September 29th is the feast of St Michael and All Angels, commonly called Michaelmas. It’s a feast celebrating the mythological story of St Michael and the heavenly hosts’ victory over darkness. It is acknowledging the presence of angels to message and protect us, the heavenly principalities and powers of light. If only the church took serious notice and called upon this powerful myth. It falls each year just after the autumn equinox the moment of equal light and darkness. For us in the Northern Hemisphere there will be longer dark nights, the falling of leaves and the dying back of vegetation. We notice more the night sky, moon stars and the planets on their journey.

Perhaps we don’t pay sufficient attention to the sky. We might notice the sun rise and rain clouds forming, but we probably don’t know where the moon is in its cycle or where we might find Saturn in the sky. It is difficult to see the night sky in urban areas so we become unaware of the drama happening above us. I am grateful to Matthew Fox in drawing my attention to the physical and spiritual rhythms and energies in the ‘heavens’. We pray ‘Our Father who art in heaven’ we sing of ‘angels and archangels and all the company of heaven’ and we read stories of transfiguration on the mountain and the ascension, all these about entering the sky. This is because we are grafted onto a Jewish spiritual tradition and cosmology with just two dynamic dimensions, the earth where God’s people live and the sky or heavens, the abode of God.

We have been limited by the Newtonian enlightened world which could only see an empty and silent universe where planets spin on mechanical and predictable orbits around the sun without the aid of God. But modern Cosmologists speak now of a different universe full of magnetic and gravitational energies – gas, rock, ice, beautiful nebula, bursts of colour, births and deaths of stars and galaxies ever expanding and everlasting and our little blue earth a fragment in this eternal dance.

Matthew Fox points to this magnificence and the significance of the heavens and speaks of the metaphor Father Sky (2008: p.3ff). He advocates a reconnection with the cosmos, particularly for young men who find in Father Sky a powerful healthy masculine archetype, a modern cosmology which recognises the eternity and forces of space for mortals made of star-dust. There is a reciprocity between ourselves and the energies of the universe and we do well to explore this more.

I mention all this because it was on Michaelmas day some years ago when I visited the Kilmore standing stones on the Island of Mull. Looking up from the stones I contemplated the drama and energies above me. But then there were also our ancestors who knew the ways of sun and stars, could measured the moon’s pull and from the heavenly cosmic dances erected the stones in the correct position to align the earth and the sky.

The stones called for a response from me – I was not a tourist ‘finding it all very interesting’ and then take a photo for Instagram. Rather I needed to find a way to engage with this mystery. Maybe a prayer or feeble ritual was required to mark the moment and the eternity which hung around the stone. So here is the poem which emerged.

Fox, M. 2008 The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculinity. California: New World Library.

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Kilmore Stones On Michaelmas Day

Standing stones set in the heart of the hill
autumn’s dying back in browns and orange.
They stand grounded deep in the peaty earth
stretching tall towards an eternity.

Above these stones there is a cosmic drama
planets and stars, angels and archangels
all the heavenly host still and still moving*
wax and wane, cycles of birth death birth.

From their rootedness they measure the dance
waiting an alignment of moon and sun,
once a year, a perfect moment of hope.

With my palms I trace the ancient scored lines,
runes maybe by my Neolithic forbears.

Impulsively I unbutton my shirt,
hands and arms wrapping the sharp stone,
bare chest pressed tight to it’s east face,
fragile soft skin, bone and blood against cold rock.

Maybe I had hoped for a vibration,
or to hear the wild men call down the years.
But nothing. Nothing came, nothing was heard.
It was a gesture.

But on reflection, I wonder.
It was me certainly who embraced that hard rock

But perhaps also in that short moment
with the sun moving behind the hill
and wind weaving in my hair
just maybe, the universe held me
a moment
in its wild eternity

“Still and still moving” T.S. Eliot

©   Tim Clapton

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A Meditation

Young men in prison, it seems to me, need as much energy and reassurance as they can possibly get. Shabby stinking isolation cells are lonely and fearful places in the dark hours of the night. Men in such need should know how to call upon St Michael and the heavenly hosts to defend themselves against spiritual darkness. Michael Fox proposes in his book a meditation which became a favourite amongst prisoners seeking protection and energy. Whether you are male or female you may like to have a go.

– On your own – solitary – no chance of disturbance

– Is it possible to glimpse a bit of sky? Look up to the sky

– feet apart, knees slightly bent

– slowly lift arms above your head imagining them entering the sky

– stretching up arms and hands further imagining the hands are entering space amongst the planets joining the dance,
energy, love permeating the whole universe……

– Call on St Michael and the heavenly hosts the defender, call, asking them to come.  Wait.

– when ready slowly returning the hands and arms to earth and your side.