Becoming a Pearl of Great Wisdom

The Pursuit of Dermot and Grainne

Photo by Patrick Metzdorf on Unsplash

Lugnasadh Greetings Readers,

Although I live on Moku o Keawe in the Kingdom of Hawai’i, my ancestral roots are in Ireland, England and Scotland. Today on the feast of Lugnasadh, or Lammas, I offer you my telling of a story from the Fenian Cycle, The Pursuit of Dermot and Grainne, a story from my ancestral lands that appears close to the end of my book Piko: a Return to the Dreaming.

This is one of my all-time favorite stories, full of magic and wonder, but what appeals to me most in it, is the hard-earned maturity we witness in the characters in the end. It was the last story I heard

Martin Shaw

tell at the Great Mother Conference before I moved to Hawai’i. In my mind, it was a fitting story for Martin to move on with, although I do believe the year he told it he planned to come back one more time. Covid had other plans. Neither Martin or I have been back since.

As an unmarried woman without children in a culture that encourages perpetual adolescence, it’s often hard for me to remember my age or determine where I am in life according to society’s terms, not a bad thing necessarily, but I knew when I heard Martin tell this story that I had crossed the threshold into middle age. I don’t mean that in years. With today’s advances perhaps I’ll live to be 150, which would mean biologically I’m still the young adult my culture encourages me to be. What I mean, is that I became aware of how I’d been tempered by suffering and loss, that I had accepted some limitations and been able to grow with them. Instead of resisting; like a tree bending to the wind, my roots had grown deep.

This is one reason why stories matter—they help us realize a threshold has been crossed. Remember, thresholds are openings. If we resist crossing, or even refuse to cross, we not only don’t learn what waits for us, we risk acknowledging and integrating what we’ve learned. This matters because if we don’t acknowledge it, we can’t pass it on. We become dried up rivers that never reach the sea and all of life suffers.

I’m offering this story to paid subscribers, so if you want to read it, please click on the link below. I’ll be back next week with Part VI of The Art of Spell-Casting, and I’m happy to report that I am in the final proofs of Piko. You should be able to order the book soon!