Taken for Granted

The simplest way to find out what you take for granted, is to not have it for a little while. Spending time in a city recently, I’m ever more conscious of the ways in which cars and electricity are taken for granted by those who have access to them. They make life a lot easier. I’ve never had a car, so I find the idea of being able to hop in one and go where you like, when you like, a bit strange, but for the majority, that’s normal. Electricity is another thing we all take for granted – there at the flip of a switch, all the energy to power the devices that enable our lifestyles. Refrigerators, lights, washing machines, vacuums, irons, computers, televisions, game boxes, cookers, air conditioning, and so on. How often do we consciously think about the power we use? It’s just there, waiting to serve our every whim. Maybe we think about use when the bills come in, or in moments of wanting to be greener, but for day to day living? Not so much.

The way we consume and produce energy isn’t sustainable. But we’re so used to flicking the switch and knowing we can have what we want. How on earth could we change? How could we move away from that assumption of use? Because it’s the assumption that we can have what we want, and should have it, which creates the dependence, and the overuse.

For once, I have something a bit like an answer rather than just more questions.

I’ve done a lot of camping over the years. In a tent, or caravan, there is no power supply. You have to run a generator, which makes you a lot more conscious of what you use, and when. Or you have to go somewhere else to source power.

There are increasing numbers of solar and wind units coming onto the market – some aimed primarily at campers. There are solar units that will charge your phone, ipod and other toys. There’s even solar gear coming in that will run your laptop. I’ve seen some very interesting domestic wind turbines too – with those you charge a battery and run from there.

Sustainable energy is unpredictable. On a still day, the turbine doesn’t work, and at night the solar panels won’t give you anything. Which means you have to figure out how to store your electricity, or you have to use it when it’s available, not when it suits you. Talking to people who depend on generating their own energy, I hear that they use their computers and televisions only when the generator is running, because that’s the most efficient way. They think about energy use in a totally different way from people who are used to it being there. They are not miserable however, and have adapted their lives to fit their resources.

When you have to generate your own power, you become a lot more aware of what you use. It’s a similar issue with running a stove rather than a heater – if you bring in the wood and the coal, you know exactly what you are consuming and it changes your attitude to it. You can’t run that kind of heat source without paying attention to it – they go out – so you can’t leave them on by accident, nor are you going to ‘forget’ and open the windows when it gets too warm.

If we all had to take responsibility for generating our own energy, we would not waste so much. We would consider need rather than whim. We would not default to electronic solutions – especially not for entertainment. This I think, would be good. I don’t think electricity is a bad thing – I’m writing this on a laptop and sharing it on the internet after all. It’s our relationship with energy that needs looking at. I’m starting to explore the options for generating my own, and although I’d say I was energy conscious beforehand, that has taken me forward in radical ways. I’m finding I do not need as much energy as I thought I did. I’m increasingly convinced that a lot of the problem lies in what we think we need, and that given the chance and motivation to test this, it is (I am finding) possible to totally rethink that.

Although I’d like a bit more internet access than I’ve had this last week, but that, as they say, is a totally different story.

Just Passing Through

The tourists come in the middle part of the day, and they are different from other visitors. They bring the noise of some other place, talking loudly about lives, jobs, interests that are not here, not now. You can’t hear the birdsong for their self important noise. They bring recorded tinny music and leave litter. They come to take, and while they are here, the very character of the place seems different. Once they have gone, tranquillity returns, and other people pass through quietly, giving more than they take, and letting the place breathe.

‘Here’ could be anywhere. Places people come to look at, treating what they can see and use as a commodity and entertainment source. They forget that for some – human and non-human – this place is home. Or they don’t care. What’s in it for them? Nothing else counts. They never meet the spirit of the place, never encounter it – they just bring their noise, pass through, and leave. If you talk to them in a pub or on the road, you can easily ascertain that they’ve mostly missed the point. They are frequently bored and disappointed.

It’s so easy to miss what is around us when our heads are full of ourselves. It’s an issue for ritual, and any other kind of pagan gathering. Getting folk to leave behind the noise of their other life, and enter fully into the moment. If you aren’t right here, right now, then it isn’t ritual. Can’t be. If you’re busily discussing last night’s TV, the neighbour’s dog, the job horrors, you aren’t encountering the spirits of place. You are missing what is happening.

It’s so easy for us to be tourists in our own lives, paying half hearted attention to the scenery, not stopping long enough to experience anything properly, ultimately bored and let down. It’s not a good way to live.

Tom tells me that most people don’t think as much as I do. I find this a very odd idea. I think about everything. I spend a significant amount of my time seeking to understand, wondering, contemplating, observing… I don’t say anything I haven’t considered, or do anything ‘off the cuff’ without knowing why. I don’t confuse lack of attention with spontaneity. I never find I don’t know why I’ve done a thing, or that I’ve said something in the heat of the moment I want to take back.

All those weekend people, walking through, lost in their own conversations, their own noise and oblivious to the things I can see around them cannot, I guess, be thinking that much. Or, they are thinking about the wrong things. Here and now don’t feature heavily. Their impact on those around them doesn’t feature much. There’s another challenging idea for me – how do people go round so oblivious to the effect they have? They don’t notice their own litter, their shouting, their intrusion into an otherwise lovely place. Or they don’t care.

The other kind of traveller devotes the time needed to form some relationship with a place. They look and listen, and as a consequence, they see and hear things. From those come interactions with the people and not-people who live there all the time. A taste of something real. The other type of visitor avoids the middles of sunny days, comes at twilight or in the rain to avoid the tourists. And I would bet they go through the rest of their lives with a touch of that same alertness and sensitivity. They take what they learn on the mountainside back to their job, rather than taking the job to the mountain. They live at a different pace.

The twilight visitors, the quiet folk, the listeners and watchers are the minority. The tourists who come by the bus load at midday and stay until tea time, outnumber them by a scary amount. What does it take to persuade one tourist, in any place, to stop bouncing off the surface and actually connect? In a park, on a beach, in their actual, every day lives. What does it take to make people slow down, notice and get out of their own little ruts? I don’t know. I’ll have to keep thinking about that one.

Druidry and Tentacles

I’ve dabbled a bit in things Lovecraftian in my author-life. One of the things that strikes me about H.P. Lovecraft is the belief that underpins his fictional reality. There are ancient, nameless, all powerful things in the universe, they will drive us mad, and destroy us. His writing is laden with fear. This is about as far as you can get from the New Age perspective that the universe loves us, is full of light and good intentions.

There are a lot of different ideas out there about how reality works. Some of them postulate kind and giving gods, others wrathful, jealous ones. Some perceive reality as something we carefully chose before we were born, our souls planning it all in detail for us to achieve some personal goal. For some, there is no meaning, no reason, no ultimate source of good or evil, there is just life and energy for as long as it lasts.

How you understand yourself and your life will depend to a degree on how you think about these bigger issues.  Do we think that ultimately there is fairness and justice, or do we think that the gods have it in for us? Do we see love and light when we look out of the window, or do we see the inevitability of death, madness and tentacles? A Lovecraftian view of the world is rooted in despair, and a sense that all is futile. Worse than meaningless. A world that is merely meaningless and indifferent will let us get on with things as we see fit, whereas a world where the great powers are malevolent and hungry, will destroy us.

There’s no firm line for Druidry when it comes to ideas about the essence of reality. We’re a disparate lot. I’ve encountered ‘love and light’ Druidry (OBOD favours that) and existentialist Druidry – no external meaning but that which we make for ourselves. Existentialist Druidry pushes us to take responsibility for our actions and meaning, and works well. I’ll admit that’s how I tend to look at things, and I found a lot of that outlook in The Druid Network during my time there. No doubt there are plenty of other takes.

Are there Lovecraftian Druids? I’ve not met any, but anything is possible. How differently would we live if we thought it was like that? What would you do, if you believed, or for that matter knew, that reality is basically hostile and evil. Would you give up? Or would you fight harder? Despair is not the only available response to hopelessness. Just because something is impossible, doomed and futile, doesn’t mean we have to go with that. For a start, it’s a way of thinking that puts all the emphasis on ends, not on means. If the universe is evil and hostile, those small moments of compassion and humanity are not any less real. The love we share and experience isn’t any less real. Even if I believed we were all ultimately doomed, I would not value these things any less – probably the opposite.

Looking forward, looking back

Janus is the Roman god of doorways. Two headed, he looks to the past and the future at the same time. I mention him because that’s a really good image.

It occurred to me yesterday that no amount of examining in the past will enable me, or I suspect anyone else, to move forwards. What happened to me along the way got me to here. Looking back, I might be able to unravel and make sense of some aspects of that. I might find any number of reasons, explanations, excuses and justifications. How useful is that?

The cliché of the therapist asking about our childhoods is an obvious one. Did anyone have a perfectly functional and happy childhood? Of course not. The process of being alive is full of disruption, challenge and upset. If everything was perfect, we’d come out of childhood with no idea how to cope with setbacks, and we could tell the therapist all about how ill equipped we are…

I could look back and find/invent any number of reasons for why I am the way I am. There are things I don’t know how to do – therefore I didn’t learn them when I should have done. It would be easy and tempting to go ‘I can’t help this, it’s because of my upbringing, it’s the way I am.’ Psychologists talk about nature and nurture in shaping personality, but they don’t talk about choice. We are not merely the accidents of youthful experience. We can choose who to be. The more time you spend looking back, the less time you spend looking forwards. Life is lived somewhere between the two, mostly.

How do I go forwards? How do I become the person I want to be? Not by looking backwards. There are no answers in my past. There’s the potential for explanation, but that only tells me how I got here, not how I continue.

I think it can be useful to understand how we got to where we are – easier not to repeat the mistakes of the past once you know about them. Easier to see the patterns, recognise assumptions for what they are, see the scope for change. But to change it’s also necessary to let go of that history, to decide not to be led by it any further.

There are other answers that lie ahead rather than behind. Answers that we craft for ourselves, that we work towards, rather than being driven by. And as soon as it crossed my mind this could be so, all the possibility opened up. The answers I want aren’t behind me, they are in front. I will find them by going forward. I don’t know who I am any more. Fine. I will not learn that by looking at who I have been and what has been done to me. If I can go forward, living, doing, finding my own way, who I actually am will emerge over time if I give myself space. If I explore how I feel and what I want, then that will tell me about my preferences. All the past can give me is the clarity that not feeling free to want or express was not very helpful.

How much does the past dictate the future for any of us? How many patterns are inescapable once set in motion? How many choices do we never get to remake? The more I think about it, the more certain I feel that most of the time, there are second chances if we look for them. There is scope to go a different way, to reject old assumptions and experiment with new ideas. All it calls for is the belief that there can be change. Things will not always be the same. If we can hold that idea of change within us, then we have the scope to make it real. Nature and nurture may have got me this far, but it’s choice and decision that will take me forward.

No abstaining for pagans?

It’s Lent, not that I’ve seen much evidence of it this year. Back in my childhood, people talked about giving things up for Lent, some of them possibly did, but there doesn’t seem to be much of that happening right now. Abstinence isn’t very sexy.

We associate self denial with Christianity, and a mindset that rejects worldly things as bad for the soul. This is not an attitude that is ever going to work for pagans. Spirit is manifest in nature, in physical, material things. Through bodily experience we know the world, present to our physical selves, we connect and celebrate joyfully. No hair shirts for us.

There are folk who see pagans as hedonists, all self indulgent, pleasure seeking and superficial. Tree hugging feel good hippies with no spiritual discipline, no substantial bones under our carefree flesh. Are self denial and discipline the same things? No. In fact, it can be a lot more complicated. My other identity edits erotica. Pain, punishment, self denial, forced abstention and even chastity can be the foci of fetish. Too much ‘abstention’ can in fact create an obsession with the flesh and all things worldly. The aesthetic of Puritanism can become a vanity, an affectation. Anything taken to extremes can become far more about the ego of the person doing it, their ‘holier than thou’ state, and not about spirituality at all.

Pagans don’t tend to think there’s much point punishing ourselves for imagined sins. Life is plenty hard enough without having to beat yourself up as well. But abstaining is a whole different process, and there are reasons to explore it that are neither about self aggrandisement, nor self flagellation.

1) To find out if you actually need it. Sometimes in giving things up for a while, we can better see how, or if they fit into our lives. It’s an experiment, a learning process, with no assumption that we should go either way at the end of it. Keep, do not keep…

2) So that we can celebrate our appreciation of what we have temporarily denied ourselves. Sit on a hill all night to watch the sunrise, and you will marvel at the wonder of your duvet, the sheer poetry of a mattress and the modern miracle that is your hot shower. Short abstentions help keep life in perspective.

3) To change how we feel or think – this is especially true of things we imbibe. Cutting back on stimulants like refined sugar can affect the mind.

4) For environmental reasons. We give up things we have enjoyed because we know they aren’t sustainable, and we want to do our bit.

5) As part of an inner cleansing process, a ritual lasting over days as we transition – so we might choose to do without sleep, or sex, or perhaps even food for a short period because we need the space not having it gives us, as we do something else.

No doubt there are other reasons too, and more personal, harder to explain motives that inspire us to reduce, abandon and rethink aspects of our lives. There is no fixed time of year for a pagan to do this. We might be inspired by the dying back of autumn, or by this hard spring season when for our ancestors, Lent made a virtue out of necessity. Last year’s stores will have almost gone. This year’s crops are not yet ready. Food would have been scarce.

We choose to give things up, long or short term, not because we think we should, or that God will put a little star on a chart for us. We don’t tend to imagine anyone is keeping score. If we give something up, we do it for a reason, and that reason is down to us to decide. Sometimes, giving things up is good for the soul, sometimes it isn’t, and that’s a thing you only find out by exploring it yourself, if it speaks to you. It’s such a private thing to do, as well, with little scope for tapping into the kind of public support Lent abstentions might once have brought people. If you’re giving something up for health reasons, friends and family will cheer you on, but if your motive is some quiet, personal, spiritual expression, sticking to your course will go largely unnoticed and unremarked. It takes a lot of discipline to do that.

Money in a druid’s world

Money makes the world go around. It buys privilege and political clout. Those who can pay to advertise, lobby and make themselves heard, get much more voice than those who cannot. In our private lives, economic power often equates with decision making power. The person who pays the bills is the one who ultimately decides. I’ve heard money described by pagans as ‘the movement of energy’ – and you can productively relate to it that way. It works better if you rank it comparably with other exchanges of energy, where time, effort and creativity do not otherwise relate directly to a financial ‘worth’.

In an entirely fair system, money would just be another tool we could use to facilitate exchanges. Nothing wrong with that. Bartering is slow, especially if you want my chickens and I have no use for the lawn mower you are offering in exchange. We’ve deified money. The presence of it in a person’s life is far too often taken as a measure of their worth and importance. This is, on closer inspection, insane and counterproductive.

The following traits and actions will not result in you being rich. Working hard. Acting honourably. Keeping your word. Being fair. Being compassionate. Upholding the law. Treating others with respect. Being mindful of the environment.

On the other hand, ruthlessness, a willingness to use others, profit from them and take advantage, may well make you rich. Disregard for the environment, willingness to break promises, to lie, to bend the laws, especially the tax laws and so forth, will all help you keep your money. I am sure there are plenty of lovely rich people out there, it’s just so much easier to be a rich bastard than a nice person if you want to accumulate worldly goods.

How do people become wealthy? There are of course always stories of rags to riches, through luck or the triumph of ingenuity. Most people who are affluent were born that way. Which country you land in makes a lot of odds. Whether your parents are millionaires, billionaires, is going to have an influence too. If working hard was the key to financial success, teachers would have fortunes and playboys would not. That’s not how it happens. Even if you have a ton of creative energy, the best idea ever, and even some backing, whether or not you find success is as much about luck as anything. There is no sure fire way.

If power is in the hands of the rich, really that comes down to giving control to the people who were inherently fortunate in the first place. Money buys its own opportunities, for learning, commerce, living well. Does it need any extra help? Not really. Do the people with money perceive themselves as just lucky, or do they believe in their hearts that they deserve every penny of it? I’ll bet it’s mostly the latter. Should the power they wield therefore be used to uphold the system that keeps them wealthy? Hell yes.

And what keeps us all running on the treadmill is the belief that we too could get lucky, we could be like them. Win the lottery, sell that novel, be discovered, join the wealthy elite. So we keep the world turning just the way it suits the tiny minority who really benefit from it.

How do you go about being a Druid in this sort of reality? Money is not one of the gods I worship. Honour is integral to my life, I have no place where ‘greed is good’ or it’s all about the bottom line. I’m not going to make a profit by trashing the environment or oppressing the workers. I do believe that hard work, integrity, value and creativity ought to be rewarded, and money isn’t a terrible way of doing that. It’s the power that goes with the money I’m worried about. And how people understand themselves in light of their earning and spending capacity – or absence thereof.

I can’t opt out of the money system. They lock you up if you go very far at all down that route. But if I think of my money as energy, as potential for change, I can deploy it, make it work for my agenda, my world view, my values. Not all the time, because my taxes are going to go on wars whether I like it or not. But sometimes.

There are plenty of places where the money doesn’t matter. In the woods, with my feet on the earth, it doesn’t make a great deal of odds what is in my bank account. I don’t think the gods care whether I have a fortune or not. Why would othey? My being a Druid doesn’t depend on being able to cough up enough cash for designer robes, and an actual sickle made out of gold. There are other places money is equally meaningless, and I shall be contemplating them a lot.

The trouble with revolutions

I’ve read enough to know that largely revolutions don’t work. Rally the troops, get all excited, kill some people, burn something… and end up with some new despotism with an unfamiliar face. I’ve read a fair bit of autobiography around China’s cultural revolution, the rush of enthusiasm, the hope, the bitter betrayal that followed. It doesn’t seem so far from the wild optimism and brutal bloodshed France went through. Wild, desperate attempts to seize power and make it all better quite often don’t.

Which when you’ve a revolutionary streak, is not happy news.

Fast revolutions don’t work. What is born in anger and brutality, is not likely to evolve into enlightened progress. I’m not someone who believes that the ends justify the means. If you look at history, it seems obvious to me that how you do a thing really informs what you get at the end. Violence begets violence. That which we build out of hatred, anger and resentment will not serve to warm our hearts much in the future.

The best revolutions are slow and quiet. They sneak in. I think about passive resistance and quiet acts of non-cooperation. A little civil disobedience can go a long way. Or wilful obedience. Sometimes nothing can be more subversive than doing as you were told. Precisely and literally. And not doing anything else.

We need change. I’m reading articles in newspapers about how the world is run to benefit the 1% who have the most, a UK education minister blaming feminism for the rising gap between rich and poor. We live in a system that is designed to serve the wealthy. We are playing a game where they make the rules, design the board, own all the pieces. Guess what? The game is rigged. We’re shown the few who sing, act or dance their way to fleeting fame and fortune to keep us believing that anyone can get out of the gutter if they’re young, attractive and lucky. It nourishes our illusions.

It’s not the physical poverty we need to tackle in this country at least. Compared to our recent ancestors, most westerners are obscenely well off. Our poverty lies in our lifestyles, how we feel. What use is money if you are miserable? What good is it playing a game you cannot win, to serve the needs of an elite few?

I’d lay good money if enough of us got angry we could storm the banks, burn a few politicians, put someone new on the throne. Give it a little while for the shine to wear off, and we’d find ourselves in the same system with a new set of faces under the hats of the elite. That’s not progress. Being the person on the throne is not a win, and only when we recognise that can we start to change the rules of the game. It’s only while we aspire to be like the people who seem to have everything, that we remain slaves of their system. Once you stop wanting to be them, its possible to rethink everything.

I want to live in a fair and sustainable world, where need is considered more important than greed, compassion is not equated with weakness, and money is not political power. I want to live in a world where beauty matters more than the bottom line, where quality means more than a quick buck. I want a whole different reality from the one we’ve got.

I am not alone.

Reading blogs and newspapers, seeing the growing disquiet amongst people all over the world, I know there are a lot of folk out there hungry for change. No dramatic uprisings. No bloodletting. No putting a new despot on the throne this time. What we need is a quiet revolution. It starts on the inside. It starts inside our own heads. It is the act of rejecting assumption and trying to figure out how things ought to be. And then, through small action, through personal choice, through our day to day choices, going after that vision of a better world. Throw away the unwinnable game. Chuck out the rules of the few designed to keep the many on a leash. Dream of something better.

Clap your hands if you believe in revolutions.

Clap quietly.

Guest Blog – Jay Lancaster

Author Jay Lancaster offers some startling insights into recent UK news and politics, along with some profound thoughts for the quiet revolution.

Yesterday, HMP Lancaster Castle closed.

Yeah yeah – who cares – bunch of criminals.

You should care. This was done to save YOU, the taxpayer, money, apparently. Let’s put aside the 700 years of history. Let’s put aside the fact we were top performing Cat C in the North West. Let’s look at money.

We were a specialist drugs rehab jail. We ran various programs, NA, 12-step, meth, counselling – whatever was needed by the individual. Guys would ask to come to us. They knew they could get clean here. A drugs worker told me that for every £1 spent on getting these men sorted, it’d save the taxpayer £4.

The taxpayer: you and I.

So today we closed. The Ministry of Justice owes on the lease though: the castle belongs to the Queen. For the next 3 years, a sum of money in the millions will be paid for renting an empty castle. 12 Support Staff and the Works Team are being kept on for maintenance. Of our team of 26 in Education, 11 are redundant and paid (by Manchester College – ie by the Learning and Skills Council – ie by YOU the taxpayer) a pitiful redundancy. Other staff, the healthcare, probation and prison staff are either redundant or moved. When moved, the prison staff will be paid travel expenses. £80,000 over the next year in travel alone.

But hey this saves you, the taxpayer, money RIGHT NOW. Apparently. I don’t think you’re going to notice this saving. You will of course notice the long term effects of this. Half my friends list is redundant or at risk of redundancy now. Where are the jobs? In the worlds of New Model Army – “nobody needs morality when there isn’t enough to eat.” So the crime rate is dropping? Do you think that’s a trend, or will they just keep adjusting the way they record the figures so it looks like it’s dropping?

They don’t teach the Civil War in schools. “What civil war?” The one in 1642-1649 which changed British and European history. I believe this is because they do not want YOU, the public, to realise that the government of this land – parliament or monarchy – is subject to OUR WILL. They do not want us to realise we have the choice. We are pacified by television, placated by consumerism, befuddled by the smoke and mirrors of mainstream media. You are probably all thinking people who get angry about what’s in the papers – but you don’t choose what is reported. You’re only angry about what they want you to be angry about.

Big society? Total bollocks. What can we do? Vote: a mish mash has got into power. But to not vote is an insult to those who have lost their lives for the privilege of democracy, so not voting is not an option. So, keep voting… BUT…

Small society. That’s the answer. Always has been. That’s why they try to destroy it. Homogenised high streets, corporate branding, advertisements and standardisation and towns with no heart – it keeps you all separate with the illusion of community.

Real community is not because you all shop at Tesco and you all buy hummous and you all think about Fair Trade and you all subscribe to the Guardian and you all worry about food miles. That’s how they’ve tricked you. 

Small society is when you walk out of your house and buy food at the greengrocers and talk with them. It’s when you chat at the bus stop, and nod at the old lady across the road, and keep an eye on the post piling up in your neighbour’s porch. It’s when you make the effort to seek an alternative. It’s when you place more value on a connection than on the money or the time – it will take 1 hour to whizz round Tesco, and you can spend the rest of Saturday watching tv. OR you can spend the whole morning at the Farmers’ Market and miss out on some tedious cookery programme.

It’s little things. One change a week. You don’t throw out your technology and knit your own muesli and sneer at the hardworking family who HAVE to shop at a supermarket. But you do make thoughtful choices, as and when you can – you do read the papers with question in your mind. You do discuss the local planning policy with the bloke in the newsagents. You do offer to show a younger family member how to go blackberrying. You join a local LETS scheme, you volunteer at a school – independently, not to boost Cameron’s figures on Big Bleeding Society. You do it for the kids. You get Freegle-ing and Freecycling. You make your voice heard.

Do you remember your grandparents? Then they remember theirs – and one jump before that – and a jump before that was the seventeenth century – it’s not so long ago. Four leaps of living memory, when we killed a King. I’m not advocating violence now – just an awakening to the power we hold as a group when we decide what’s important and what’s not.

They put an end to 700 years of history today. History is a dangerous thing – you can learn from it.

Feeding the spirit

What we eat has a huge impact on how we feel, and the state of our physical health. I think it also effects us at emotional levels. Where nature is honoured as sacred, and relationship is highly valued, eating becomes an activity with spiritual implications. For me, nothing I do is separate from my Druidry, not even lunch. I don’t believe there’s any one right way of doing this, but there are many issues around food that we might want to contemplate from a spiritual perspective.

Where did the food come from? Is it part of our land? How do we relate to the spirit of the place it originated? Do we experience food differently if it’s locally sourced, or we’ve grown it ourselves, or foraged it from a hedgerow? The origin of the food can significantly shape our relationship with it and also raises issues around food miles and sustainability.

How was it prepared? For me there is a huge qualitative difference between pre-packaged mass produced, and homemade. Where someone has invested love and time in creating nourishment, it can be related to as a bardic expression, and it is richer. It’s unique, and there is more soul in it. There’s also less packaging usually, which is an environmental plus. Mass produced food can be bland and will be the same every time. The more inspiration we bring to our food, the more interesting and rewarding it becomes.

How do we eat it? Food that we share with loved ones and take time over is more pleasing than a hastily grabbed solitary snack. It’s about taking the time both for relationship with the food, and with those around you. Food creates space for social bonding, which is powerful, so when we think about food we can also be thinking about community.

I find that what I eat has huge impact on me. I spent time as an omnivore, and found that meat sits very heavily in my gut – some people equate this with satisfaction, but it’s not a sensation I like. I find my body feels more comfortable when I don’t eat meat. I assume this will vary from one person to another, but finding the diet that suits us is a huge contributor to wellness and feeling good. If I keep refined sugars and pre-processed food minimal, I feel cleaner, lighter and better in myself. I find that including a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables makes me feel better about myself – not just as a physical experience, but emotionally better and spiritually more open. Where I’ve experimented with vegan food, I find I feel lighter again, and I enjoy being less dependent on animal products. Although I’m very conscious of the sustainability issues here too, it’s the impact on my body and my sense of self that incline me to continue exploring.

Too many people are all or nothing about food. For some, vegetarian, vegan or meat eater labels are such a big part of sense of self that exploring alternatives seems threatening. I like experimenting with food, learning to cook in new ways, and there are vegan tricks that everyone, regardless of overall diet, would benefit from. Nuts and pulses are great, and broaden a diet and meal repertoires. It was from vegan cooks that I learned to mix raw and cooked things, and to explore texture to a greater degree. Vegan meals don’t focus on a solid lump of animal product, so you have to think about the components in totally different ways, again opening up creative possibility.

How I feel about myself as a spiritual person is informed by what I eat. Would I feel as I do if I consumed a lot of fatty, high sugar, chemical laden food? Or if I frequented fast food emporiums with their disposable, unsustainable packaging? I wouldn’t be the same person at all. When I’ve eaten in ways that felt at odds with my beliefs, I’ve been deeply unhappy.

I’m not any kind of food evangelist, beyond the ideas that we shouldn’t waste it, we should enjoy it and we should be responsible about it. How we eat affects how we feel. It’s a key point of engagement with the rest of nature, which for any pagan ought to make it a point of significant interest. We can make it a conscious part of our spiritual expression. We can eat with awen, and recognise spirit in what we do.