A Few Brief Excerpts From This Book

Death is not a fearful thing because there's love.
Mystery should not be feared but sought;
its wonder is the path out of our doubt and pain.

To trust someone who tells you that they know a way; that isn't easy. And then to ponder and ponder and finally choose then wait on tenterhooks; and then at last to do whatever mumbo-jumbo that you're told will help the ritual begin, and then to really listen to the sacred tale, and call the god or goddess to your open soul, and really do the dance or pantomime or such for all you're worth; and then, with your body throbbing and weary and bound into a space of darkness, to await the deity. How hard is that?

An old blind man up by the table's head rises carefully to stand on wobbling legs. Some good girls and boys assist this blind old gentleman to find the chair that some have run to set in a shady spot beneath a tree. Our local champion poet brings the painted harp and gives it, bowing by his knee. And so he strikes the first note on the strings. He begins to sing amid the ringing chime. This reedy thinning voice cries out the tale of great Odysseus.

Down southeastward from the rugged mountains of Anatolia, east across the desert from the valley of the Nile, west from the green plateau of India, there lies a land of dry rolling hills and plains, scattered with lakes and thick lush marshes. Here two rivers, broad and mighty, wander to the Lower Sea.

Early summer is a coming of age. It brings a leap into maturity for Nature and for human hearts. The sun is rising up to rule the sky; the moon has turned her crescent and is falling low. It is a time for us to plow and sow. It is a time to glory in the forces rising in the Earth and dance in Heaven's light. Why not rejoice?

At one time, long ago, the king of Britain was a man named Vortigern. You have surely heard of "Good King This" and "Emperor That The Great" and too, as well, "Potentate Whomeverwhich The Wise"; but Vortigern was a bad king, a foolish one, a man of no accomplishments at all beyond the grand theatrical air of power and command in battle.

On the very day when Jack was born, his father was killed in a war and so his mother resolved to raise him somewhere quite apart from the corruptions of human society. She took him to a little cabin deep in the woods where almost no one ever came. There he grew with trees and animals and earth and sky as his parents almost as much as she was.

The tambourines had come out of the basket first. One of the women stayed there in the cave on this side of infinity and sang a song so they would not be lost and then the rest flew off or swam or ran or climbed far off beyond our human realm onto a certain distant mountain peak or craggy island. There they set a camp and sang and danced and struck their little jangling drums.

Behind Janet's house there was a path through an old garden over to her friend's house way over there. It was a wild old garden with all the trees and grasses and shrubberies and everything. There was a big rock in the center with a huge old wild rose bush bending up over it, a whole big rose bush in the center of the garden, with roses on it. One bright spring morn when there had been a little rain to wake up all the beautiful smells, she stopped to smell a flower.

With heart risen up into her throat, wondering at her hope, she threw together this and that then went out through the sleeping dew-wet camp and came upon the big fellow standing nude and barefoot, chanting at his meditations. Strong arms strained toward the growing light. The white mane tumbled down. She felt her old eyes aching to be filled.

The girl ran the few steps in to Selma's open arms, arms that opened wide to hold the girl. Then she had to let go of the child to pet the long and shining hair. "You fixed your hair real nice!" the mother said. "Raymond brushed it!" Melody answered, full of pride to have her brother's care.

When the mystic words were done, up they stood and the mother beckoned the daughter where they stood there at the hearth and each pulled loose each other's bow and helped each other take their tunics off and lay aside as if, almost, this was a simple night of homely life and they were bound to bed. Some of us cheered but others elbowed them to silence.

Well, the constable of Dundee castle had a son and that son was a hateful spiteful youth, very free about the town at robbery and rape. William Wallace, seventeen, boiling in the wrath of grief, donned a gorgeous suit he had of springtime green, and dainty shoes, and gaily feathered hat, and stuck an heirloom dagger that he had into his belt, its hilt all worked in ancient Celtic gold.

So, what are we to think of him? He was violent, self-righteous and cruel, ridden by madness. But still, John Brown fought against human slavery. And he fought with endless courage. And he gave up all a human being can have in this world for the fight.

What principles can we teach a boy that will help him guide his manhood into good behavior? Respect yourself, and earn your self-respect. Support and protect your people. Comfort anyone who is in pain.

Five times since Uther's wooing, the glowing Moon had turned the face she shows the human world, so on that summer day the Lady Duchess Igraine would stand the sea cliffs and trot the stone-fenced country lanes of her Cornish realm with belly well swollen and many distant thoughts. Only five moons more there were ere Yule when she would pace her privy chamber again in yearning expectation of a different man, the child of brilliant light who was not her husband's but her nation's and the world's.

The garden faeries had mentioned Destiny in their question, had they not? Now, Destiny is a force that draws you toward it, but so what? What good sense could he make of that? And would he ever live enough that he and they could find agreement on some answer?

Love is not the thing, nor hate. Faith is not the prisoner's chain, nor doubt the prophet's holy flame, nor greed the mother's teat touched to the sleeping baby's lips, nor is blessed charity the tyrant's grip. All this is life, but what is life? What is the melting of all opposites?

Now see the truth of All:
All is one thing;
a world of self-same strangers, cable of many threads,
garden of night and noon and morning,
magic loom of all there is.