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To support the development of this site and the work of soul friendship you are invited to express your appreciation through the spiritual practice of Dana

Radiant 

Spiritual Cinema

In his final motion picture Peter Sellars plays a gardener who has everyone hanging upon his words of wisdom.

 Being There [Blu-ray]

Radiant Poetry

On Grafting by 

Thomas Randolph

 

If the fresh trunk have sap enough to give

That each insertive branch may live;

The gardener grafts not only apples there,

But adds the warden and the pear.

The peach and apricot together grow,

The cherry and the damson too,

Till he hath made by skilful husbandry

An entire orchard of one tree.

So lest our paradise perfection want,

We may as well inoculate as plant.

 

Radiant Song

Hear Van Morrison play one of our favorite soul anthems  

IN THE GARDEN

 

 

 In The Garden

The fields are always wet with rain
After a summer shower
When I saw you standin'
Standin' in the garden
In the garden

Wet with rain

You wiped the teardrops from your eye in sorrow
And we watched the petals fall down to the ground
And as I sat beside you I felt the
Great sadness that day

In the garden

And then one day you came back home
You were a creature all in rapture
You had the key to your soul
And you did open
That day you came back

To the garden

The olden summer breeze was blowin' gainst your face

Alright

The light of God was shinin' on your countenance divine
And you were a violet color as you
Sat beside your father and your mother

In the garden

The summer breeze was blowin' on your face
Within your violet you treasure your summery words
And as the shiver from my neck down to my spine
Ignited me in daylight and nature in the garden

The Practice of Spiritual Gardening:

How a Gardening Saved my Soul

There is a soft, soughing sound that is distracting me from my hoeing. It is brilliantly sunny. So it cannot be a plash of raindrops on polythene. This sound seems to be inside the polythene greenhouse not from the outside.  

The temperature in the polytunnel is soaring; it has to be 100 degrees.  The sweat is rolling into my eyes. As I mop my brow my line of vision is drawn up to the arch of the tunnel. I discover the origin of the rhythmic pat-pat-pat sound that has been permeating my consciousness. 

Near the supporting bars I see a dragonfly, an orange brown body, most likely a four-spotted chaser.  And not far from the dragonfly my eyes alight on the damsel.  This damsel has brilliant, Technicolor blue stripes. The Irish damselfly is more often found north of the border in Armagh and Fermanagh but this one has migrated to West Cavan.

The dragon and damsel are united in my tropically warm polytunnel on this unseasonably warm and dry June afternoon. Without doubt they have been drawn by the drainage ditches that form mini-canals to run off the accumulated water from torrential showers that blow in on the Gulf Stream.

These days I work on the land. Or rather, I work on the land, in the home and write as the weather dictates.  Yet the polytunnel is weather shielded to a certain extent, a guaranteed access to grubbing in dirt even when it is pouring. I even have a nail to hook my rain jacket just beside the front door. In this protected environment I have a routine of germinating, hoeing, weeding and harvesting. 

This routine has been life altering during a period that can only be described as a deep, dark night of my soul.  I pay attention to the animals that show up in my life, on my doorstep, the tunnel, across my line of vision. 

Jessica Davis Palmer’s  Animal Wisdom gives another interpretation of Dragon and Demoiselle (Damsel) Flies.  Here they are said to be the remnant of ‘the wee people.’ Fairies, in other words. They are the vestiges of that race, Tuatha de Danaan, who invaded Ireland millennia ago and were only vanquished by the coming of the Milesians. 

Perhaps vanquished is the wrong word. Disappeared may be more accurate. Gone to another shore or burrowed into fairy mounds or living at the roots of hawthorn trees, which are called Fairy Trees in some parts of Ireland.

 The Tuatha de Danaan were sometimes referred to as The Beautiful People or the Shining Ones. But the literal translation is that they were the People or Race of Danu. The Goddess Danu is the primordial goddess in Ireland. Very little is known in terms of her own story or myth although she offers blessings of abundance and prosperity. 

The Paps of Anu, the breast- shaped hills in County Kerry, are said to be Danu. Kerry is the part of Ireland associated with the landing of the Tuatha de Danaan. It is also possible that Danu’s stories have transposed into those of Aíne and Brigid. Yet like those early people who followed her, she too has retreated into the mist of timelessness.

In time of deep psychic discontent, the earth and Her elemental spirit messengers has helped redress my psychological balance. The hoeing, the sowing , the watching the growing have all soothed and absorbed my anger, the sense of injustice done, feelings of betrayal.  I had come to distrust my own instincts and judgement. 

Yet in my amateur way, I have developed a close relationship with my plants; they are responding well to those unspoken instincts, the spiritual guidance that tells me what needs food, water, less mulch, more air.  Perhaps the dragonfly and the damsel fly are really telling me that the past is let go. 

It has been chopped up and put in the compost heap and is decomposing nicely. It may need a little more time before it is that lovely organic matter that will feed the next generation of plants. The earth has fed my soul. Maybe it is true that you need a lot of manure to get both a garden and a life!

The present is trumpeting yellow flowers from the zucchini plants. The tomatoes are flowering. Danu is giving me a pat on the back for my stewardship of the acre in my care. She is rewarding me with such abundance and it is healing me. 

I am developing my own form of circadian rhythm and a hitherto unknown sense of harmony in my lifetime. Who would have thought that this townie, without an agrarian ancestor on her family tree for as many generations as I can trace, would suddenly find such peace in horticulture!

This new intimacy with earth has made me more physically fit and increasingly more mentally and spiritually fit. There is great sanity in the ground. There is no greater ritual than saluting the sun, however strong or weak it may shine, and to go and acknowledge gratefully what the earth has nurtured overnight.  

With this stewardship role I do begin to feel that I am co-creating with Goddess. It is almost a conversational relationship with the Divine, where each day we listen carefully to the other and in synchrony act in true harmony.

©Bee Smith 2006

A longer  version of this article was published in Sagewoman magazine, Issue #70

Another Soul Friend

"click on graphic below"

John O'Donohue is a man of the soul.  His scholarly meditation on the continuing relevance of Ireland's spiritual heritage has become a publishing phenomenon....  This poetic meditation has become a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic......  A lyrical epic prayer

The Times

From Review of Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom