New Year 2017 - Resolutions at St Agnes Beacon

New Year and it dawned bright this morning after a rain spotted and grey New Year's Day. I have resolved to begin writing my regular posts after a three year break. I started today on Jan 2 2017 with a walk around St Agnes Beacon and climb up to the Beacon, as well as around the coast. The day was stunning and welcomed a walk with its clear, winter skies and brittle cold. I parked my car on the Beacon Road, surprised at how many other people in woolly, bobbled hats and walking boots seemed to have the same idea. I imagine everyone, like me, was making the most of a day of pure sunshine and the chance to walk off the Christmas excesses.

I like this time of year as it is a time of clearing and cleansing after the over indulgence of Christmas. I parked away from the throng and climbed the path that skirted away from the main one which was getting eroded by the popularity of the walk. I am aware more than ever on my walks of this issue of erosion and just the numbers of people now living in Cornwall and walking. This, along with the fierce storms of latter years, has left an enduring mark:less space to breathe and be without the interruption of voices or other feet on the same path.

The views from the Beacon were stunning today and I could see as far up the coast as Trevose Head and along to St Austell clay pits as well as over to Carrick Roads and Carn Brea. The coast was a ribbon of headlands in a veil of misty sunlight and I found a niche below a white quartz outcrop with a wooden bench and a view nestled in the lea of the beacon, out of the wind.

View to Chapel Porth

View from the Beacon toward St Agnes and beyond

Wheal Coates in the sunlight

Low tide view to St Ives

Sentry box

People on top of Beacon

For the first time in ages I remembered I had my note book on me and managed to scribble some lines:

ST AGNES BEACON

This browed old crone in bracken cape
Glass grey eyes and peaty skin
She is a grin of quartz
Blood oxide veins run deep
Her apron of gorse spills boulders down valley
To where cattle blink in the pale light
Smoke tendrils and floats skywards to
A silhouetted panorama of sisters Brea and Marth
She is warming her cold old bones in winter's rays
Spreading heathery arms wide to clutch blue sky
Her brittle claws grasp an unexpected star
Wishing on eddies of far North Atlantic frost.

From here I picked my way on a smaller, narrower snake of a path down to one that skirts the edge of the beacon leading to the right and over a stile into a green farmer's field with a sign 'Beware of the bull.' Thankfully, there was no bull in sight and the path led into a slurry pit and then a farm yard where there is a caravan site in summer months. Across the Beacon road to the left and then off on a footpath to the coast marked Chapel Porth. I did not go as far a Chapel Porth, but walked straight ahead to the coast path and off towards the right and Wheal Coates with its magnificent coastal views down to St Ives. The tide below was out and people were walking the sands etched with running water and silhouettes. The ocean was a turquoise green, the coast bathed in a shimmer of sunlight and shadow. It looks translucent and shining like a land in old stories ancient and renewed by this sudden gift of sunlight. From Wheal Coates, I clambered upward and along the top to St Agnes Head with more stunning views up the North coast to Trevose Head, then cut inland past quarries and mine dumps to where I joined the road to the coast by an old second world war sentry box of Cameron Camp - all that remains of a training camp for the 10th Light Anti Aircraft Battery built in 1939-40 and used later by American troops prior to the D Day Landings. Then back to the road and my car...refreshed and full of New Year's resolution.



Healing Room ,Sinéad O'Connor

Songs and Poetry that speak of healing.......

  

I love this song.....now here is someone coming through and finding they can allow all the feelings and really going on the journey into healing and faith and self belief...at least that's what I read into it......

Mary Oliver the poet also writes about this in her poem 'The Journey':

 

 

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

 

Mary Oliver

 

And here in her poem:

 

 

Wild Geese

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.

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver

published by Atlantic Monthly Press

© Mary Oliver

 

And here I think Sinead sums it up.....it's inside us all...the healing room.....

 

 

 

October Project - Bury My Lovely

Healing the shadows

Been thinking a lot about the shadows we all carry deep inside...the scars, the wounds, the hurts from childhood and the words of William Blake in 'Infant Joy' where the new born soul is born as an expression of joy....'I happy am'......and I thought that these music videos seem to sum this up to some degree. How I wish we could heal these wounds and wash away the pain.......I have been wondering how possible this is for those who have had a life time of hurt...and look around me at the society we live in and feel completely overwhelmed by the suffering caused by violence and abuse.....and yet there is also so much hope and so much love and wish for healing in spite of this and the more light and love we share now the more hope there is for others....... I know that for me the way through has been through art, poetry, music, friendship and nature......also through working with these wounds in a small way .....I do believe as Ghandi says the 'we have to be the change we want to see happen in the world' and even when it is hard to still be at all it is necessary to learn, grow and become .....keeping the channels of loving kindness open Blessed Be xxx

Sarah McLachlan - Adia [Official Music Video]

Beltane Musings....

I cannot really believe Beltane is almost here again and yet there is so much around us to delight in: bluebells raising their chalcedony heads from lush grassy banks and woody shades; the hawthorn starting to blossom after the snowy bursts of Blackthorn; wild garlic on every back and hedgerow....what a blessing all this flowery beauty is all watered by the rains which seem to have been rather abundant in Cornwall in April. I seem to have been absent from blogging for a while....I have been out and about as usual enjoying nature and also practising more healing from home which is beneficial to my state of inner peace and calm.I have also been doing more one to one work with children both emotional healing and teaching. Beltane is a time to really appreciate the beauty of mother Nature all around us fertile and free...especially in these recession driven times when so much is more expensive a walk can be a great meditation and salve and costs nothing especially if you can walk out from your own front door to appreciate it and be. It is also a time of love and lust for life as we walk the dragon ley lines and connect with source energy: the firey dance of delight in all the blessings we have been offered and jumping the Beltane fire, symbolic of the shift from winter to summer as well as a cleansing and purification of the land and home. This is a time to gather with others and to share the warmth of community and friendship.Appreciate every day the blessings the Goddess has bestowed upon you however small and as you sow these seeds of gratitude and love in your heart so will she bless you in an abundance of ways bringing more love into your life and more healing. This is a time to come from the heart chakra and be centred in 'heartfelt' being, letting love for your fellow beings guide you on your path and flow through your body.... let your heart be your guide..xxx