the
seasons, works with the cycles of nature, and finds spiritual guidance
rooted in the living earth. Modern druidry is inspired by the Ancient
Druids who were astronomers, philosophers, teachers, and diviners. The
modern druid movement is about four centuries old and includes
practitioners from all over the world, including many here in the US.”
Feel free to use this statement or adapt it for your own purposes. As
someone who is fairly in the path of the sun at this point, I find
myself using something like this more often than you might think!
Community Work. IF you have a group of people
(grove, study group, seed group, etc), it is often helpful to do the
Path of the Sun work together. One of the things a group of us did
while I was still living in Michigan was to pair up with the only other
non-Christian group in the area (a Buddhist group) and do some joint
community service work. We let ourselves be known and open, and showed
those in the community that we were part of it, there to do good work
for the benefit of all. That worked really well, and I’d encourage it
for others!
Hemlocks in the Path of the Sun
Other ways to shine. The Path of the Sun is often
one of seeing opportunities and choosing to take them on, rather than
deciding to retreat. For example, some NPR folks
found my blog post on Hemlock a few years ago and asked me to talk about the Hemlock
tree mythology.
I was terrified of this and thought, “Oh no! People will know I’m a
druid! Nobody actually reads the stuff I write on this blog!” After
some meditation and reflection, decided to go ahead and do it. It ended
up being a great deal of fun and I think I was able to share my
knowledge of the trees with a much wider audience. This is all to say
that each of us can find our own opportunities to shine and do our own
Path of the Sun work in the world.
Closing Thoughts. Whether you take the path of the
moon or the path of the sun, or perhaps walk the dawn or dusk that sits
between them, the ultimate goal of this two-part series is to explore
how we can be more authentic and comfortable in our own skins. Because
that’s part of what a spiritual path is meant to do–to illuminate the
path before us, to show us the ways to go and the ways not to go, and to
help us feel like more fully actualized, vibrant people. May you walk
your path, sun, moon, dawn, dusk, or otherwise, in peace and
fulfillment.
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Primer on Druidry,
Tools — Dana @ 8:30 am
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