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" One touch of nature

makes all the world kin "

William Shakespeare

Three Sources of Stability in an Unstable World: Tea with a Druid 88

August 26th, 2019

Current world events – the fires in South America and the Arctic, the ecological and political situation in many parts of the world – evoke in us feelings of hopelessness, wounding, and despair. They make us feel like victims – or like children overwhelmed in a world of adults acting destructively and out of control.

In feeling this way today, I remembered a quotation we use in the Order’s training  (I can’t find the exact quote because we have so much training material, but if it’s familiar to you, do please remind me.) It says something like: “When you feel lost, take a child by the hand, and you will no longer feel so lost.”

This is the way I assuage those difficult feelings – not by denying them, but by allowing them into my awareness and then reaching out to others from a place rooted in what I believe is good and true – rooted, essentially, in my sense of soul and of the values it is guided by. You know when someone is ill or in a crisis and you succeed in ‘rising to the occasion’? You are  no longer thinking about yourself, but about others, acting like those in the caring professions who do this every working day of their lives.

So this is the strategy I’m adopting: I’m accepting my feelings of despair and vulnerability and powerlessness, but then I’m trying to be a good, caring person who tries to make decisions and live in a world that is constantly challenging.

Well this is all very well – and rather trite you might say – but how do I act the adult, how do I act mature, anchored, responsible, amidst all this turbulence? I think there are many things we can do, but for today let’s focus on just a few ideas, about how we can ‘resource ourselves’ to use that awful phrase! I’ve put them into a triad:

Three sources of comfort: knowledge of the Divine Origin of all Creation, inspiration in the teachings of mystics and sages, support in the fellowship of like-minded souls.

This is what helps me keep going – what helps me offer my hand as we all walk through the difficulties of this world: my belief in and experience of the Divine helps to anchor me; the teachings of mystics help to inspire me and give me hope; being with like-minded souls, fellow seekers on the Path nourishes me with a sense of community. And from there I can act in whatever way I can to help make the world a better place. If I can shift my centre of gravity from a sense of childlike helplessness to a sense of adult responsibility I think I can be of more use.

Below is a photograph from our recent One Tree Gathering – an annual event where members of the Druid and Hindu community come together. At the end of each weekend a participant offers to accept the statue of Ganesha to keep safe until the next meeting.

One Tree Gathering Leicester 2019

9 Responses to “Three Sources of Stability in an Unstable World: Tea with a Druid 88”

  1. Hi Philip, Thank you so much for your perspective on the current situations today. I do hope you keep broadcasting and maybe someday, come back again to the NJ/Pa area. We haven’t met yet but I am hopeful that we will someday. You are certainly a treasure of inspiration.

    Druid Carraig (Rocky Romeo) (O.B.O.D)

  2. Thank you, Philip, for your words of comfort and inspiration – and especially for the new Triad you shared – I love it! <3

    We Druids here in the Redwood Coast of Northern California (Pacific Northwest area) are very active in trying to preserve the remaining 3% of the Sequoia Sempervirens Rainforest from the clear-cutting and raging Summer fires. We raise awareness both locally and online and hold fundraisers for the Save the Redwood League and other organizations that work very hard for our common (and global) cause…

    We also teach our members methods for tapping into their particular strengths to see how they may be of service to our Mother Gaia and her children with fur, scales and wings. Nature needs all of us to wake up and take the blinders off and bring balance and love and healing to our only home on the physical plane…

    I enjoy watching your videos and your thoughtful and Awen-inspired themes! 🙂

    Blessings, in Gaia /|\

  3. Thank you so much, Philip for this beautiful mindful meditation concerning the critical ecological and political situation in the Arctic and The Amazones

  4. Philip, thank you for this. The triad is something concrete I can work with, filling in the blanks in my life. I trust the rightness of the meditation, and yet as a human who is part of the problem, I find myself distressed when asking more from the trees. I stayed with the meditation to the end in spite of the difficulty, and I can see how we are ultimately giving back and all benefit, but do you have any words to say about this dilemma, which rises up often for me in various similar contexts?

  5. This Tea and your Triad are so helpful to me right now. Such dismal and discouraging times…Thank you for your insight and wisdom.

  6. In order to find some stability in a unstable world is it good to turn inward, but sometimes i think that we are kidding ourselves. Must the madness of the world not make us alert, and bring us to into some kind of concrete action to stop the forces that create ecological disasters? There are too many alarm bells ringing that things are really going wrong and we are only busy looking to comfort ourselves and silence the fears. We turn away from the problems having a peaceful mind. Or maybe with (regained) calmness we can approach the threats of our times in a more efficient way than with a fearfull spirit?

  7. Hello Philip, I have just found your website through another article and have now read many of your posts. Your view very much aligns with my own. I’m interested in perhaps trying Druidry, I also live locally to the Downs, do you meet often?

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