A Wilder Graduation Day
This day marked the closing of a 3 year journey – one that for me extended my 1 year masters degree at Schumacher College into 4 wonderful and formative years.
At the end of the first year at Schumacher I remember reflecting that it had been an education true to the original meaning of university, which according to Matthew Fox, is a place to explore our relationship to the universe. Although Wild Wisdom School is not (yet) a university officially, it certainly is a university according to this original meaning. Our teacher – Sam Wernham – is a fantastic scholar and mystic who weaves together these two approaches to offer a way of studying that is packed with aliveness. If this were the education offered in mainstream institutions we would have a very wise society indeed. We can dream…
Back to the here and now (or rather to 3 weeks ago) – the day after its final study day, Wild Wisdom School celebrated its graduation day! Except we called it our community day – a day to celebrate our community and to honour the great journey we’ve taken together. If it were a traditional graduation day, we’d perhaps be wearing classic graduation hats and gowns and carrying important scrolls in hand. Clearly, this was not what our day looked like. Rather think summer hats, prosecco and a great big feast put on by Jan and Henry, who were our incredibly generous hosts for the day.
We did however have a ceremony – but forget long speeches and sore bottoms, and think instead a circle of joyful people on the grass around a fire pit. This is the basis of the Wild Wisdom collaborative ceremonies, which in the last year have very justly earned the title “ramshackle rituals”. Poems, songs, music, dance and a story weaved together the threads of our wisdom journey, and together we marked this ending and new beginning.
My contribution to our ramshackle ritual was the classic Mary Oliver poem ‘Wild Geese’. Her words speak to me of what our Wild Wisdom community is…
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
So, on I go to new pastures. The ending of Wild Wisdom School marks the ending of my journey in Devon, and the beginning of a new life in Scotland. I am so grateful for this incredible journey, and pray that the potent gold of the Wild Wisdom vessel travels far and wide – to energise spirits, engage minds and awaken hearts – and to remember our embodied belonging to the family of all things.
Who knows, maybe one day it really will have a graduation day with gowns an’ all.
Writing and photos by Beth.
And for us, there was so much of the same experience. I was struck, as I listened to our shared wisdom, how far some people felt they had travelled over the 2-3 years together and how all of us felt we had changed in some way. Our gatherings had become a regular rhythm in our lives, creating a community and a space where we were able to say whatever needed to be said in a very special physical place (thanks and blessings to Juliette for her beautiful house and garden). And in that space, everything was welcomed: joy, excitement, fear, rage, despair, confusion, contentment, gratitude……… And as we learned to accept that knowledge and wisdom are both dark and bright, we opened up to the alchemy of transformation. In the heart of the storminess and mess, there is gold. And for many, that gold is prayer: praying for the greater good of everyone, not caving in, believing that Someone knows, that there is a greater reality, letting kindness emerge.
Wisdom School. It is a very lovely feeling to be able to say to myself “both…and” instead of “either…or”. Living with the tension of opposites is tough, but I have increasingly found it possible to reach a point of balance and in those moments, something else is born from the holding of the polarities: a feeling of peace, of wholeness and wonder. A glimpse of the Divine. And, together, we have encountered those opposites in many ways and many places. From the start of our travels in paleolithic times we found that those early peoples were not just focused on survival – there is evidence of wonder too. Ritual, community and art alongside hardship and death. We do not know what, if anything, they “worshipped” but as we travelled through time we saw how that sense of wonder evolved into different spiritual traditions, with myth and story interwoven through everything. I have learned so much from the myths and stories that Sam has shared with us over the years, and they have helped me find different ways to hold paradox: the descent into darkness is necessary for the return and transformation, willing sacrifice offers new hope, death allows for the possibility of rebirth, the ugly becomes beautiful when it’s accepted. And listening to my companions in the circle, I have learned too that there are many many ways to experience the stories, not just my way; and those experiences can be diametrically opposed and still both be true.
So, we started our day with a meditation which reminded us of the fourfold way of knowing on which our practice has been based. The body and the natural world, and the wisdom that comes from both; the psyche, listening to the wisdom that emerges from how we feel about things, and from our memories and thoughts; the witness capacity, stepping aside, stepping back, getting out of our own way; and the Divine, the ground of all being, the wisdom that comes when we ask “what would You have me learn in this moment?”. All of our meditations have been beautiful, and this was no exception. As one of our community said afterwards, these have been opportunities over time to organise the purple blobs of the mind into a pattern.
