Response-ability, and a Re-turn to the Sacred

'We all know the same truth and our lives consist of how we choose to distort it.' Woody Allen
 

The Celts who inhabited these lands once upon a time considered the hills and the rivers as integral to their very being, and to their 'slow' way of living.  The hills and rivers nourished them, and were part of the great open system through which the Celts themselves were gradually cycled and recycled. Through this unhurried process, a certain health was attained, a health that was, as the etymology of the word testifies to, inextricably linked with wholeness (from the proto-Germanic 'hale', from where we get health, whole, holy, and all their offshoots).

Further down the line, the processes and cycles are still there, though now they are significantly more concealed, and, much to our detriment, significantly more punctured. There are many tragic examples nowadays of these punctures: children not knowing where their food comes from, not knowing the simple cycle of a river; conversely, and more alarmingly, their knowing more corporate logos than local birds or trees. Their call of duty now is apparently to a video game or an iPad, and no longer to the land which feeds them, which allows them to play their games... The call for eco-literacy and a return to the sacredness of the Celtic spirit  that embraces this health and wholeness is of vital importance... to us, to the land, to 'well-being' in general.

This is no easy task, especially when living in cities and faced on a daily basis with its howling busyness. One's ability to respond to nature is constantly being ground down by the limited objectives of an increasingly monied society. Nature's intrinsic value is of little import. Its wealth lies emphatically within its externalisation and its subsequent commodification. But the wealth of the sacred, of wholeness, cannot be equated in such a fashion. To do so is to be blinded to the great natural kingdom that lies before you. 'Paradise' in the Celtic world was 'fin-mag', a white field, symbolising fertility, nourishment and the cyclical patterns of nature. Heaven is not something that lies beyond living.

An increasing re-cognition and re-minding of Nature is the key to paradise. Only then will we be able to respond to nature naturally, and see our own selves within that metamorphic and transfigurative process that does not grow 'old' but simply cycles. This 'response-ability' and this 're-turn' is the elixir of life that we have all been searching for and which has been right in front of us all along. Only when we learn how to respond to nature, and how to converse with our greater self, will we attain any sense of deep health (health that is not just physical/biological but spiritual and metaphysical). Then, and only then, will we inhabit the truth from the inside, instead of distorting it from without.