Sense Of Place

Lately, thanks to the kindness of NTodd, I've been allowed to do some blogging over at Pax Americana and it's had me thinking quite a bit about peace. When I was a young, young woman, we'd sing:

Bring me some peace when there's talk of war,
When it's hard to find.
Oh, bring me some peace when there's talk of war.
I've got peace on my mind.
Oh, peace is sweet, most any time and, yet,
Bring me some peace when there's talk of war,
And how easy we forget.

Tuesday evening, I got my hair done and, as I often do, walked back to the office, stopping at one of my favorite D.C. restaurants, La Chaumerie, for dinner on the way. You walk into La Chaumerie and there seem to be about half-a-dozen Inside entryway/anterooms, but, finally, you step through the last door and you are no longer in Georgetown, just off of Pennsylvania Avenue. You are inside an old French farmhouse, winter or summer. If you are ever in Georgetown, you must eat at this place, not the least because their seafood is amazing. I had oysters on the half-shell, which I never eat without a salute to Venus, and softshell crabs as good as any that I've ever had. I washed it all down with a lovely, white chilled sancerre, well, ok, several glasses of a lovely, white chilled sancerre.

While I ate, I read the latest issue of Faerie Magazine. Now, how to deal with the realm of Faerie without becoming either ridiculous or banal or twee is a serious challenge for modern Pagandom and I don't pretend to have found the correct balance. I do know that it doesn't lie in purchasing tacky ceramic "sculptures" of "fairy queens", which is what a lot of modern Pagan "Faerie" seems to entail at times. Nor do I think that it rests in gothickly-pouty "faeriez" splattered across spaghetti-strap tees, as, again, much of modern Pagan "Faerie" appears to entail.

Yet, I'd be the last witch on Earth to disparage fairies. They live in my house, sometimes holding these old beams together, sometimes fucking with the intenet modem, sometimes demanding honey and v., v., v. good booze on the altar -- now! My own dear grandma showed in every line and shadow of her face that she was of the ancient Pictish (pixie) race and she could play music that indeed made you wonder for just how long you really had been underground. I've seen what they did at Findhorn. I see what they do under the oak trees and holly bushes and fig trees and grape vines in my yard. I understand that Fairies are here and that they hardly consider our good to be conversant with theirs.

Long way round of saying that this issue of Fairie Magazine, along with trying to sell lots of "fairie" tzotchkas, had an interesting article w/ Ari Berk, a poet who's also collaborated on some books w/ "fairie" artist extraordinaire Brian Froud. A poem of Berk's got me thinking -- yes, indeed, she is going to tie this all up at some point -- about the role of a sense of place in our longing for peace.

In Tintagel I, Beck writes:

The sea will swoon and rise
and love the rocks to death
below the walls of Tintagel.

Soon will cave and castle
converge upon the strand --
a cold and churning bridal bed --

And consummate their bond
in ruins of mortar
and turf and shard from Antioch.

"Sense of place" is a loaded term, but one that most Pagans understand. As Beck sensed, it always involves consumation, sex, a linking of the Great Rite to the ley lines of the place and the chance to make the Sacred Marriage between the Lord and the Land. It would be, I imagine, impossible to completely unpack it for some people.

Many Pagans base their spiritual life upon a relationship with their land, and by "their" I don't mean legal ownership, so much as land with which they are familiar enough to have a relationship, land to which they've attended, listened, land that they've watched, learned, loved, to which they've paid attention. The plants that grow there, the animals who live there, the water that flows there, the winds that are wont to blow, the way that the sun hits early in the morning, in high summer, in late fall, on a cold winter's dawn when frost changes everything that it touches and everything that it touches changes. I can place every mystical moment of grace that I've ever experienced to the place where it occurred, to the plants that danced with me in that moment, to the acid content of the soil, to the leaves on the trees, to the way that my own grounding roots felt sinking into the soil, past the rocks, through the water table, beyond the deep lakes and caves, into the deep mystery of Mother Earth.

Modern Americans lack, in general, a sene of place. We are nomads, we hop planes, switch time zones, are citizens of the globe. That has tremendous positives and should make us greater lovers of peace for the entire globe. Ancient people who likely had a greater sense of place certainly waged war. And, yet. And, yet. I can't get past the idea that one is less willing to commit "shock and awe" upon another's landbase if one has a deep relationship with one's own landbase, watertable, micro-ecology. Who wants to piss off those altogether alien Fairies in that distant place, stir them up, get them looking for the cause of their displeasure? Who can't imagine how horrific it must be to see a long-tended garden or grove or field bombed beyond recognition? No one sane wants to do things like that. Goddess knows that i sometimes shudder at "who" is following us back from ancient Mesopotamia, although not at all in the way that George Bush wants me to quail.

Barring what Lovelock refers to as a "hard collapse" there's no going back. So how do we do both? How do we live as citizens of the entire globe and still engender all the good that springs from a "sense of place"? Does a relationship with the land have a relationship to a longing for peace?