You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
Mary Oliver - The Wild Geese
Last night I awoke in between those layers of sleep to hear wild geese fly overhead. They were talking loudly to each other, those things that travelling geese talk about. From within my cocoon of sleep I imagined them flying between stars, their route illuminated by star dust as they flew across the cosmos. Their chattering echoed in my head as I fell back to sleep again and in dream joined them on their journey.
That morning a light frost lay upon the ground, as if the tail ends of the cailleach’s cloak stretched across the Atlantic and skirted the ancient old mountains of the Appalachians.
I can hear the song of the Cailleach, that crone born of Scotland and Ireland. I hear her as she is part of the land that I was born of, I too am part of that land and I carry it with me wherever I am in the world. Some say she travels with her great Schalachan (staff) and beats down life so all will die. Yet if you, like me, have an ear to the ground and a foot in the otherworld you’ll know that she sings to the land. A song that infused the soil with the great change that starts squirrels burying chestnuts, that the geese hear as the call of their winter homes. It’s the song that begins the change of trees drawing their energies back down to their roots.
Daughters of the Cailleach
If you listen hard enough you just might hear the song of the old crone an invitation to sink deeper into the season, a call to tend to yourself on a deep level. Your invited to take a journey with the Cailleach which offers you the opportunity to:
Create a Sustainable Connection That Supports You in Your Life
Take a Pilgrimage to Visit Her Sacred Sites
Get To Know Her Through the Tools of the Wise Woman’s Gathering Bag
Discover Her ‘Forgotten’ Story and It’s Importance for Us Today
