## In this issue
– Westacre’s latest
– Interview with Barry Patterson
– Book review: Letting in the Wild Edge by Glennie Kindred
– What you can do to help Westacre

## Westacre’s latest

The last three weeks have been quite an adventure. I visited my mother in Belgium, and since I came back life has taken off big time. So much so that this Newsletter is a few days later than planned.

For a few days after I got back, we were working hard on the renovation project. We have been taking the downstairs rooms back to the bare bones, and in places those bare bones needed some extra support. We added some bricks and mortar in the holes where the floor joists used to be, and supported the chimneys.

A few days later, we took the caravan to Pengraig farm in South Wales, to help set up the very first Morrigan Encampment with The Warrior’s Call. Alex had an epic struggle with the Land Rover’s windscreen wipers, but he eventually managed to fix them. We got to Pengraig a day later than we would have hoped, and dived straight into the job of setting up facilities for the campers.

Alex helped with the practicalities, including many trips off site as he was the only one with a car. Hilde kept the crew fed and watered. And after just a couple of intense days, tents started to appear and the Morrigan Encampment had started.

It was a bit of an experiment. We were attempting to marry political activism with pagan spirituality. The Warrior’s Call team are members of White Horse Camps, a community of Druids with long experience of community building. We used White Horse Camp’s tried and tested ways to bring people together for a common course.

We had an amazing weekend. A few dozen people turned up to learn together how to face the threat of fracking in their own communities. They found new friendships and mutual support surprisingly easily in those three days. It seemed magical, and perhaps it was.

We came back to Westacre on Sunday, and then dove straight into an intense week of building work. The brick laying for the raised vegetable bed by our south facing wall is finally finished. It took several days of brick scrubbing, mortar mixing, tool cleaning and painstaking brick laying, which for a first-time brickie is pretty slow going.

But now it’s done, and only the wooden superstructure needs to go on. Then we will have a very handsome raised vegetable bed in the sunniest spot of our shady garden.

The land is burgeoning and green growth is speeding up. So is our productivity. And hopefully it will stay that way through the long days of Summer.

Blessings of vibrant life returning,

Hilde

## Interview with Barry Patterson, Buddhist, Druid, musician and professional Green Man

Barry Patterson and his wife Anne have been members of White Horse Camps for many years, and dear friends of mine for nearly as long. At those Camps, Barry is a respected voice of wisdom and spiritual insight. This respect is very much due to his dedicated practice of meditation and practical work with the spirits of nature. In this interview, he tells us more about his life, his spiritual practice, and his work.

What does a typical day in the life of Barry Patterson look like?

I’m self employed, but I don’t get very much work at this time of year & most of my paid work is at weekends anyway. So weekdays are about being creative & domestic.

Grounding myself in routine has become an important part of my practice. Establishing routine has allowed me the freedom to do everything without having to push too hard. My routine has developed organically through experiment & is flexible.

Anne & I get up, together – first ready goes down & does the cat’s breakfast & his various pills (he’s 20). We do 30-40 minutes meditation practice together, usually mantra practice which we’ve found works well for us in the morning.

I usually aim to go down the allotment by 10.00 am. The benefit of going to the allotment every day (well, every week day) even if only for half an hour is twofold: I see day to day changes & become more deeply attuned to the land & the season, plus it gets me out of the house.

Instead of saying I’m a house-husband I call myself an urban peasant. The allotments are literally just at the end of our street. I unlock the gate & I’m in a different world, full of hedges, birdsong & conversations about apples & onions. There’s an old Irish guy called Larry who’s full of knowledge & stories.

I always include some kind of spiritual practice in the garden. Even if you’re really busy, that 10 minutes makes a difference in many ways! I also always do some music practice, usually bagpipe, because it is my newest & most difficult instrument. I met some local druids last year & they said: “Oh wow, you’re the guy we hear playing the bagpipes when we walk over the railway bridge.”

My afternoon is more variable depending on what kind of jobs need doing. I know very well that as a creative practitioner I have to write, check emails, think about business & so on. I tend to alternate a bit of housework with time in the office.

I also often do more meditation practice or music practice late in the afternoon, depending upon the circumstances & this is often integrated with bread making. I make all our bread, about twice a week. I set alarms on my phone for the next stage: rising, proving, 15 mins gas mark 8, 20 mins gas mark 6.

I usually cook dinner for 7.30 – 8.00 pm. Anne and I watch one TV show, then read, internet, listen to music etc later on.

I usually go to bed about 10 when I’m at home. I may do some sitting meditation before bed, but I always see turning the light out as the beginning of a new adventure. What is consciousness? Is unconsciousness possible? I’m not so good at what is known in Tibet as “The Practice of the Night,” but I always observe the process very carefully & sometimes get to play with it.

You mention spiritual practice a lot in your daily routine, down to falling asleep at night. Can you tell us more about your practice?

For the sake of simplicity, I call myself a Buddhist & a Druid, but to be quite frank it’s my path, not someone else’s; the labels are just sometimes convenient. I could also say that I am animist & nature mystic if you like, so I will briefly comment on these four terms, as approaches to something beyond words, which I find complement one another well.

Buddhist. The bottom line: what is the nature of reality? What is my own deepest nature? I’ve been entertaining these questions as welcome guests since I was a little kid. It’s not about someone providing you with answers on which you base some kind of belief. It’s about the questions themselves demanding that you take them very seriously & very, very personally. Ever since I encountered the Dharma in my teens I have loved it’s emphasis on open hearted meditation practice – your own body, mind & sense of self become a laboratory.

I follow a Tibetan Buddhist practice called Dzogchen. We have primary & secondary practices. The primary practice is to descend to your deepest nature & live there; all the patterns that arise, arise naturally & freely. That’s liberation. Secondary practices include sounding, singing & visualisation – they are supports; only provisional, but sometimes very useful.

Druid. This is about my spiritual practice being rooted in the living presence of the land, honouring our heritage; natural, cultural, ancestral. I grew up loving the old tales & mythology & I still find them inspiring, but for me today my Paganism is more about working with the spirit of the place & the natural energies of the elements all around us.

I always say to non-druids: “We druids are very proud of our 300 year history of spiritual enquiry & experiment, mutual aid, creativity & political radicalism.” I take a folklorist stance: folk tradition always changes according to the times & the things people say about it also change according to the times. We’re still stuck with romantic fantasies about Merrye Englande which were out of date as soon as they were conceived a hundred years ago. Meanwhile back stage, there is a secret. A mysterious… Presence. That doesn’t change with the times.

Nature Mystic. What really inspires & moves me is what we modern folk call Nature. Life in all it’s glorious, messy, tangled sometimes horrific profusion. Geological layers; trees; bird-song; the ever changing weather; the sea, my own body; all have some kind of profound meaning. Not that they are just symbols, but rather each one can lead us on a merry dance, deeper & deeper into the mystery of our own experience of the Earth & the Cosmos. Beyond concepts, beyond clever ideas, beyond words; our own deepest nature, the wellspring of the world is alive & aware.

Animism. By animism I mean that we are members of a living community of persons, human & non-human. That what we are told are inanimate objects, forces of nature or lower life forms are animated subjects in their own right with their own dimension of existence; alive, aware & responsive to us. That we are held together by honour & kinship. It implies the re-enchantment of the world.

Some people are becoming propriatorial about this now; telling me that you can’t be an Animist & Buddhist for instance. Or that I am playing mix & match. I’m not practising any kind of syncretism, putting together a bit of this with a bit of that to suit. They’re just different ways of imagining the same indescribable things.

For me polytheism, monotheism, atheism, pantheism, panentheism & so on are all views. They are ways of looking at a question or a category of experience. Like software. I use them all according to the circumstances. Great Mystery doesn’t mind what kind of ideas you have about it, but it loves you when you turn to truly face its depth, wildness & vast openness, however you conceive of it.

You are also a performer. How does your work relate to your spirituality?

My performances as the Wild Man of the Woods have been going since 1991 & I have travelled all over the country to do my shows. I paint myself green & wear leaves on my head; I play music & sing songs; tell stories; talk about natural history & our heritage.

In many ways this kind of bardic work is directly inspired by my spiritual outlook & practice, but these have no explicit place in the performance as such. Mostly my audience consists of the general public at an event somewhere or the members of a school, library or club.

One of my keynotes is a quote from Keats: “Fair things pass by unheeded as the threshold brook.” I want to encourage my audience to appreciate the natural world more & as a result of that think about more ecologically sustainable behaviour. How can you get people to care about things which they don’t even know exist? So I try to be entertaining & memorable in the hope that whatever their level of engagement (which varies widely, I can tell you) they might become more attuned to the beauty, power & complexity of the natural world in their day to day lives.

I don’t promote the modern myth that what we call “The Green Man” is a coherent figure from our heritage or an ancient deity. I am happy to tell them that folk customs constantly evolve & mutate. He’s our Green Man, a sign of our times & our society.

This is part of what I tell people & that his origins are a mystery. In fact I see that as part of my brief, to invoke if nothing else, a sense of mystery & wonder rather than some kind of narrative of certainty.

I tell them: “You call me a storty teller, but let me tell you something. Some day the people of the future will tell stories about us! They will sing songs & write essays & plays about you & I, & what we did & what we didn’t do. I wonder what they will say about us?”

I wonder indeed. You can find Barry’s poetry and links to his other activities on his web site: http://www.redsandstonehill.net/

## Book Review: Letting in the Wild Edge by Glennie Kindred

The move to Westacre was always going to be a complete lifestyle change. From our postage stamp suburban back garden, we moved onto three quarters of an acre of old fruit trees, ornamental garden and vegetable patch. I knew my knowledge of growing things (both of the things that grow here and of how to encourage them) would have to expand massively.

Glennie Kindred’s book is doing a lot to help me with this. It has given me the confidence to start foraging the wild plants that are growing all around the garden and adding them to salads. After all, they are growing here for free and they contain nutritious minerals that we shouldn’t let go to waste.

The book is full of practical advice, but woven through this is a spiritual thread of kinship with and celebration of the natural world that resonates with me strongly. This is the way I’d love to live. So in the midst of our busy house renovation, I’m looking at our patch of land in a new way, with Glennie’s written encouragement.

The first part of the book has four chapters, each laying out a basis for working with nature in different contexts:
1. Out on the Land: ways of getting in touch with the land around us and the things that live there. There are suggestions for pilgrimage, spiritual practice, and foraging.
2. The Wild Gardener: how to bring wild plants into your garden space and manage them so they don’t get out of hand.
3. Kitchen Medicine: what to do with those wild plants, both for food and healing.
4. Seasonal Celebrations: how to celebrate the Wheel of the Year with your neighbours and community.

In the second part of the book, Glennie takes us through the yearly cycle, using the time around each of the eight seasonal festivals to guide us through our landscape and our garden with seasonal activities and recipes. She repeats the four themes of the first part of the book and applies them to each season.

Right now, we are On the Edge of Summer: April into May. It is the time when everything grows profusely and bursts into flower. The book explains clearly how to, for example, make flower essences from native trees, start growing wild native edibles, make flower wines and cordials, and create a temporary labyrinth for your Beltain celebrations.

This joyful book gets my fingers itching and has inspires me to learn to identify and use the wild plants in the garden. I look forward to doing much more as the seasons turn.

## What you can do

We are celebrating the gorgeous Spring weather and smiling as our fruit trees burst into flower. The damsons have already snowed down their petals onto the grass, but the pear trees are in full froth and the apples and hawthorn are about to burst into flower. What is flowering in your vicinity? Go and visit the flowers. Breathe in their scent. And smile.

You can keep in touch with all of Westacre’s news and progress on Facebook and Twitter. And should you ever fancy some weeding or lawn mowing, we could always do with an extra pair of hands.

You can find all our contact details at http://www.westacre.org.uk/contact/