Meeting in the Midnight Orchard
Wild Wisdom One – Sunday 29th February 2016
As I had missed the Saturday’s gathering I had a feeling of being allowed into the cooking pot some hours after the process of creation had begun. All the ingredients had been picked and chopped, so that the stew was already bubbling nicely. I listened with awe. I had clearly missed a powerful day.
But Sunday was a wonderful day in it’s own right. We listened to Sam talking about the part of the calendar between Christmas and Easter. I learnt that 6th of January, as well as being Epiphany is also the date of the Baptism of Christ. As we listened we were invited to draw and sketch, I drew pools of water and moving into Easter the theme of cleansing seemed strong. We reflected on Ian Bradley’s presentation of Celtic Christianity as being about Presence, Poetry and Pilgrimage.
After that Sam took us on a contemplative walk. A short pilgrimage or our own. We walked in silence with our attention on all of our senses; through the village, past the ancient historical pub with meaty smells of lunch wafting through an open window, we squelched across fields, kissed at kissing gates, touched and smelt flowers and herbs, tumbling into the woodlands, scrambling over branches…to a pool of water, several of us felt watched there but who was watching us? And back through the woods and along the lanes to Juliette’s warm house where soup was waiting and Juliette and Janet had laid the table.
In the afternoon I introduced the group to some basic reflexology techniques. As a 
newly trained reflexologist it filled me with delight to see how much joy everyone took in an opportunity to learn and to simply touch, hands to feet. I read Hilary Llewellyn-Williams poem from her collection ‘Tree Calendar’ and for our date the tree was ‘Ash’.
‘In the encircled heart
Something vibrates from skin to skin – and how
Those blackstopped boughs curve upwards into blue,
Fingering the invisible stars of spring!’
Our day finished with silence and ceremony. We each spoke of what we wanted to include, what had felt important to us; there were stones and holes in stones and winds and birds and archways and wishes for the Spring….
Written by Clare Viner
Photos by Sam
