Savanah's Year: Calas of Earth, Week 1

Just finished this week's lesson with Savanah, which went very well despite her having a pretty icky head cold.

To begin, we went over her "homework" from the previous week, matching up different associations and words for the four classical elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water and the three Druidic "elements" or aspects of Calas, Gwyar and Nwyfre. Surprisingly, she did better on the three aspects than on the four elements, although I think most people assume the four elements are more widely-known and more natural for people. We spent a lot of time talking about what mistakes she made with the associations with the four elements and what her reasoning was. Sometimes her thoughts were very sound (matching "east" with water and "west" with air because, where we live, the ocean is towards the east and our winds and weather come from the west), and other times they made less sense (matching "salmon" with air instead of water). She's already doing some really excellent work, though, in thinking things through and understanding how to make the associations and connections, though. For instance, her reasoning for putting salmon with air was because she knew air and "intellect" matched up and she remembered the Celtic tale of the Salmon of Wisdom, so she connected the salmon with intelligence. This gave us the opportunity to talk about "wisdom" and "intelligence" and ways in which they might be different; we discussed how a "wisdom of the heart" understands and appreciates the connections and relationships between things, and how patterns of relationship flow into one another. Not all wisdom is the impersonal calculations and measuring of the intellect, but each has their place.

So in general, that exercise went very well and opened up a lot of opportunities for discussion, which was fantastic. I think Savanah is really into the work so far and has a lot to say about her own thought processes, and her own worries. We moved on to this week's work, which was Week 1 of "Calas of Earth," in which we began by talking about the basic foundation of our spirituality as rooted in the sacred earth and a reverence for the five senses and the physical world around us. The nature of calas as "form" which gives rise to relationship, and thus to boundaries and limits and the importance of negotiating these with honor and love, brought up her anxieties about not knowing what "her calas" was yet, and so worrying that she might not know how to engage with others'. That's fantastic! I mean, of course she doesn't know all of her talents, gifts and limitations yet, but this year is in part about finding out what those are, and learning what our relationships with others and with the natural world can teach us about our own "calas," our own form in this world.

Her "assignment" for this coming week is to spend some time thinking about, talking to and listening to her (rather extensive) plant collection, and to journal about her relationship with the creatures, plants and people in her life. She also has two questions to answer: what kinds of things can interfere with our ability to appreciate the natural world, and what kinds of limits do we as human beings experience when trying to live honorably and in harmony with the natural world? I'm really looking forward to next week's lesson and hearing some of her thoughts on these topics.