For the past few years, my friend and a wonderfully powerful poet, Reni Fulton, has conducted a poetry salon at her home in Red Lion, PA. She has dubbed her gathering Brighid’s Forge Salon. I finally took her up on her kind invite to attend the holiday salon two weekends ago. Fulton’s invitation said, “We will explore our unique and universal experience of the season through poetry and writing.”
Maybe you’re asking yourself the same initial questions I had. What exactly is a salon? And, why Brighid’s Forge? A salon is a periodic gathering of persons noted in literature, philosophy, fine arts, or similar areas, held at one person’s home. Salons thrived during the Enlightenment.
Brighid is the Celtic goddess of activities and states of being conceived as psychologically lofty and elevated, such as wisdom, excellence, poetic eloquence, craftsmanship (especially blacksmithing), and healing ability. In short, she was, and is, the goddess of healers, poets, smiths, and inspiration.
It is little wonder Fulton chose such an apt appellation for her salon. She forged her assemblage of poets and people from all walks of life, different ages, each on his or her separate path intellectually, educationally, occupationally, and spiritually.
Fulton embodies a keeper of Brighid’s flame, being herself a poet, a healer, a sage, and a muse. Fulton is a facilitator extraordinaire, having served Vietnam vets as a trained therapist and having helped so many others to find meaning in this life. Her salon serves as a forge to purify words with spirit and emotion, the raw material of meditation and discussion, to become later the beginnings of poems themselves.
One instantly feels welcome in Fulton’s home. There is an ambience both warm and inviting. Hot soup on the stove, the aromas of dishes her guests brought along, the oblong of chairs and sofa in her living room, the meandering of a dog and cat, the decor begging to reveal a story behind each knickknack and furniture piece—all commingle to say, “Come in, stay a while, join the celebration we call ‘this moment.’”
Having asked a round of trivia question starters, Fulton passed out copies, labeled for educational use only, of the following poem by Edward Hirsch.
I Am Going To Start Living Like A Mystic
Today I am pulling on a green wool sweater and walking across the park in a dusky snowfall.
The trees stand like twenty-seven prophets in a field, each a station in a pilgrimage–silent, pondering.
Blue flakes of light falling across their bodies are the ciphers of a secret, an occultation.
I will examine their leaves as pages in a text and consider the bookish pigeons, students of winter.
I will kneel on the track of a vanquished squirrel and stare into a blank pond for the figure of Sophia.
I shall begin scouring the sky for signs as if my whole future were constellated upon it.
I will walk home with the deep alone, a disciple of shadows, in praise of the mysteries.- Edward Hirsch
Fulton first asked us to pick out one phrase that spoke to us with importance. We then each contributed phrase and insight. What amazed me is that nearly everyone picked a different phrase!
Discussion ensued, including the relationship of the natural world to spirituality, the relevance of Sophia’s attachment to wisdom, the association of the astronomical, mystical, and mysterious, envisioned in the imagery of shadows, signs, constellated, dusky, prophets, ciphers, pondering, and occultation.
Conversation wove its way from the deeply personal to broadly religious contexts. The season of Advent, the Old Testament, eastern philosophy, numerology, genealogy, symbology, familial anecdotes–all enhanced the enjoyment one gets from such eclecticism.
One such discussion centered around whether we have had mystical experiences, which led to the question of whether we are occasionally mystics, which evolved into the revelation that mysticism is not something we can just try on.
Mysticism is not something we can casually attempt; we intrinsically either are or are not mystics. We can experience the mystical, but we cannot simply become mystics unless we are willing to be lost to this world apparent, a rare feat indeed.
Later, we broke bread and shared our “other lives” over repast and conversations, then eventually parted, knowing we had experienced an afternoon quite extraordinary and meaningful. We had entered the flame of human commonality and emerged stronger in our trust and belief.
We were somehow humbled by our communal awe of what we occasionally glimpse as insight into the experience of the inexplicable, which pushes and pulls us to find substance and sustenance in this world, by undergoing a kind of divine therapy.