Journeying with the Holy Thorn ~ Days 2 & 3

The Plant Spirit Challenge 2023, Day 2: Meditate & Day 3: Make an Offering

Days 2 and 3 of the #PlantSpiritChallenge are Meditate and Make an Offering.

Day 2: Meditate

I decided to combine days 2 and 3 as I knew that I wanted to make my offering at our nearby Pond Hill hedgerow hawthorns, who are old friends, and I find it so much easier to meditate when I’m walking. I did try at home the night before but, other than having a sense of the many wildly growing individual hawthorns scattering our land in a great untameable web, I didn’t get very far. Although, thinking about it now, that is quite a striking image!

When I approach a sacred place or being I like to spend a long time getting there. I wind my way in, getting closer and closer rather than going directly. Today, I began with a little picnic in the tiny wood on the edge of our nearby housing estate. The seat was shaped like a butterfly. I liked that.

Next, I began to make my way across our local field. Walking there is a mixed blessing these days, as the less managed side of the field has had a children’s adventure playground erected on it by the building company who are putting up hundreds of houses here. Community engagement and all that! I have no objection to the playground, and a lot of children have begun to use it, but I continue to grieve the loss of my much missed tiny tundra, once carpeted with reindeer lichen, stonecrop, and honeysuckle, with drifts of rosebay willowherb in late summer.

Today, as I walked across the field I visited my beloved jelly ear fungus community

and then saw that the fence dividing that side of the field from the other had been, quite dramatically, knocked down. It looked as though a car had driven over it!

The knocking down of fences was a theme of my entire walk, as I found the same on the other side of the field. It seems that people have had enough of being fenced in or, more to the point, fenced out.

On the other side of the fence was a line of saplings, which were clearly meant to grow into a hedge. There were a few beleaguered hawthorns amongst them and I reflected on the ways in which the Inclosure of the Commons continues & how hawthorn is so often forced to be a part of that. Continuing to walk, I found a most welcome new bench, although it was facing a rusty barbed wire fence and a pile of rubble when, if it had been facing the other way, the view would have been of beautiful wild grasses.

I found a possible patch of rosebay willowherb, the first elderflowers, and visited my friend Rosa, the Peace Tree, who was surrounded by drifts of stunning cow parsley. Heaven on earth.

There was still some fence up there and, between that fence and the one bordering the field, was a clear desire line where people had decided they would walk, fences or not. I found that both glorious and sad.

My clear message from the walking meditation to meet the spirit of hawthorn was “don’t live between the cracks.” I know that there are ways in which I try to live my life in as small a way as possible, and so this was a personal message for me, but I was aware that it was also a message for all of us. Until we ‘knock over the fences’ and take back the sacred land we will always be living lives that are too small for us. Don’t live between the cracks.

Day 3: Make an Offering

Having visited Rosa, the Peace Tree, I made my way to the hedgerow, which is on an, occasionally quite busy, narrow road.

I began at the promontory that looks out over the little valley. There was a small hawthorn there, almost in the flower. I greeted it warmly. The banks around it were scattered with red campion and speedwell. Beautiful!

Then to the hawthorns! There are four hawthorns in the hedgerow of varying sizes. I visited the largest one first (and found the first green flames of new mugwort leaves on the way).

The tree was awash with blossom and somehow had a shape that made me feel it would be possible to climb inside it and rest in a hawthorn bower. I will be visiting that blissful thought whenever I have a little daydreaming time. I spent some time with the tree, cut just one piece of flower-covered twig (as I did from each tree), and moved on to the next.

Each tree was not only smaller than the one before, but had fewer flowers open, until the last smallest tree had none at all. They must show how the sun moves along the edge of the valley. I paused for a while at the third tree, which grows in the midst of the old man's beard and brambles, and decided to make my offering there.

As I did with ground-ivy, I wanted to offer a song, but although with her I spent days crafting just the right song, I decided this time just to see what came in the moment. I felt a little self-conscious, as there are often people walking along the opposite pavement and also I was causing cars to have to stop to get by me if anything was coming the other way, but I decided to be brave.

The song that came was, “Blessed are you, the beings of the hedge. Blessed are you, who call us to the edge.”

I had sung it a few times when I heard the most striking bird song and saw two darting goldfinches flitting past me. So exciting! But then they stopped on a branch about 5 feet directly in front of me and, facing me, began to sing along, or that‘s how it felt. It was the most magical moment. There were four or five goldfinches altogether; a little charm. I felt so blessed; goldfinches are shy birds and I have hardly ever seen them. Today, I was able to watch them for about five minutes, after which time they zoomed off. Whilst they were there and the song continued, there was no traffic and no one walking nearby. I felt that my offering was accepted. Time out of time.

Continuing, I began to walk on to the next tree. I caught another song as I walked, “The hawthorn and the hare, they are wild, they are wild. The hawthorn and the hare, they are wild. They will not be defiled. The hawthorn and the hare, they are wild.”

I came to the end of the road and spent some time enjoying the beautiful view(with more hawthorns). As I stood there, two young men from the nearby Napier Barracks, where asylum seekers are being housed, asked me if there was somewhere they could light a fire to cook on. It was sad to have to tell them that in this country there is really nowhere to do that. More fences!

When I got home I looked up goldfinches. I had not realised that goldfinches were, and are, commonly kept in captivity as songbirds. Indeed, in 1890 one of the newly formed RSPB’s first campaigns was against the practice. In the 19th Century, many thousands of wild birds were captured and caged ~ fences again. It is also the case that, if goldfinches are kept with other birds, they will take on the song of the other species. What a perfect metaphor; if we are caged too long we begin to sing another’s song (and lose our own)!

The goldfinch is also important in Christian symbolism (and is one of the companions of St Brigid). Because they eat thistle seeds they are associated with the crown of thorns (sometimes believed to have been woven from hawthorn!). They are also said to symbolise the foreknowledge Jesus and Mary had of the Crucifixion, hence Raphael’s 1505-06 painting, ‘Madonna of the Goldfinch’, in which an infant John the Baptist is holding out a goldfinch to the baby Jesus.

Another story says that a small bird flew down and plucked a thorn from the crown, Jesus’s blood splashed on them, and that's why they have spots of red on their plumage.

Goldfinches are considered to be a ‘saviour bird’, a protector against plague, and are associated with St Jerome, patron saint of archaeologists and archivists. I am enchanted of course.

What a truly magical encounter, and an exponential deepening of my relationship with hawthorn, whose name in Welsh is, beautifully, y ddraenen wen (which means ‘white thorn’). It feels important to know the name of plant beings in an older, poetic tongue. More etymology on another day. For now, I feel deeply blessed, excited for the rest of this unfolding journey, and Mary of the Ordinary Magic is surrounded by hawthorn on our kitchen windowsill.