Postcards from The Hedge - Dispatch 4

 
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"You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up on all other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.”

- David Whyte

Welcome to our fourth dispatch of Postcards from the Hedge.
This month's care package has been prepared by Kathy Scott, our founder and co-faculty at the Hedge School.

Dear Friends,

As we open into the ancient festival of Bealtaine we also celebrate our first Birthday at the Hedge School. The great poet and philosopher David Whyte once wrote

“Our sense of slight woundedness around not belonging is actually one of our core competencies"

His poetry has been a place of  personal solace and refuge for me for many years now and has inspired many of our creative adventures at The Trailblazery across the last 10 years. It feels fitting that he will lead us alongside a host of magnificent guides into Returning to our Senses -our Bealtaine Spiral at the Hedge School 

 
 

The Hedge School world was made as a place of belonging in bewildering times. We launched in a crucible moment that marked a series of inner and outer interconnected crises on our planet. Over the past 12 months we have have gathered together and found shelter as a community just like our ancestors did in at the Scoileanna Scairte when Ireland was under colonial occupation.

At the Hedge School we invite people around the world to find our shared humanity and resource our creative possibility. It is an Irish drumbeat with a global resonance. We have hosted thousands of ancestors-in-training from all over the world and together have weathered many storms.

We set out to explore the spirit of our times and have been guided by great like hearted humans from all walks of life.

We have met Aunties, Activists, Coaches, Farmers, Folklorists, Futurists Grandmothers, Hurlers, Jungian Analysts, Peacemakers, Pioneers, Politicians, Professors, Scientists, Sean Nós Singers and Wisdom Holders.


LeAnne Howe, former Hedge School guide


We have cycled with a Wheel of the Year handed down by the ancients that honours the living and the dying. We have travelled through deep time out of time, time.

We have been held, informed, inspired, activated, challenged, surprised, seduced, encouraged and nudged into our shared humanity.

We have been enraptured by extraordinary powerful artists, poets, performers, musicians and writers.

We have heard stories that stirred the heart and sometimes broke it open. Tales of Choctaw peoples sending blankets to Ireland during the famine and the great act of reciprocity that followed when the Irish supported them during Covid.

Sci-fi pancake breakfast dates between great granddaughters and great grandmothers in Iceland in the year 2150

Bridges to the Otherworld in our mother tongue reveal léaspáin – the dancing coloured lights that appear before your eyes at times that you drift too close to other dimensions.

Manchán Magan, previous Hedge School guide


The Hedge School was inspired with an intention of learning, but now we know that we are also been called to unlearn.

So what have we learned and unlearned ?

Indiginosity
We are listening to keepers of the flame across many indigenous traditions. We are exploring our own lineages; what being in right relationship looks and feels like with our selves, each other and the living natural world

Decolonisation
We are understanding the importance of decolonizing our imagination and the ties that bind us to dying systems. We are exploring how to midwife a world that is waiting to be born

Rewilding
We are experiencing the art and science of connecting with our wild selves and the wild world that is waiting for us. We are exploring intimacy with Earth and aligning with the rhythms and life force of nature around us and inside of us.

Ancestors-in-Training
We are honouring our ancestors who were stargazers and lived in rhythm with the natural cycles of Earth. We are exploring the wisdom available to us when we remember and honour that we are part of a great chain of interbeing with the generations that came before us and the generations yet to be born.

Global Citizens
We are embodying cultural wellbeing and cultural activism with connection and attunement. We are exploring pathways of individual and collective trauma healing so that together we can find a way home.

We have strong backs and soft hearts. We are the ones we have been waiting for. I look forward to hosting our Bealtaine Túatha (Irish word for people/tribe) - David Whyte, Nóirín Ní Riain, Ian Mackenzie, Damien Dempsey, Alixa Garcia and Lyla June Johnston - I hope you can join us.

Ní neart go cur le chéile – There is no strength without unity

Beannachtaí agus Míle Buíochas

Kathy


Announcement
Lullaby : Suantraí at Moon Medicine Live
Monday April 26


 
 

Moon Medicine Lullaby : Suantraí - Resting into our Greatness is our fourth gathering of 2021 with Woven Kin - Siobhán Moore (Ajeet) and Aisling Urwin. who weave a world of harmonic dreamscapes and ethereal journeys, that encompass both the folk tradition and new ground. We will travel through time and space with some restorative yoga nidra practices and land in a deep sonic soundscape gently guided and performed by Siobhan and Ash. This circle asks you to make a ‘nest’, bring warm blankets, woolly socks, oils, headphones and other creature comforts so that you can rest and receive their beautiful debut album ‘Hibernate’ and other sensory surprises. This is an opportunity to pause within the pause and enter time out of time , what TS Eliot called the ‘still point of the turning world’ .

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If you feel the call to join us in person at Moon Medicine Live click here.


Hedge School Highlights

Watch some golden moments from our Hedge School guides who remind us to mind ourselves, each other and this place we call home
Hedge School Website


Recommended Resources

Here are a few watching and listening pieces inspired by the Hedge School to mind you this week:

Watch |  All Nations Rise by Lyla June 

Listen |  Deeply Rooted and God is the Water by Lyla June

Read | SUNRISE OVER BROOKLYN: FROM THE HEART OF A GLOBAL PANDEMIC with Alixa Garcia

Watch | Serious by Damien Dempsey

Listen | The Mythic Masculine podcast

 
Kat Scott