Cailleach

This thread in the podcast series can be listened to as a kind of guided mediation-observation-connecting-practice and support. This is the second meditation episode, but can be listened to in any order and more than once if it's helpful.

I believe that we can all tap into our own inner wisdom that comes from our life experiences and perhaps even from our species memory. 

This mediation is a guided imagery journey to help find your inner guide and communication from one part of yourself to another. 

I mention in the listen notes for the first episode that the personal is the political. In this second episode, I explore the political context that surrounded me in Northern Ireland as a child and its profound influence on my worldview.

In the listen notes, I give some links to places to learn more if you are interested, and correct one name from a political movement that I couldn't quite recall when recording. 

Because it's the beginning of Spring, in the second episode of the practical skills thread I talk about different types of compost and the basics of good garden compost. I also give some pointers on seed sowing and start off with knives for whittling. In the listen notes on Cailleach.ie I share lots of links to where you can learn more about starting off in gardening in Ireland, many of which are good for any similar climate. 

Listen notes

Episode two Chapter 2 I introduce the other main character in the book. When sharing my thoughts re-reading the novel also I share some potentially exciting news.  I finish with some of my reactions to looking back on this chapter in 2021.

Listen notes

This is the second episode in the thread where I explore the influences of the land of Ireland and our ancestors on my doing, feeling, thinking and being in the same land now.

I touch on how we might have understood balance in our relationship with our resources, our long lineage of humans on these islands.  Echoes that others have pointed to in the language. Land use and links both what it might have meant to be 'away with the fairies' and what it might mean to return to the wisdom of the Cailleach. You can find a quote from one of the books I mentioned in the listen notes at Cailleach.ie and also the names and authors. 

In this second episode in the interviews thread I chat to another Donegal resident, co-founder of OURganic Gardens Joanne Butler about her journey from community youth worker to permaculture and community garden facilitator.

Since recording this interview Joanne is also working as part-time Development Worker,  with Change Makers Donegal who she mentions as being an emotive catalyst to waking up to the challenges in our world. As journey's often do it seems hers has brought her in a circle or spiral of connection. 

This gives the background and explains the different threads that will weave through the year with each release of 8 episodes.

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.“

The first Identity episode, iii1, explores my own story and the ever changing nature of the materials that go into remaking me ,as well as, the things that sculpt me along the way. This experiment in autobiography contains the multitude of connections from one individual to the complex living and human designed systems that surround them. I am weaving my story both in the Identity thread and the other threads of the podcast.

Read more: Listen Notes 

The early feminists explored the notion that the personal is the political.

Musings and reading from an unpublished story I wrote in 2010 aimed at children on the cusp of adolescence. It is set a few generations after we make it through multiple systemic global collapses. Two young teens live in a changed Ireland which is now a land of many isles with pockets of regenerated wild woods, managed productive food forests and community allotments.

To read more go to Listen notes

I interview Judith Hoad. 80 years old when I spoke to her in her small sunroom attached to a tiny cottage on a Donegal hillside early on a crisp morning a fews years ago. I was just beginning to conceive of starting podcast thinking it would be made up solely of interviews, at that time. Judith had been an inspiration for many years living the way she does but also, as she says her self, because she was a 'non-conformist' who did it her way.

To read more about Judith go to Listen Notes