All Soul’s Celebration

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Tam chose a feline theme for our pumpkin lantern this year

The winter winds came in on Halloween night and reminded us that this growing season has come to an end. By morning, the last of the dark red cherry tree leaves were lying by the back door and I felt both sad and strangely excited. I stood in the shower thinking through the story of Ceridwen’s cauldron for our All Soul’s Celebration…just what do you put in a magic potion so potent that just a drop will transform a young man into the poet Taliesin and birth the Bardic tradition?
I found out later that evening, as four local families gathered to walk the moors and gather round the fire for feasting, stories and songs. This year Ceridwen’s cauldron was filled with ‘custard, slime and superglue’ (courtesy of the young people) and ‘shark’s teeth, mermaid’s tears and moon cheese’ (to name but a few from the ‘older’ people).
As I reflected on all the elemental transformations that birthed a poet… and the process of being pursued by the dark muse of any creative calling… it struck me how mostly it’s simply suffering that matures and sweetens us. That final stage feels so true…becoming nothing more than a seed, down in the dusty earth, experiencing a final humiliation and an emerging humility. In my own journey it does seem that out of these last few dark years of loss, this new birth at Bonehill is emerging. If you are reading this in a dark time…track down those old tales and let them remind you that there can be meaning and process and purpose in pain…