Menelluin - Lisa Crockett

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BRD101
Cosmology - Part 1
Chapter 4

Into the Well of Beauty

Write an essay (3-5 pages, double spaced) reflecting on your own relationship to the sacred
and/or divinity. How does it (or does it not) relate to what is written in this chapter of the
text?

This assignment has been especially difficult for me. Not because I found the chapter

hard to understand, or because I failed to connect with either the question or the content. I have

found it difficult because I struggle to find words I can use to adequately describe the sacred.

Divine and spiritual worlds. None of the words in the English language can come close to

describing the intense intimacy of my (or, I believe, anyone’s) interactions and relationship to the

divine. As such, I usually feel failure in any attempt to communicate my experiences. In

addition, the feeling of failure brings fear of being mis-understood, or ridiculed. However, as

there is no growth without courage and trust, I am going to try to express my experiences and

understanding of the divine and sacred.

In much the same way as the world is cyclic in all things, so is my interaction with the

divine/sacred. I travel through periods where I will have many very intense episodes of contact

which can often be euphoric. This can be anything from a few days to an entire season. During

these times, my meditations and contact feel as easy and graceful as closing my eyes and

opening my eyes to the luminous flood of images, sensations and insight. Following these

‘seasons’ of intensity, I will cycle through times of gentle, peaceful contact where I find myself

able to absorb and meditate on the meaning of what I have experienced.

Throughout these cycles, I maintain a constant base line of gratitude and service. No
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matter what the circumstances are, I give thanks to the universe for its blessings and do anything

I can to nurture the natural world. This could be picking up rubbish on the beach or hiking trail,

removing introduced weeds or planting a pollinator garden each year. I view this as a

relationship with the sacred, because I believe that all things natural in this world are gifts to us

from the divine, and are therefore sacred. I am trying (and rather failing) to see humans as

sacred as well. By doing what I can to protect and nurture and repair the natural world, both by

my actions and as an example, and giving thanks and living a life of gratitude, I reinforce my

connection to the divine on a daily basis.

I take this a step further through attempting worship of the divine in all my actions in the

mundane world. I try to ensure that anything I buy or make has a gentle outcome for our planet.

I also eat with mindfulness. What goes into my body needs to be in line with the gifts of the

harvest and benefit me and bolster my energy in order to stay on quest. While I love and respect

the rituals and large events such as epic meditations which connect me to the sacred and spiritual

worlds, I firmly believe that a life that is filled with small actions and constant gratitude cements

a graceful relationship that opens me to the worlds and experiences I cannot begin to describe.

Tom Cowan and Frank Mac Eowen’s philosophy of shape, shaper and shaping is an

interesting definition of human interaction with the Divine. Just as with the definition of the

Christian Holy Trinity, I find that true understanding of the concept dances alluringly just on the

borders of my understanding. For example, I do not agree that humans have the power to create

other than as a form of artistic expression. I believe that the ability to create lies with the Divine,

and our expressions of our understanding of the Divine are what we express through artistic

endeavours. I am a manifestation of the Divine and its ability to create or shape. I can easily

recognise that I am a shape, and, as such, part of my interaction with the Divine is being grateful
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for my creation.

The Divine is also present in all of nature. I actively seek her in the trees and plants, the

water in all its forms, the animals and the sky. Through seeking the divine, and in keeping with

my practice of nurturing and protecting the natural world, I believe I am not being a shaper. On

the other hand, maybe these acts of worship which occur though recognition of the spirits, Gods

and Goddesses and their creations and my desire to protect and repair the damage that has been

done by humans is a type of shaping.

Whether we choose to differentiate between sacred and divine, or choose to regard them

as different faces of the same power, I feel that my experience of both is one of conduit. In being

grateful, respectful and nurturing as a type of worship, I believe that my actions and thoughts

allow an increased presence of the divine in the world. Now we can take the idea of shape,

shaper and shaping further to include the Christian idea of the power of the creative Word. If the

creative Word can be correlated with the ability to manifest in the world through intent, then

Druids, by continuing to believe and act in accordance with the wisdom from the Divine and

sacred, would be able to also manifest the intent of the divine in the world.