Thank you so much Dougald for this lovely piece about Mark and about our work together for Dark Mountain. Really touching, So glad you and Anna and Alfie could be there for the ceremony and wake. Here's to remembering the inside-out, always here time, and all those who work invisibly both in spirit and in the depots of the world, who make life the joy that it can be for all of us, Here's to remembering how to laugh (like a wild god) and to take the (fucking) liberty! Lots of love from Suffolk, Charlotte
He sounds like he was one hell of a man, Dougald. Hearing this news from you and Caro has me pulling my old Dark Mountain books out of storage and working through them again, with gratitude. You've heard Steven Jenkinson's take one the word wake, I assume. If not, it's this: at the event we attend by that name after a death, we are quite literally standing in the outward-rippling swath that person made through the world. They are the same word. To be a-wake is to be turned toward, tangled up in, and willing to take a look at the ripples you're making before you go. Afterwards, those ripples become the inheritance for the rest of us.
Thankyou so much for sharing that understanding of the meaning of "wake" and "a-wake". I was not aware of this understanding from Stephen Jenkinson. I have attended many funerals recently, and each time I find my thoughts diving deeper and deeper into how this ceremony is an important touchstone of one's life lived, but also how energetically, there is a 'reaching out' with tendrils, that connects into each of the attendees present as well. For each funeral we attend, something more shifts in us spiritually, and hopefully we come away more renewed in our own clarity of purpose and valuing relationship (where there is not too much trauma involved in the death).
This understanding that you have shared, furthers my own thoughts about how powerfully important this ritual is - to the departed, and to the remaining - in weaving meaning into the days of our own lives that we have left to live.
Thanks for your meaning-filled words as always Adam.... I love this sentence "Afterwards, those ripples become the inheritance for the rest of us." We are not as islands in the stream, fully formed and unchanging. We are more as an artwork in the process of being woven, and for each person in our life that has touched us in deep and meaningful ways, we weave yet another strand (or many strands depending on depth of relationship ) of these people into what makes up the patterning and the structure of whom we are now. These threads that have been integrated into the weave as our 'inheritance' as you say, are of varying colours, shapes and sizes, but all essentially informing and guiding where the artwork proceeds to next. These threads pulled into us from the gifts of those whom have touched our lives, become the texture, the strength and the character, that makes up the uniqueness and blessing of each creation, that is each human soul.
Thanks Dougald. I am likewise touched by what you have shared of Mark Watson, and I also love your writing.
Thank you so much Dougald for this lovely piece about Mark and about our work together for Dark Mountain. Really touching, So glad you and Anna and Alfie could be there for the ceremony and wake. Here's to remembering the inside-out, always here time, and all those who work invisibly both in spirit and in the depots of the world, who make life the joy that it can be for all of us, Here's to remembering how to laugh (like a wild god) and to take the (fucking) liberty! Lots of love from Suffolk, Charlotte
He sounds like he was one hell of a man, Dougald. Hearing this news from you and Caro has me pulling my old Dark Mountain books out of storage and working through them again, with gratitude. You've heard Steven Jenkinson's take one the word wake, I assume. If not, it's this: at the event we attend by that name after a death, we are quite literally standing in the outward-rippling swath that person made through the world. They are the same word. To be a-wake is to be turned toward, tangled up in, and willing to take a look at the ripples you're making before you go. Afterwards, those ripples become the inheritance for the rest of us.
Thankyou so much for sharing that understanding of the meaning of "wake" and "a-wake". I was not aware of this understanding from Stephen Jenkinson. I have attended many funerals recently, and each time I find my thoughts diving deeper and deeper into how this ceremony is an important touchstone of one's life lived, but also how energetically, there is a 'reaching out' with tendrils, that connects into each of the attendees present as well. For each funeral we attend, something more shifts in us spiritually, and hopefully we come away more renewed in our own clarity of purpose and valuing relationship (where there is not too much trauma involved in the death).
This understanding that you have shared, furthers my own thoughts about how powerfully important this ritual is - to the departed, and to the remaining - in weaving meaning into the days of our own lives that we have left to live.
Thanks for your meaning-filled words as always Adam.... I love this sentence "Afterwards, those ripples become the inheritance for the rest of us." We are not as islands in the stream, fully formed and unchanging. We are more as an artwork in the process of being woven, and for each person in our life that has touched us in deep and meaningful ways, we weave yet another strand (or many strands depending on depth of relationship ) of these people into what makes up the patterning and the structure of whom we are now. These threads that have been integrated into the weave as our 'inheritance' as you say, are of varying colours, shapes and sizes, but all essentially informing and guiding where the artwork proceeds to next. These threads pulled into us from the gifts of those whom have touched our lives, become the texture, the strength and the character, that makes up the uniqueness and blessing of each creation, that is each human soul.
Thanks Dougald. I am likewise touched by what you have shared of Mark Watson, and I also love your writing.
Beautiful reflections. Thank you.