Druid ritual

Druid ritual.  Done in the freedom of solitude.  Don't worry about how it sounds.  Don't worry what they think.  Just give voice to the spirit.  Let the spirit flow.

Words memorized, repeated.  Let their meanings cast their footsteps.  Speak the words memorized, and speak the new words which bubble forth.  Don't worry if they make sense.  They tell me what is in my heart.

Roots. Return to your roots.  I returned to my father's land.  It reminded who I am.  Returning to my roots tells me how to step forward.

Wisdom.  Wisdom tells me what I need to know. Wisdom tells me what I need to do. Escape my job.  There's where I need to turn.

The wheel of the year turns round and round. Summer turns to fall turns to winter turns to spring turns to summer turns to fall.  Keeps going round and round.  But not like the hamster's wheel.  The wheel of the year is always marching forward.  Each year, we carry with us the wisdom grown in years past.

The year outside me now is in autumn, but my life, I think it's in spring.  I hope.  Six years ago my year was in winter solstice, the bottom of the darkness.  My health left. My friends left.  Betrayed.  As winter solstice turns to Imbolc, so I slowly turned to light, building my life up first inwardly, in solitude.  I immersed myself in music.  I found pantheism. I found druidry.  I gazed at trees.  I danced in solitude and in joy.  Then, my soul flooded with light once more, I reached out.  I found communities.  I found people I liked.  I found people who value what I  have to offer.  I pray that I continue to move forward.  I pray that I stay grounded within while also blossoming without.  The nature of life is that despair will come again one day.  And the nature of life is that I will then rebuild myself once again.

People used to know how to make stuff.  But I don't know how. I just buy stuff.  If I was going to make something, I could buy the cloth, buy the pattern, sew it.  But still, buying stuff.  People used to make the pattern.  People used to make the cloth.

The words of the ritual flow forth.  Stored somewhere in  my memory.  If I think about it in isolation, I don't know what that line is. But when I say the line that comes before it, then it flows forth.  Like with the dances. I can't think how they go, but when I'm out there with people doing them, my body seems to do them.  And the songs I've learned on the ukulele.  I can't think what the notes are, but when I play them, they emerge from my fingers.

So much lives somewhere within us, more than the mind can see.

I walk around the circle.  Melody pours forth.  This is not part of the memorized ritual.  This is the spirit.  The spirit tells me to sing, so I sing.  I don't have to think, I just turn my body over to the spirit, and the spirit gives me song.

We have evolved to find joy in song, in dance, in religious ritual, in sex.  Perhaps these evolved for practical reasons.  But now, forget the practical reasons.  The joy is here.  Let us revel in it.

The ritual has found its end.  I blow out the candle.  The flame is extinguished but the spirit lives on.