Halcyon In Kaleidoscope

Imbolc, imbolc, the light will soon return, warm the Earth this winter's night and let the candles burn - from Ancient Dream, by Aeolian Songspell

A time of purification (hence spring cleaning), this is a hopeful time of year, with the days drawing out and even the mornings slowly lightening. Later this month, the first snowdrop and crocus should visit, suggesting that Spring is not far behind.

Imbolc is the Gaelic word for the slow moment between the winter and spring equinoxes. As the relentless cold makes us wonder for a moment whether it will ever end, we begin to find signs here and there that all is not quite as hopeless as it may sometimes seem, and that everything goes on. Frost is cold, but it will get warm again. It’s dark, but every day we’re given just a precious minute more of light. The dawn chorus grows just a little louder.

Please see below "talking change" pages, containing a wide range of quotes - some famous, many unavailable anywhere else - covering each of the 150+ elements of life that Halcyon writes about.

This is a work-in-progress and many more talking change pages will be added in late 2024.

See also:

• Talking Change - Acceptance
• Talking Change - Activism
• Talking Change - Animals

This is a work in progress. Please contact us to discuss further.

See also:

• Novelty and heresy

On an alternative world view

The sheer novelty of the ideas of such leaders not only addresses the issues at hand and but gives the world a new perspective to address issues of the future. The outmoded ways of leadership, of securing selfish interests and of exploiting public sentiments, should be relinquished. The new age leaders must look forward to lead the global thought rather than leading only a particular country or a section of society - Club of Amsterdam

This is for you and about you.

In the 1840s Henry David Thoreau swapped his busy schedule in Concord, Massachusetts, for a wooden hut he built himself near Walden Pond. We had the privilege to visit Walden in July 2012; it exceeded expectations in its tranquillity and beauty - and the swim in the pond itself was unforgettable.

Writing in the winter of 1843, shortly after Margaret Fuller’s mentorship made him a writer, the twenty-five-year-old Thoreau awakened to a snow-covered wonderland and marvelled at the splendour of a world reborn.

Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" is an epic poem written in the early 14th century, divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

Inferno:

• Dante finds himself lost in a dark forest and guided by the Roman poet Virgil.
• The pair descends through the nine circles of Hell, each representing different sins and their corresponding punishments.
• Notable figures from history and mythology are encountered, and Dante learns about the consequences of sin.
• Satan resides at the centre of Hell, and Dante and Virgil eventually climb down Satan's body to reach the other side of the Earth.

Purgatorio:

I have always been attracted by the veil, by seeing through a glass, darkly:

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half heard, in the stillness

Between the two waves of the sea

- from Little Gidding, T.S. Eliot

When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now

This is an evolving manifesto, more modest than great charters calling for widespread political change, or updated commandments for our time, or even simple poems for our time.

Instead, our small charter will be primarily a call for inner change, leading to outer change. We want to help people think more about how they can nurture key values. 

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone - Herman Hesse

As a member of The Woodland Trust, I regularly signed petitions to preserve ancient woodlands and unique trees. Does this make a difference? The battle is an ongoing one, but worth fighting, if necessary tree by tree.

December 1st comes around again. Grateful to witness it once more. So many memories - the most vivid from Campion Days of old...pushing for almost glory or just plain survival through fields of mud, up frosted hills, leading or trailing friends of yore.

I guess I've been aware of Walt Whitman as an American national icon since I was at university, and have long admired what I may be his most famous poem, I Sing the Body Electric.

It's probably been said many times before, and much more profoundly, and studied and dissected, but the poet's words do indeed seem to crackle with electricity, with vitality, with what Robert Pirsig called in Lila, "dynamic quality". This is a celebration of connecting, of being alive.

"Examine these limbs, red, black, or white—they are so cunning in tendon and nerve; 

They shall be stript, that you may see them. 

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs - George Eliot, Middlemarch

Unexpected celebrities have in recent times included the likes of Captain Sully Sullenberger and Susan Boyle, whose years of patiently working on their own talents suddenly came good, shooting them instantly to international attention, and who then accepted the spotlight, perhaps reluctantly, but with quiet dignity nonetheless.

If the past is replayed too fast, life seems futile, and humanity resembles water flowing from a tap, straight down the drain.  A film of history for today needs to be in slow motion, showing every person who ever lived as a star, though dimly visible in a night sky, a history still unexplored - Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity

A call to action. Time to explore these unexplored histories together. 

I was first attracted by Camus, "prince of the absurd" when I was 16. Camus still fascinates me, now well beyond what would have been his 100th birthday, and more than 60 years after his premature death in a car crash in Burgundy (it's said that he was found with an unused train ticket in his pocket - he'd planned to go by rail to Paris to rejoin his wife and children, but had accepted at the last minute the offer of a lift from his publisher).