May Day and the Ancestors

HAPPY BELTANE  friends..
Its the 1st of May,  and these lovely pheasant's eye narcissii are blooming in my garden and at last the sun is shining :-)   I planted them because my Mum used to grow them and I always loved them.  This is the 1st year I have had a group of blooms like this,  and their beauty seems like the right place to start this post..
Inspired by beautiful photos coming in on the email from friends who are celebrating this day,  I photographed the the flowers  this morning on my way over to our barn & looking forward to my daily  spiritual practice.

When I looked up in the barn,  there was a new image on the wall ..

Well,  to me this looked like a dancing woman,  with a banner,  or is it a snake ..?  I soon realised it was the shadow of a woodcarving that sits on a window sill and was made by a dear lady called Marjorie who was a fellow student of wood carving in a class I went to in the 1990's.   I knew Marjorie at the end of her life,  she was in her 80's,  and became a friend.  When she passed on her family kindly let me have this sculpture,  which I had seen her make in the classes,  & which was the last piece she completed.  So it is dear to me,  as she was - 

So,  this morning I felt Marjorie's dancing,  playful,  no nonsense  energy there in the barn,  which made me smile even more,  on this lovely sunny day.  Not  only was this image at the top of my wall,  but it was above two paintings  - 

these  paintings are about meditation,  death,  and the communication between power animals and the shaman - ( I have written at length about them in posts last autumn which you can find in the blog archive ) . So all this is at the core of my shamanic practice,  and it felt like a blessing to have the sculpture's  shadow dancing there too.  

On my One Spirit Interfaith training we are looking at buddhism this month and I am  using a beautiful daily prayer we were given (thank you , Cathy Slow ).  In buddhism ,  as on the shamanic path,  we honour and celebrate the Ancestors,  meaning all those who have gone before us in the widest sense,  not just our bloodlines.  So on this May Day  I would like to share it here. It is based on work with the ancestors by  Thich Nhat Hahn,   that wise vietnamese buddhist teacher..


In gratitude and compassion, I reach up to my physical ancestors

In gratitude and compassion , I bow down to my physical ancestors

My mother in me,

My father in me


In gratitude and compassion, I reach up to my spiritual ancestors

In gratitude and compassion, I bow down to my spiritual ancestors


In gratitude and compassion, I reach up to the ancestors of this place

In gratitude and compassion, I bow down to the ancestors of this place


In gratitude, compassion and the spirit of forgiveness, I reach up to all those I have injured

In gratitude, compassion and the spirit of forgiveness I bow down to all those who have injured me

In gratitude and compassion, I reach up I to all beings

In gratitude and compassion, I bow down to all beings