“All times are changing times, but ours is one of massive, rapid moral and mental transformation. Archetypes turn into millstones, large simplicities get complicated, chaos becomes elegant, and what everybody knows is true turns out to be what some people used to think.”
“It’s unsettling. For all our delight in the impermanent, the entrancing flicker of electronics, we also long for the unalterable. We cherish the old stories for their changelessness. Arthur dreams eternally in Avalon. Bilbo can go “there and back again,” and “there” is always the beloved familiar Shire. Don Quixote sets out forever to kill a windmill … So people turn to the realms of fantasy for stability, ancient truths, immutable simplicities.”
~ Ursula Le Guin, in the
Foreword of Tales From Earthsea
There is much that is unsettled, and unsettling, just now. And so we reach deeply into that which is enduring, rooted, ‘evergreen’.
Many roots of Sophia’s Children spring forth from the wells of the “Ancient Truths,” the timeless stories, and the threads of ancestral wisdom that weaves into the present from the Elder TImes.
Dipping into these wells, sinking our roots deeply, nourishes and fortifies us as we live in, and into, the gale winds and storms of — and the powerful possibilities in — “changing times.”
Here are a few of the Sophia’s Children Ancestral Wisdom, Ancestral Byways musings to help stir your root-reach into that deep, deep well of remembering.
And speaking of ancestral byways and holy, healing wells …
St. Dyfnog’s Well (pictured at right) is in one of my own ancestral byways — Denbighshire, Wales. There has been a church on the site since the 6th century, and it was likely a local holy or sacred well prior to that, as was often the case. So it’s one of many wells and springs long-associated with holy and healing powers.
Big Love,
Ursula Le Guin links:
** Find more about Arwen Curry’s documentary, Worlds of Ursula Le Guin here.
To see and learn more of ancient holy wells and springs:
**** Check out the Wellhopper blog, which features beautiful photographs and images from the ancient sacred springs and wells in North Wales.
**** Megalithic Portal U.K. features more beautiful photos and ancient sacred-place ‘intel’.
April 1, 2017 at 12:48 pm
Nice. Literature definitely is a portal to our deeper spiritual selves. I also love your photo. I sometimes go out into the woods and seek out those mystical places (which often include water) and gazing into the water allow the ripples to transport me.
Anyway, thanks for your inspiring posts. Always love to read them.
Jeff
April 1, 2017 at 3:58 pm
Thank you, Jeff. Mmm, yes — wandering in Nature to those places (that usually do include water for me as well) where we are transported. I recently read of ‘Forest Bathing’ … some interesting science about how/why being in a forested area ‘transports’ and soothes us, though we’d know that from just experiencing it, too. The same to you … I always enjoy your musings as well. ~ Jamie
April 2, 2017 at 7:13 pm
I read Ursula Le Guin’s book Steering the Craft while in a writing class last term, and an essay of hers, which was a part of the class even though the book was not assigned. I didn’t realize she was a Portland icon until I moved to SW WA. It shows how we are connected by our stories. Thanks for the post. I am much more settled when I am outside and observant of the small but significant details in nature.
April 6, 2017 at 1:51 am
Thank you for stopping by and joining the conversation. 🙂 Did you like Steering the Craft? The realm and reach of story is vast, to be sure! I, too, feel much more settled in the company of Nature. (Speaking of … I just read a blog-sister’s mention of the Japanese practice of ‘forest bathing’!). Be well. Jamie