Merry Christmas Paul to you and your lovely family,
At this time of year (and especially on this Solstice day) I find myself reflecting on what it means foe their to be so much darkness and night at this time of year - as well as the bitting cold and frost. I find myself sleeping an extra hour or two and rest more often during the day. I wonder if this is actually normal - how it should be?. I wonder if winter should be a time of rest, recuperation and even hibernation(!) after the frantic activity of summer and harvest.
But, I know that in our modern machine world with the ubiquitous electric lights and blue glows of the screens coupled with our always frantic paced work culture winter is just as much a hive of activity than spring and summer. Perhaps leaning back as much as we can into the rhythms and limitations of nature is one way of resisting the machine?
I believe you’re on to something. It really may be time to just say to hell with whatever the culture are large and these devices are demanding of us. They’ve never really wanted what’s best for us in the first place. They want all of us and those of us in Christ know we can’t give that.
But yes, getting back to the rhythm and pace of the nature around us seems like the best way to detach ourselves from The Machine as much as possible. It’s a great place to start at least.
You might remember I wrote something about this a while back https://overthefield.substack.com/p/the-rest-that-winter-brings . Dixie Lane at Hearth and Field commissioned me to wrote a flood up to this on the work of spring time. I am convinced that re-seasoning ourselves/integrating our lives back into the rhythms of the seasons is a chief way of navigating these times in a sustainable, communal and healthy (Berry's use of the term health) way.
Winter, for me, is also the time I find writing poetry the easiest under the warm glow of my old fashioned lightbulbs and inside with the warmth juxtaposed with the frosty outside. Theres something in that too I think, that winter can be the time for the creative pursuits (coupled with rest) that summer did not allow the time for.
I’ll go back to read your piece at some point today. Thank you for sharing that again.
And I’ve also written a bit more poetry lately. All of it inspired by a little time outdoors in the cold thinking about Advent. The anticipation of the Light while the earth grows in darkness… Meaning around us everywhere we look if we are willing to see.
Absolutely. The body dictates what we should be doing. Winter is definitely a time for hibernation. You see this if you live on the land: most things are in abeyance or at least partially asleep. This is the reason I am about to turn my computer off for a few weeks! I can recommend it.
Hadden Turner, since you are the first person commenting on this salon, I am going to address you, and hope that you will not take badly what I'm going to say here, because I don't intend it as what could be considered petty criticism. (And criticism of any kind does not make us happy. We do not, individually or collectively want to be... CORRECTED right now. I am in this lot, too, as we say in French.)
In front of the word "cold" in your post, I see the word "bitting" and wonder what you (or it ??) intended, because I know the usual expression "biting" cold, but not "bitting" cold. For sure, the English language has changed a lot since I was speaking in it every day, but did you mean "bitting" or "biting" ?
If you meant "biting", this brings several things to mind which are very important to me.
Reading through the posts here, I often find... mistakes in English. Some mistakes must come from people whose first language is not English, and that is not too much of a problem for me. But there are other mistakes too, by native speakers, and they make me... wonder.
English is a comparatively easy language to write in, compared to French, which was used as a diplomatic language for many years, because in order to write with no mistakes in French it is absolutely, (and I mean absolutely, no holds barred on this one) necessary to reread what you have written, and sometimes, even pull out a dictionary to check. (Incidentally, French is structured in such a way that a dictionary would not even help you in some of these cases. French is really tough.) Because French won't let you just get on with it, and GO FORWARD WITH NO TURNING BACK... English... is a little easier with you, but still, it can be a good idea to GO BACK and reread yourself.
I know that in the Old Testament, in Genesis, God told Abraham and Lot and their families to leave Sodom and not only, not go back, but not even TURN/LOOK BACK. And that Jesus picked up on that in the Gospels, too.
But since i, at least, consider that I still live in a fallen world, and that all my frantic wishing is not going to turn a fallen world into an unfallen one, I think that maybe God's commandment to Abraham and Lot should be taken... with a grain of salt...
Maybe I should ask myself "when should I turn back, and when shouldn't I ?" That makes things a lot tougher than generalizing the commandment to make it apply in ALL circumstances, maybe the way that we have been individually and collectively doing for a while now, in our lust to PRO-GRESS ?
That said, I agree with what you say about winter rhythms, and find, even, that getting older shoves my corporeal* life in front of me with a sometimes unpleasant insistance. But I know from discussing with people who work very close to the land, raising beasts, that in the winter they (some of them, at least) take the time to do repairs, in preparation for the moment when they will no longer have that time to take. They don't hibernate. They just work at other things.
I will ask for your indulgence for MY English here, since so many years living in France has mixed together in my mind words that are common to both languages, but have different spellings from one place to the other. So.... I may make mistakes like everybody else, right ?
But... I will congratulate myself on having just reread what I wrote, out of respect for my mother tongue., and maybe, the people reading and writing here, too.
* Out of the desire to be a good person, and practice what I am preaching, I opened my American College Dictionary to check on the word "corporeal" which spontaneously came to mind, and put it up against the word "corporal"... Mystery here : which word is better suited, and how to know ? I will stick with "corporeal" for right now, since sometimes ? often ? what comes to our mind first is correct, and it's when we... go back over it that we make our mistakes...
Ah... that troublesome fallen world... it will always give us trouble, no getting around it...
It’s been a fun and strange venture with you here, Paul. You’ve challenged my ideas about God, people and society. The first (God) I have more faith in. The second I have hope for. The third…. Still watching and waiting to rebuild that one once the great fall is over with. Seems to be taking a while. But there is much to collapse I guess.
As for the salon, I just want to offer everyone else here a Merry Christmas and a bit of encouragement / caution. The American politics of 2016 seem to be ramping up again and we all know this unfortunately spills to the rest of the world. Now is the time to focus on your people, place and prayer. Things will not get better. I truly believe the worst of American theatre is to come in 2024. But don’t let that turmoil from the artificial ruin what is real.
Your family and friends are real. Love them. Spend time with them.
Your place is real. Pray for your city, village or rural neighbors. Get to know them. Dine with them. They’re probably more interesting than anything going on on TikTok.
And focus on prayer. Meditate on the truth and ask God to reveal Himself to you. Ask where you can join Him already at work. He may just point you back to your neighbors. Or He may not. Give yourself to Him and let Him lead you to the desert if He wants. Wherever He leads you He surely won’t leave you.
Thanks for the earnest but gently delivered reminders, Derek. We are striving to be firmly rooted in the real here in Alabama, even while the artificial blusters about outside. Merry Christmas and warmest greetings from another fellow traveler here!
Merry Christmas Paul. Thank you for guiding me through the year. Embracing the spiritual mystical nature and beauty of God’s creation gives a solidity to life today. The early Saints knew this and fed on it. May we do so again. I think we are going to need an anchor for the coming storm.
Dec 21, 2023·edited Dec 22, 2023Liked by Paul Kingsnorth
Today, the winter solstice day is always a special day for me and my wife Brenda, because we were married 11 years ago today in a beautiful Orthodox wedding in the Church of Ireland Church in Ballyseedy, Co. Kerry. For my family, virtually all of whom are Irish born Catholics, and my wife's family who likewise are mainly Irish RC's, it was their first encounter with the celebration of an Orthodox Christian sacrament, in particular, a wedding with numerous aspects to it so different from the western traditional wedding. Thankfully, many of these differences are also beautiful, such as the crowning of the bride and groom, and the "dance of Isiah". So it was going to be a steep learning curve for many of the 150 or so friends and relatives packed into the rural Church in the countryside about three miles from the town of Tralee. In this we were blessed to have as the main celebrant, the late and greatly missed, Fr Godfrey O'Donnell. Fr Godfrey was a priest of the Romanian Orthodox Church, and one of the key factors in the firm establishment of an Orthodox Christian presence here in Ireland. Fr Godfrey, was a former Jesuit priest, and his comprehension of the Irish Catholic mindset was complete. We could have had no better a celebrant, since he paused occasionally and explained the meaning and significance of each aspect of the ceremony. As well as remembering that wonderful occasion, with the Church lit up with numerous candles in stark contrast to the gloom of the Kerry mid-Winters day outside the stained glass windows, I like to remember Fr Godfrey. I loved him, though I only knew him a short time. He met us prior to the wedding, and his instructions around our personal preparations were most helpful. He was entirely respectful of Brenda's continued attachment to the RC Church, and it was he who gained us the blessing of the Metropolitan for Western Europe for the dispensation for us to wed in the advent fasting period, due to Brenda's recent serious illness. An illness, which thanks to God, she has been free from ever since, for which we give thanks to God from the bottom of our hearts. Glory to thee O God!
We had planned to use a Roman Catholic Chapel in Tralee for the ceremony. Five months prior to our wedding day, we, to my great surprise were informed by the local Roman Catholic "decision maker" that our using of the RC Chapel was "absolutely no problem at all". We went ahead with our plans, and had invitations printed, but crucially, not posted. We arranged a further meeting with the RC diocesan "decision maker", who let me say was a Kerry cleric of a type well known in Ireland. Good natured, breezy, affable, and good humoured, but not perhaps much of a "details" man. As we sat together the three of us discussing the wedding day, we thanked him for his flexibility in hosting an Orthodox Christian wedding ceremony in a Catholic Church for an Orthodox Christian groom and a Catholic bride. He responded modestly with the words "sure, no problem at all, aren't we all under the Pope?", there followed a silence I will not forget for a long time, which I eventually rather awkwardly broke, with " but we're not all under the Pope though Father". There then followed a flurry of activity where the poor man felt it was best to ring the Canon Lawyer for the region, since the call was made in the adjoining room on speaker phone we overheard it all. "Orthodox he is, she's a Catholic from our parish Michael, that'll be OK won't it?".... "but who's the priest? Is he one of ours and is the ceremony a Catholic wedding though Joe ? " came the reply."Michael sure no, the priests an Orthodox priest who used to be a Jesuit, coming down from Dublin".... "Joe, my dear man, do not touch it with a bargepole" was the firm and curtly delivered response.
Our helpful decision maker returned to the room, in fairness to him full of apologies, but nevertheless imparting the bad news that we had no Church for the wedding.
In a mix of vexation and panic once out of the building I rang Fr Godfrey in Dublin, he was unruffled, and pausing briefly after my frantic explanation he said " Really? Most unfortunate, sadly it would appear news of the schism has not yet reached Kerry".
Fr Godfrey O'Donnell came up trumps for us though, with his numerous contacts through his role as the Romanian Orthodox Church representative on the Irish Council of Churches we were soon fixed up with the use of the Church of Ireland Church in Ballyseedy with the best wishes of the Church of Ireland Bishop for the area.
So on this day, I give thanks once agaín to the now sadly reposed Fr Godfrey O'Donnell, raising a Christmas toast to his memory, may it be Eternal.
That's a fantastic story, John. 'News of the schism has not yet reached Kerry...' I'm glad God provided for you, as he will. Happy anniversary to you both!
Thanks Andrew, I'm aware of that too, but sometimes life here in Ireland, thankfully, though sadly to a declining extent, does bear a passing resemblance to the world depicted so amusingly on "Fr Ted".
What a very lovely story and especially how it all came right in the end …..congratulations . I used to live in kerry and that conversation between clerics made me smile !
That was a beautiful story. "News of the schism has not yet reached Kerry" had me in stitches. But my favorite part was the gift of healing your bride received. As you say, glory to thee, O God!
Thanks for sharing that with us. It warmed my heart like a glass of glögg on a winter's night. Cheers, and Merry Christmas!
Paul may I wish you and your family a peaceful and joyful Christmas!
I'm so glad you've taken the meandering route you have, without it there is little chance I too would have found myself on the Orthodox path. I followed a not wholly dissimilar route to yourself, Humanist and Environmentalist (and aspiring Green politician), to Buddhist, to Celtic Christian (briefly) and finally to Orthodoxy.
Like so many, it now finally feels like I'm "home", like the searching is over. I have to thank you in no small way for that (and God, of course!)
One thing I'd like to bring to to folks' attention if they've not already explored it, is another substack that you read yourself:
Written by Hieromonk Gabriel. For a new convert, his sermons are wonderfully easy to understand whilst still shedding light on the deeper layers of the Holy Gospels and how they relate to us in the modern world. I've been working my way through them from the beginning and every one brings new understanding to my journey. The sermons are relatively quick reads but contain so much. I heartily recommend.
Looking forward very much to what 2024 brings to the Abbey, thanks for all your efforts, wisdom and insight.
Thanks Andrew. It's been a journey! you perhaps feel the same. If you had told me at 25 that I would end up here I would have been, to say the least, sceptical. But if eels entirely natural now. Have a great Christmas.
Christmas Greetings, Andrew! Glad you found Remembering Sion. I’ve been following Hieromonk Gabriel for a while now, since before he launched his SubStack. Always thoughtful and insightful. Best wishes for the new year!
I agree, Hieromonk Gabriel deserves a much wider audience, he's a very effective and insightful writer and importantly very easy to understand for those just starting out.
Dec 21, 2023·edited Dec 21, 2023Liked by Paul Kingsnorth
It's a very windy Solstice eve here in Dorset from where I'd like to send warm greetings both to Paul and to all of you who've been writing here at the salon and in the comments this year. I find the diverse range of thoughts, and the robust yet friendly manner in which they are shared, heartening. Bless this corner of the internet...
Regarding the life of a little known (Orthodox, RC and Anglican) English Saint, whose ossuary miraculously survived the Reformation, here's a small request: if you have any leads, online or in books, that you would like to share with me as I research further into the life and martyrdom of my local saint St Wite (aka Vita, Wita, Candida) of Dorset, I would be most grateful for them. I have told Paul about my nascent plans for spending a year as a 'community hermit' and for pilgrimage around her landscape in West Dorset. Encouraged, I am posting this here. You can email me by pressing reply at this post https://carolineross.substack.com/p/in-the-company-of-saints
Caroline, best wishes for this Christmas and beyond, and thank you for sharing about St Wite and your plans. I’ve subscribed to your SubStack and look forward to following your journey!
Have a very Happy Christmas Paul, and all readers of the Abbey! Once we've got through the last few days of the fast and unfortunately concurrent manic Christmas plans preparation, I'll be sure to raise a glass to you all!
Thinking this Christmas of everyone who is poor or lonely or living amid the ruins of broken and missing relationships; of those just trying to survive the season. Winter Solstice is a wonderful milestone as it means each day will be a little brighter than the last from now on.
This Longest night is remembered here and in the Uk by Samaritans in recognition of the long dark hours which many people find so difficult ….. many businesses and organisations light their premises green in support of us .
Mulled wine sounds great, something to warm the belly. We make muscadine wine and a few others. My mother has a few jugs that are at least 30 years old and still good of course. My family has a history of bootlegging so yes we can round up some White Lightning if necessary. Merry Christmas to All.
Now there's an interesting discussion: bootleg alcohol. Every nation seems to have its own drink; a necessity for any jellyfish tribalist, I'd say. Here in Ireland it's poteen, which is brewed from the skins of potatoes. I may or may not have tasted some of this illegally brewed backwoods moonshine and it may or may not be very good. You have to know what you're doing of course, if you want to avoid going blind...
Here in the States we are of course famous for our Prohibition era and the resulting Moonshine. Running from the cops with moonshine in the trunk famously gave us NASCAR... and the Dukes of Hazzard. Up here in northern Wisconsin is where Prohibition era Chicago mobsters would hide out when they were hiding from the cops.
It's still made in the backwoods, in caves, and other hidden places. Its not for the faint it heart. Or so I've been told...
The Dukes of Hazzard! There's a blast from the past. I used to watch that every Saturday afternoon, and have still not quite overcome my desire to climb through the window to get into my car.
My favorite show when I was a kid! I still remember my brothers and I gathering around the little (non-cable) TV every Friday night at 8pm for the Dukes of Hazzard. I still have a matchbox car General Lee. It’s probably illegal to sell those now!
Can’t say I’ve ever had moonshine or poteen but it’s certainly inspired a lot of song and story. There are lots of great Irish songs about the poteen or the real old Mountain Dew.
Same! Rural Michigander (now Oregonian) here, so growing up, every Friday night at 8 PM I was glued to the old TV set adjusting the antennas and watching Dukes of Hazzard with my brother. How funny to think of this after all these years. He also has the miniature Matchbox car. Happy Solstice and thanks for the memory, John!
My mother can take the white lightning and cook it down into a paste like substance, lets it crystallize and then it can be broken up into pieces. She would use it as a medicine for us when my brother and I had a sore thoat , colds whatever. Probably explains whats wrong with me. Still remember laying in bed sick as a kid and taking a little piece and then falling asleep the rest of the day.
I got talking to a herbalist from Romania (I am an English herbalist) and she told me that everyone in Romania has their own still. They collect the medicinal herbs and steep them in their home made alcohol and that is their medicine. She said that under Ceaucescu there were no pharmaceutical drugs available, so the school children were sent to pick herbs in the afternoons.
She was very surprised that English herbalists have to buy our alcohol in if we want to make medicine.
Two short tales. My grandpa, on my mom's side, was a farmer and very poor, dirt floors in the home. He made bathtub gin for Milwaukee (Wisconsin) folks during prohibition to supplement the family's meager income. I live in northern Wisconsin (just like NKoch it seems!) and am archivist for my Lutheran church body up here - I found receipts in the archives from the US Government on wine orders for churches during prohibition (sacramental wine was not prohibited but had to be approved by the government). One small rural church way up north was ordering gallons and gallons of wine. There is no way they could have been using that much for Holy Communion.... ha!
My maternal grandparents came from the Piedmont region of northern Italy and settled in Butte, Montana. No Prohibition would keep them from making their own beverages just like they did in the Old Country, but nothing was sold - what was produced was only for family and friends. My grandmother made gin from juniper berries; the neighborhood mothers made a picnic for the children and they all went out to harvest the berries together. Grandpa put up brandied cherries for Christmas and fruit brandy during the summer, and made wine year-round. He had a copper still for grappa. The only time the wine failed was when he was trying to make spumante for my oldest aunt's wedding and it exploded in the basement.
The only "funny" story I know was that Grandpa had hooked up a light bulb that was turned on whenever booze was being made, and my mother, the youngest in the family, invited her elementary-school teacher to come over after school, but didn't see that the light was on. Evidently the teacher was cool about interrupting whatever was going on, but boy did my mother ever get into trouble over it....
oh, I write from the bottom of a glorious well.......... to return to the surface is a predicament for sure....
but so what, I did not study with Tatterhood and the sisters to be concerned.
Down here at the bottom, the muddy slush swampy bottom, the murk and mile has become roots and trees, chlorophyll hangs around in messenger form waiting with me a the collective...
I hang with various ash piles..... the elders blown up in smoke.... and sometimes with grandfather..... old as the hills and a relic of Christian suspicion..... this morning when he wakes up, I am taking my dough over to his place to create the shortbreads...... he can no longer smell, so I tell him to remember the smell, just like Beethoven remembered the Symphony of Love, though he did not know about the new applause....
So Be like Beethoven, remember the sound and the smell.... and then the way out of the well may become clear...
sigh, but then those thin blue lines from Ithyca rise up in the distance.... seasonal sommulance beckons...
hoping to learn how to edit posts murk and mire.......cholorphyll hands around in messenger form waiting for me and the collective to come forth later on.....
Malo soifua Paul from New Zealand. I am a first generation Samoan Australian Kiwi. I have enjoyed reading your work and following your spiritual transformation. I was brought up Catholic, steadfastly driven by my Samoan mother. I carried out all the duties and fulfilled ceremonies related to this (schooling, Sunday school, baptism to confirmation etc). My father is not religious but is a Saint and beautifully wise in my eyes. His devotional quality manifested in making sure my siblings and I made it to mass every Sunday (1979 - 1985). Once a month the mass was in Samoan. We stopped going as a group when my older brothers and I were old enough to get a job on the weekends with my mother (13 years old for me). In addition dad never was a barrier to my mother's devotion to the church and to our Catholic upbringing. Work ethic and being a good Samaritan were handed down to us five children by my wonderful state-housed-eventually-owned, blue collar working class mixed marriage parents with great success except we have actually all ended up following my father's way (I am the only sibling who has continued a spiritual practice). A main reason for this is not having both parents being Samoan. I know it hurts her that we are no longer practising Catholics but God works in mysterious ways right? My dad never came to mass with us on Sunday. Instead, he would stay home diligently preparing the most satisfying Sunday breakfast ever! Creamy porridge with brown sugar and cream, plates with stacks of buttered toast, a big pot of tea and a 50c bag of lollies next to each place mat. This lived ritual taught us a lot about the value in belonging to something and reinforced my Samoan cultural practices around gathering to pray and worship in a sacred spiritual space and transitioning to a gathering to feast as a family to celebrate that sacrifice. So we learnt that when you do the mahi, you get the treats! This learning has been as important as my Catholic upbringing in developing my current spiritual practice. My practice blends my parents belief systems and much more based on my independent study and passion for many belief systems and mystical frameworks such as: Buddhism and Tantrik Yoga, Astrology, Tarot, Psychology especially Jungian, Education Psychology, te ao Māori, Matauranga Māori, Pacific values especially the notion of service, along with a love of art and artistic practices (painting, creative writing, music, DJing). It was God's will. I strive to help my mother to understand that her and I are the same just two sides to the same coin. Manuia le Kerisimasi ma le tausaga fou Paul. I very much look forward to reading your work and continuing my support. God bless.
I wish Paul, and the people writing and reading here, a joyful Christmas, with time to rest, time to be of good cheer, good will towards our neighbors, and preferably, people with faces.
Christmas Greetings, likewise, Debra! Your reference to ‘Till We Have Faces’ leapt out at me. Georgia Briggs, who has two fine ‘young adult’ novels out, mentioned that was really what her second story, The Fullness of Joy, was following after. It is a remarkable inner story about a second bear which was befriended by the great Russian saint, Seraphim of Sarov. If interested here is the link to the description: https://store.ancientfaith.com/the-fullness-of-joy-a-story-of-loss-and-renewal/.
I looked at your link, Zosimas, and read the reviews. The book looks like something I could be interested in, but as far as I can tell, it is only available in the continental U.S., so that makes it out of reach for me. But reading the reviews was nice, anyway.
2023 has certainly been an interesting year, highlight of which for me was listening to you and Andy hold court in the back of that minivan as I drove us across South Dakota. A mystical experience at least.
I just read this interesting comeback to the Andreesen Techno-Optimist manifesto from a few months back. One wonders if Lord Yarvin has been reading your work and taking on critiques of the machine.
In other notes, I have convinced some trucker friends of mine to read your work, as well as two of my aunts, both of whom have been absolutely loving your 50 Holy Wells series.
On their behalf, thank you so much, and a Merry Christmas to you and the family.
Great times! I hope the repeat them some day. With any luck I'll be up in NY state in the autumn, if the US still stands. Maybe you and Andy will be around and we'll get lucky.
Interesting to see this from Yarvin. I will read it. It all comes back to the tech if you're paying attention.
I love the idea of men who drive massive trucks enjoying my little holy well stories. More power to them! Have a great festive season.
A blessed solstice to you and yours! My observance of winter solstice has changed and deepened over the years, from "yay, the light is returning!" to honoring the dark and the cold for the unique gifts they bring. Winter is more than a problem to be gotten past; not to recognize that dishonors the season, and thus (if you like) dishonors God. Our ancestors no doubt looked forward to the plenitude of the growing season, and bade the gods ensure its return. Now we understand that deep cold and dark night are essential to some species and processes. And they carry their own mysterious beauty.
The gaunt saints with their mortifications of the flesh I don't find moving. I read your Well series and study the pictures with interest, but any personal meaning for me would come from drinking in the emerald green landscape, dipping my fingers in the water, feeling the wind. I'll keep reading, and I'm certainly wondering what you are cooking up to come next!
Merry Christmas Paul to you and your lovely family,
At this time of year (and especially on this Solstice day) I find myself reflecting on what it means foe their to be so much darkness and night at this time of year - as well as the bitting cold and frost. I find myself sleeping an extra hour or two and rest more often during the day. I wonder if this is actually normal - how it should be?. I wonder if winter should be a time of rest, recuperation and even hibernation(!) after the frantic activity of summer and harvest.
But, I know that in our modern machine world with the ubiquitous electric lights and blue glows of the screens coupled with our always frantic paced work culture winter is just as much a hive of activity than spring and summer. Perhaps leaning back as much as we can into the rhythms and limitations of nature is one way of resisting the machine?
I believe you’re on to something. It really may be time to just say to hell with whatever the culture are large and these devices are demanding of us. They’ve never really wanted what’s best for us in the first place. They want all of us and those of us in Christ know we can’t give that.
But yes, getting back to the rhythm and pace of the nature around us seems like the best way to detach ourselves from The Machine as much as possible. It’s a great place to start at least.
Thanks Derek, much agreed.
You might remember I wrote something about this a while back https://overthefield.substack.com/p/the-rest-that-winter-brings . Dixie Lane at Hearth and Field commissioned me to wrote a flood up to this on the work of spring time. I am convinced that re-seasoning ourselves/integrating our lives back into the rhythms of the seasons is a chief way of navigating these times in a sustainable, communal and healthy (Berry's use of the term health) way.
Winter, for me, is also the time I find writing poetry the easiest under the warm glow of my old fashioned lightbulbs and inside with the warmth juxtaposed with the frosty outside. Theres something in that too I think, that winter can be the time for the creative pursuits (coupled with rest) that summer did not allow the time for.
I’ll go back to read your piece at some point today. Thank you for sharing that again.
And I’ve also written a bit more poetry lately. All of it inspired by a little time outdoors in the cold thinking about Advent. The anticipation of the Light while the earth grows in darkness… Meaning around us everywhere we look if we are willing to see.
Your winter habits are what is recommended in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Absolutely. The body dictates what we should be doing. Winter is definitely a time for hibernation. You see this if you live on the land: most things are in abeyance or at least partially asleep. This is the reason I am about to turn my computer off for a few weeks! I can recommend it.
Hadden Turner, since you are the first person commenting on this salon, I am going to address you, and hope that you will not take badly what I'm going to say here, because I don't intend it as what could be considered petty criticism. (And criticism of any kind does not make us happy. We do not, individually or collectively want to be... CORRECTED right now. I am in this lot, too, as we say in French.)
In front of the word "cold" in your post, I see the word "bitting" and wonder what you (or it ??) intended, because I know the usual expression "biting" cold, but not "bitting" cold. For sure, the English language has changed a lot since I was speaking in it every day, but did you mean "bitting" or "biting" ?
If you meant "biting", this brings several things to mind which are very important to me.
Reading through the posts here, I often find... mistakes in English. Some mistakes must come from people whose first language is not English, and that is not too much of a problem for me. But there are other mistakes too, by native speakers, and they make me... wonder.
English is a comparatively easy language to write in, compared to French, which was used as a diplomatic language for many years, because in order to write with no mistakes in French it is absolutely, (and I mean absolutely, no holds barred on this one) necessary to reread what you have written, and sometimes, even pull out a dictionary to check. (Incidentally, French is structured in such a way that a dictionary would not even help you in some of these cases. French is really tough.) Because French won't let you just get on with it, and GO FORWARD WITH NO TURNING BACK... English... is a little easier with you, but still, it can be a good idea to GO BACK and reread yourself.
I know that in the Old Testament, in Genesis, God told Abraham and Lot and their families to leave Sodom and not only, not go back, but not even TURN/LOOK BACK. And that Jesus picked up on that in the Gospels, too.
But since i, at least, consider that I still live in a fallen world, and that all my frantic wishing is not going to turn a fallen world into an unfallen one, I think that maybe God's commandment to Abraham and Lot should be taken... with a grain of salt...
Maybe I should ask myself "when should I turn back, and when shouldn't I ?" That makes things a lot tougher than generalizing the commandment to make it apply in ALL circumstances, maybe the way that we have been individually and collectively doing for a while now, in our lust to PRO-GRESS ?
That said, I agree with what you say about winter rhythms, and find, even, that getting older shoves my corporeal* life in front of me with a sometimes unpleasant insistance. But I know from discussing with people who work very close to the land, raising beasts, that in the winter they (some of them, at least) take the time to do repairs, in preparation for the moment when they will no longer have that time to take. They don't hibernate. They just work at other things.
I will ask for your indulgence for MY English here, since so many years living in France has mixed together in my mind words that are common to both languages, but have different spellings from one place to the other. So.... I may make mistakes like everybody else, right ?
But... I will congratulate myself on having just reread what I wrote, out of respect for my mother tongue., and maybe, the people reading and writing here, too.
* Out of the desire to be a good person, and practice what I am preaching, I opened my American College Dictionary to check on the word "corporeal" which spontaneously came to mind, and put it up against the word "corporal"... Mystery here : which word is better suited, and how to know ? I will stick with "corporeal" for right now, since sometimes ? often ? what comes to our mind first is correct, and it's when we... go back over it that we make our mistakes...
Ah... that troublesome fallen world... it will always give us trouble, no getting around it...
It’s been a fun and strange venture with you here, Paul. You’ve challenged my ideas about God, people and society. The first (God) I have more faith in. The second I have hope for. The third…. Still watching and waiting to rebuild that one once the great fall is over with. Seems to be taking a while. But there is much to collapse I guess.
As for the salon, I just want to offer everyone else here a Merry Christmas and a bit of encouragement / caution. The American politics of 2016 seem to be ramping up again and we all know this unfortunately spills to the rest of the world. Now is the time to focus on your people, place and prayer. Things will not get better. I truly believe the worst of American theatre is to come in 2024. But don’t let that turmoil from the artificial ruin what is real.
Your family and friends are real. Love them. Spend time with them.
Your place is real. Pray for your city, village or rural neighbors. Get to know them. Dine with them. They’re probably more interesting than anything going on on TikTok.
And focus on prayer. Meditate on the truth and ask God to reveal Himself to you. Ask where you can join Him already at work. He may just point you back to your neighbors. Or He may not. Give yourself to Him and let Him lead you to the desert if He wants. Wherever He leads you He surely won’t leave you.
Cheers to that, Derek. Have a good Christmas!
Thanks for the earnest but gently delivered reminders, Derek. We are striving to be firmly rooted in the real here in Alabama, even while the artificial blusters about outside. Merry Christmas and warmest greetings from another fellow traveler here!
Greetings from another fellow Alabamian striving to throw off the artificial!
Thank you Derek, gladly received and a merry Christmas to you and everyone else here as well.
Very nicely put, thank you.
Merry Christmas Paul. Thank you for guiding me through the year. Embracing the spiritual mystical nature and beauty of God’s creation gives a solidity to life today. The early Saints knew this and fed on it. May we do so again. I think we are going to need an anchor for the coming storm.
Today, the winter solstice day is always a special day for me and my wife Brenda, because we were married 11 years ago today in a beautiful Orthodox wedding in the Church of Ireland Church in Ballyseedy, Co. Kerry. For my family, virtually all of whom are Irish born Catholics, and my wife's family who likewise are mainly Irish RC's, it was their first encounter with the celebration of an Orthodox Christian sacrament, in particular, a wedding with numerous aspects to it so different from the western traditional wedding. Thankfully, many of these differences are also beautiful, such as the crowning of the bride and groom, and the "dance of Isiah". So it was going to be a steep learning curve for many of the 150 or so friends and relatives packed into the rural Church in the countryside about three miles from the town of Tralee. In this we were blessed to have as the main celebrant, the late and greatly missed, Fr Godfrey O'Donnell. Fr Godfrey was a priest of the Romanian Orthodox Church, and one of the key factors in the firm establishment of an Orthodox Christian presence here in Ireland. Fr Godfrey, was a former Jesuit priest, and his comprehension of the Irish Catholic mindset was complete. We could have had no better a celebrant, since he paused occasionally and explained the meaning and significance of each aspect of the ceremony. As well as remembering that wonderful occasion, with the Church lit up with numerous candles in stark contrast to the gloom of the Kerry mid-Winters day outside the stained glass windows, I like to remember Fr Godfrey. I loved him, though I only knew him a short time. He met us prior to the wedding, and his instructions around our personal preparations were most helpful. He was entirely respectful of Brenda's continued attachment to the RC Church, and it was he who gained us the blessing of the Metropolitan for Western Europe for the dispensation for us to wed in the advent fasting period, due to Brenda's recent serious illness. An illness, which thanks to God, she has been free from ever since, for which we give thanks to God from the bottom of our hearts. Glory to thee O God!
We had planned to use a Roman Catholic Chapel in Tralee for the ceremony. Five months prior to our wedding day, we, to my great surprise were informed by the local Roman Catholic "decision maker" that our using of the RC Chapel was "absolutely no problem at all". We went ahead with our plans, and had invitations printed, but crucially, not posted. We arranged a further meeting with the RC diocesan "decision maker", who let me say was a Kerry cleric of a type well known in Ireland. Good natured, breezy, affable, and good humoured, but not perhaps much of a "details" man. As we sat together the three of us discussing the wedding day, we thanked him for his flexibility in hosting an Orthodox Christian wedding ceremony in a Catholic Church for an Orthodox Christian groom and a Catholic bride. He responded modestly with the words "sure, no problem at all, aren't we all under the Pope?", there followed a silence I will not forget for a long time, which I eventually rather awkwardly broke, with " but we're not all under the Pope though Father". There then followed a flurry of activity where the poor man felt it was best to ring the Canon Lawyer for the region, since the call was made in the adjoining room on speaker phone we overheard it all. "Orthodox he is, she's a Catholic from our parish Michael, that'll be OK won't it?".... "but who's the priest? Is he one of ours and is the ceremony a Catholic wedding though Joe ? " came the reply."Michael sure no, the priests an Orthodox priest who used to be a Jesuit, coming down from Dublin".... "Joe, my dear man, do not touch it with a bargepole" was the firm and curtly delivered response.
Our helpful decision maker returned to the room, in fairness to him full of apologies, but nevertheless imparting the bad news that we had no Church for the wedding.
In a mix of vexation and panic once out of the building I rang Fr Godfrey in Dublin, he was unruffled, and pausing briefly after my frantic explanation he said " Really? Most unfortunate, sadly it would appear news of the schism has not yet reached Kerry".
Fr Godfrey O'Donnell came up trumps for us though, with his numerous contacts through his role as the Romanian Orthodox Church representative on the Irish Council of Churches we were soon fixed up with the use of the Church of Ireland Church in Ballyseedy with the best wishes of the Church of Ireland Bishop for the area.
So on this day, I give thanks once agaín to the now sadly reposed Fr Godfrey O'Donnell, raising a Christmas toast to his memory, may it be Eternal.
That's a fantastic story, John. 'News of the schism has not yet reached Kerry...' I'm glad God provided for you, as he will. Happy anniversary to you both!
I hope you take this in the spirit intended John, but the latter parts of that story do rather read like a Father Ted script!
That apart, it's a lovely story and I'm so pleased that everything worked out so well and that God blessed you and Brenda in the way he did.
I think we should all raise a toast to Fr Godfrey this Christmas :)
Thanks Andrew, I'm aware of that too, but sometimes life here in Ireland, thankfully, though sadly to a declining extent, does bear a passing resemblance to the world depicted so amusingly on "Fr Ted".
Doesn’t it just . Why I like it here so much
That was a wonderful story, thank you so much for sharing!
What a wonderful (and hilarious) story.
What a very lovely story and especially how it all came right in the end …..congratulations . I used to live in kerry and that conversation between clerics made me smile !
That was a beautiful story. "News of the schism has not yet reached Kerry" had me in stitches. But my favorite part was the gift of healing your bride received. As you say, glory to thee, O God!
Thanks for sharing that with us. It warmed my heart like a glass of glögg on a winter's night. Cheers, and Merry Christmas!
Paul may I wish you and your family a peaceful and joyful Christmas!
I'm so glad you've taken the meandering route you have, without it there is little chance I too would have found myself on the Orthodox path. I followed a not wholly dissimilar route to yourself, Humanist and Environmentalist (and aspiring Green politician), to Buddhist, to Celtic Christian (briefly) and finally to Orthodoxy.
Like so many, it now finally feels like I'm "home", like the searching is over. I have to thank you in no small way for that (and God, of course!)
One thing I'd like to bring to to folks' attention if they've not already explored it, is another substack that you read yourself:
https://www.rememberingsion.com/
Written by Hieromonk Gabriel. For a new convert, his sermons are wonderfully easy to understand whilst still shedding light on the deeper layers of the Holy Gospels and how they relate to us in the modern world. I've been working my way through them from the beginning and every one brings new understanding to my journey. The sermons are relatively quick reads but contain so much. I heartily recommend.
Looking forward very much to what 2024 brings to the Abbey, thanks for all your efforts, wisdom and insight.
And definitely for the Saints and the Wells!
Thanks Andrew. It's been a journey! you perhaps feel the same. If you had told me at 25 that I would end up here I would have been, to say the least, sceptical. But if eels entirely natural now. Have a great Christmas.
Christmas Greetings, Andrew! Glad you found Remembering Sion. I’ve been following Hieromonk Gabriel for a while now, since before he launched his SubStack. Always thoughtful and insightful. Best wishes for the new year!
Thanks Zosimas, Christmas greetings to you too!
I agree, Hieromonk Gabriel deserves a much wider audience, he's a very effective and insightful writer and importantly very easy to understand for those just starting out.
It's a very windy Solstice eve here in Dorset from where I'd like to send warm greetings both to Paul and to all of you who've been writing here at the salon and in the comments this year. I find the diverse range of thoughts, and the robust yet friendly manner in which they are shared, heartening. Bless this corner of the internet...
Regarding the life of a little known (Orthodox, RC and Anglican) English Saint, whose ossuary miraculously survived the Reformation, here's a small request: if you have any leads, online or in books, that you would like to share with me as I research further into the life and martyrdom of my local saint St Wite (aka Vita, Wita, Candida) of Dorset, I would be most grateful for them. I have told Paul about my nascent plans for spending a year as a 'community hermit' and for pilgrimage around her landscape in West Dorset. Encouraged, I am posting this here. You can email me by pressing reply at this post https://carolineross.substack.com/p/in-the-company-of-saints
Many thanks, Merry Christmas and Good Yule!
Caroline, best wishes for this Christmas and beyond, and thank you for sharing about St Wite and your plans. I’ve subscribed to your SubStack and look forward to following your journey!
Have a very Happy Christmas Paul, and all readers of the Abbey! Once we've got through the last few days of the fast and unfortunately concurrent manic Christmas plans preparation, I'll be sure to raise a glass to you all!
Thinking this Christmas of everyone who is poor or lonely or living amid the ruins of broken and missing relationships; of those just trying to survive the season. Winter Solstice is a wonderful milestone as it means each day will be a little brighter than the last from now on.
https://optera.substack.com/p/flickering-lights
This Christmas will be the 14th anniversary of the suicide of Vic Chesnutt. Gift Kristin's beautiful book:
https://youtu.be/locirssbIR8
This Longest night is remembered here and in the Uk by Samaritans in recognition of the long dark hours which many people find so difficult ….. many businesses and organisations light their premises green in support of us .
Mulled wine sounds great, something to warm the belly. We make muscadine wine and a few others. My mother has a few jugs that are at least 30 years old and still good of course. My family has a history of bootlegging so yes we can round up some White Lightning if necessary. Merry Christmas to All.
Now there's an interesting discussion: bootleg alcohol. Every nation seems to have its own drink; a necessity for any jellyfish tribalist, I'd say. Here in Ireland it's poteen, which is brewed from the skins of potatoes. I may or may not have tasted some of this illegally brewed backwoods moonshine and it may or may not be very good. You have to know what you're doing of course, if you want to avoid going blind...
Any other moonshine tales out there for winter?
Here in the States we are of course famous for our Prohibition era and the resulting Moonshine. Running from the cops with moonshine in the trunk famously gave us NASCAR... and the Dukes of Hazzard. Up here in northern Wisconsin is where Prohibition era Chicago mobsters would hide out when they were hiding from the cops.
It's still made in the backwoods, in caves, and other hidden places. Its not for the faint it heart. Or so I've been told...
The Dukes of Hazzard! There's a blast from the past. I used to watch that every Saturday afternoon, and have still not quite overcome my desire to climb through the window to get into my car.
My favorite show when I was a kid! I still remember my brothers and I gathering around the little (non-cable) TV every Friday night at 8pm for the Dukes of Hazzard. I still have a matchbox car General Lee. It’s probably illegal to sell those now!
Can’t say I’ve ever had moonshine or poteen but it’s certainly inspired a lot of song and story. There are lots of great Irish songs about the poteen or the real old Mountain Dew.
Same! Rural Michigander (now Oregonian) here, so growing up, every Friday night at 8 PM I was glued to the old TV set adjusting the antennas and watching Dukes of Hazzard with my brother. How funny to think of this after all these years. He also has the miniature Matchbox car. Happy Solstice and thanks for the memory, John!
My mother can take the white lightning and cook it down into a paste like substance, lets it crystallize and then it can be broken up into pieces. She would use it as a medicine for us when my brother and I had a sore thoat , colds whatever. Probably explains whats wrong with me. Still remember laying in bed sick as a kid and taking a little piece and then falling asleep the rest of the day.
I often think I should learn to make moonshine.
I got talking to a herbalist from Romania (I am an English herbalist) and she told me that everyone in Romania has their own still. They collect the medicinal herbs and steep them in their home made alcohol and that is their medicine. She said that under Ceaucescu there were no pharmaceutical drugs available, so the school children were sent to pick herbs in the afternoons.
She was very surprised that English herbalists have to buy our alcohol in if we want to make medicine.
Two short tales. My grandpa, on my mom's side, was a farmer and very poor, dirt floors in the home. He made bathtub gin for Milwaukee (Wisconsin) folks during prohibition to supplement the family's meager income. I live in northern Wisconsin (just like NKoch it seems!) and am archivist for my Lutheran church body up here - I found receipts in the archives from the US Government on wine orders for churches during prohibition (sacramental wine was not prohibited but had to be approved by the government). One small rural church way up north was ordering gallons and gallons of wine. There is no way they could have been using that much for Holy Communion.... ha!
My maternal grandparents came from the Piedmont region of northern Italy and settled in Butte, Montana. No Prohibition would keep them from making their own beverages just like they did in the Old Country, but nothing was sold - what was produced was only for family and friends. My grandmother made gin from juniper berries; the neighborhood mothers made a picnic for the children and they all went out to harvest the berries together. Grandpa put up brandied cherries for Christmas and fruit brandy during the summer, and made wine year-round. He had a copper still for grappa. The only time the wine failed was when he was trying to make spumante for my oldest aunt's wedding and it exploded in the basement.
The only "funny" story I know was that Grandpa had hooked up a light bulb that was turned on whenever booze was being made, and my mother, the youngest in the family, invited her elementary-school teacher to come over after school, but didn't see that the light was on. Evidently the teacher was cool about interrupting whatever was going on, but boy did my mother ever get into trouble over it....
Dana
oh, I write from the bottom of a glorious well.......... to return to the surface is a predicament for sure....
but so what, I did not study with Tatterhood and the sisters to be concerned.
Down here at the bottom, the muddy slush swampy bottom, the murk and mile has become roots and trees, chlorophyll hangs around in messenger form waiting with me a the collective...
I hang with various ash piles..... the elders blown up in smoke.... and sometimes with grandfather..... old as the hills and a relic of Christian suspicion..... this morning when he wakes up, I am taking my dough over to his place to create the shortbreads...... he can no longer smell, so I tell him to remember the smell, just like Beethoven remembered the Symphony of Love, though he did not know about the new applause....
So Be like Beethoven, remember the sound and the smell.... and then the way out of the well may become clear...
sigh, but then those thin blue lines from Ithyca rise up in the distance.... seasonal sommulance beckons...
Merry Christian Mass
Jane
hoping to learn how to edit posts murk and mire.......cholorphyll hands around in messenger form waiting for me and the collective to come forth later on.....
Malo soifua Paul from New Zealand. I am a first generation Samoan Australian Kiwi. I have enjoyed reading your work and following your spiritual transformation. I was brought up Catholic, steadfastly driven by my Samoan mother. I carried out all the duties and fulfilled ceremonies related to this (schooling, Sunday school, baptism to confirmation etc). My father is not religious but is a Saint and beautifully wise in my eyes. His devotional quality manifested in making sure my siblings and I made it to mass every Sunday (1979 - 1985). Once a month the mass was in Samoan. We stopped going as a group when my older brothers and I were old enough to get a job on the weekends with my mother (13 years old for me). In addition dad never was a barrier to my mother's devotion to the church and to our Catholic upbringing. Work ethic and being a good Samaritan were handed down to us five children by my wonderful state-housed-eventually-owned, blue collar working class mixed marriage parents with great success except we have actually all ended up following my father's way (I am the only sibling who has continued a spiritual practice). A main reason for this is not having both parents being Samoan. I know it hurts her that we are no longer practising Catholics but God works in mysterious ways right? My dad never came to mass with us on Sunday. Instead, he would stay home diligently preparing the most satisfying Sunday breakfast ever! Creamy porridge with brown sugar and cream, plates with stacks of buttered toast, a big pot of tea and a 50c bag of lollies next to each place mat. This lived ritual taught us a lot about the value in belonging to something and reinforced my Samoan cultural practices around gathering to pray and worship in a sacred spiritual space and transitioning to a gathering to feast as a family to celebrate that sacrifice. So we learnt that when you do the mahi, you get the treats! This learning has been as important as my Catholic upbringing in developing my current spiritual practice. My practice blends my parents belief systems and much more based on my independent study and passion for many belief systems and mystical frameworks such as: Buddhism and Tantrik Yoga, Astrology, Tarot, Psychology especially Jungian, Education Psychology, te ao Māori, Matauranga Māori, Pacific values especially the notion of service, along with a love of art and artistic practices (painting, creative writing, music, DJing). It was God's will. I strive to help my mother to understand that her and I are the same just two sides to the same coin. Manuia le Kerisimasi ma le tausaga fou Paul. I very much look forward to reading your work and continuing my support. God bless.
I wish Paul, and the people writing and reading here, a joyful Christmas, with time to rest, time to be of good cheer, good will towards our neighbors, and preferably, people with faces.
Christmas Greetings, likewise, Debra! Your reference to ‘Till We Have Faces’ leapt out at me. Georgia Briggs, who has two fine ‘young adult’ novels out, mentioned that was really what her second story, The Fullness of Joy, was following after. It is a remarkable inner story about a second bear which was befriended by the great Russian saint, Seraphim of Sarov. If interested here is the link to the description: https://store.ancientfaith.com/the-fullness-of-joy-a-story-of-loss-and-renewal/.
I looked at your link, Zosimas, and read the reviews. The book looks like something I could be interested in, but as far as I can tell, it is only available in the continental U.S., so that makes it out of reach for me. But reading the reviews was nice, anyway.
Sorry about that, Debra. You might search your nation’s Amazon store if interested.
Hello Paul, thanks for the discount, please is that only for new supporters? Thanks! Have a good day
It will work for anyone who takes out a new annual sub.
Good Morning and Happy Solstice, Mr Kingsnorth.
2023 has certainly been an interesting year, highlight of which for me was listening to you and Andy hold court in the back of that minivan as I drove us across South Dakota. A mystical experience at least.
I just read this interesting comeback to the Andreesen Techno-Optimist manifesto from a few months back. One wonders if Lord Yarvin has been reading your work and taking on critiques of the machine.
https://open.substack.com/pub/graymirror/p/a-techno-pessimist-manifesto
In other notes, I have convinced some trucker friends of mine to read your work, as well as two of my aunts, both of whom have been absolutely loving your 50 Holy Wells series.
On their behalf, thank you so much, and a Merry Christmas to you and the family.
See you here in January, mate!
Great times! I hope the repeat them some day. With any luck I'll be up in NY state in the autumn, if the US still stands. Maybe you and Andy will be around and we'll get lucky.
Interesting to see this from Yarvin. I will read it. It all comes back to the tech if you're paying attention.
I love the idea of men who drive massive trucks enjoying my little holy well stories. More power to them! Have a great festive season.
Merry Christmas!
A blessed solstice to you and yours! My observance of winter solstice has changed and deepened over the years, from "yay, the light is returning!" to honoring the dark and the cold for the unique gifts they bring. Winter is more than a problem to be gotten past; not to recognize that dishonors the season, and thus (if you like) dishonors God. Our ancestors no doubt looked forward to the plenitude of the growing season, and bade the gods ensure its return. Now we understand that deep cold and dark night are essential to some species and processes. And they carry their own mysterious beauty.
The gaunt saints with their mortifications of the flesh I don't find moving. I read your Well series and study the pictures with interest, but any personal meaning for me would come from drinking in the emerald green landscape, dipping my fingers in the water, feeling the wind. I'll keep reading, and I'm certainly wondering what you are cooking up to come next!
For sure, we sleep better with the lights out...
The unborn child spends nine months out of the light, and it is a fruitful time for him.
And the seed itself goes into the ground initially, and out of sight and light.