Vigil
A vigil,
from the Latin ‘vigilia’
meaning wakefulness is a period
of purposeful sleeplessness, an occasion for devotional watching, or an
observance.
A vigil may be held on the eve of a religious
festival, observed by remaining awake—"watchful"—as a devotional
exercise or ritual observance on the eve of a holy day.
Most likely the best-known vigil is the Easter held
at night between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.
During the Middle Ages, a squire on the night
before his knighting ceremony was expected to take a cleansing bath, fast, make
confession, and then hold an all-night vigil of prayer in the chapel, preparing
himself in this manner for life as a knight.
In Christianity, especially the Eastern Orthodox
and Roman Catholic traditions, a vigil is often held when someone is gravely
ill or mourning. Prayers are said and votives are often made. Vigils extend
from eventual death to burial, ritualistically to pray for a loved one, but
more so their body is never left alone.
Source: Wikipedia
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| Vigil at dawn. Photo by Avi Allen |
12 Women made Vigil for 7 hours from midnight on 31st
March to dawn on Easter Day, April Fool’s Day 2018 at Capel y Graig, Ffwrnes.
This represented the final instalment of my ‘7 Sundays in Spring’ durational
everyday art piece. On preparing to write my usual reflective blog, another
form invited itself. It announced itself as needing to ‘break the form’ of the ones
which went before. This reflection comes in the form of a poem comprised of 12 sections,
each in honour of one of the 12 women who made Vigil.
1st Woman
The 1st
Woman put out the call.
‘To express and honour the grief and pain
of the world
by holding Vigil
from
midnight to first light.’
7 hours in
all.
The women
came. A hard-love call.
7 the number
of this game, of
7 Sundays in
Lent,
with ‘all
the women I’ve ever met.’
13 Women
Making,
16 Women in
the Woods,
44 Women
Walking,
11 Women Remembering,
13 Women
Dancing,
IN
PREPARATION FOR
16 Souls
invoking Isis
and then a
final all-nighter,
from
mid-night into Oestre/ Easter Day.
The 7th
Sunday cracks open
the well-laid,
well-made form.
In Capel y
Graig we gather.
12 Women
making Vigil from midnight into dawn.
Christ is
risen with the April Fool.
Happy Easter
/ Oestre all.
2nd Woman
This dreaded
woman has come to 6 Sundays.
She travels
by hook and by crook.
Something is
making her, breaking her,
calling her
to learn the lost art of grief.
She is
gifted with a dark night
of the soul.
This, her
first Vigil.
The first
for most.
She, 2nd
Woman is blessed with a companion.
An
unexpected one who needs cradling into death.
A Chaffinch
arrives at the door
In the hour
before midnight.
It will die,
we know.
A visitor
come to message us, though only few hear.
2nd
Woman hears.
Midnight
finds her outside the cold Capel
In the
warmth and the light of the vestry fire.
She learns
how to Vigil,
becomes
mother, mourner, midwife into death
of poor
Chaff.
She holds
its small body.
Its last
hours attended.
Chaff dies
at dawn, lasting through the night,
gifting
tears, giving meaning, to this time.
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| Vigil at dawn. Photo by Avi Allen |
3rd Woman
Woman number
3 is all magic.
This too is
her 6th Sunday.
She knows
there is weaving going on here.
Something
not accessible to the logical mind alone.
She can
wait.
She sits
cross-legged in her many skirts.
She is made
for Vigil.
It’s in her
braids and in her bones.
She attends
her candle, darkening in
its
reflected light.
Back,
dancer-straight, all poise and patience.
Then like a
she-wolf she stirs.
The transition
from still to moving is invisible.
She walks
the line between the worlds.
Loops the
thread back and forth between the two.
She too is
attendant of Chaff.
Knows it has
come, like a sacrifice.
She moves in
the shadows.
Not dance.
More earth
than light,
more root
than wings.
She knows
how to do this.
She has dug
her fingers deep into this place before.
Grief is
under her nails.
She kisses
and blesses it.
4th Woman
4th
Woman comes.
She is a
woman of the elements.
She knows
her directions.
Her manner
soft, though
she carries
a sword.
This is her
2nd Sunday.
She has
danced in the castle at dawn.
And now
presents herself to the midnight hours.
The
grandmothers come with her.
She never travels
alone.
Always the
dance.
She is
versed in its language.
Articulate
words, articulate body.
Brings a
knowing of the hands that
shuffle the
tarot and the wisdom,
words and
the ways of the old ones.
She moves in
the dark.
Certain. A
prayer moving through her.
She will not
sit in silence.
She sculpts
the dark-light, half-light,
candle-lit
cold of the night-time hours.
5th Woman
The 5th
is no stranger to the Vigil.
Her and
death are old friends.
She’s been
making peace with grief and sorrow
for years
now.
Her presence
weights this Vigil.
She brings
her gentle strength, made vulnerable
with cold.
She sleeps,
she wakes, she sleeps, she wakes,
lullabied with
song and sound.
Cocooned in her
covers, candle close at hand.
She is the
circle’s elder.
Brings with
her many lives, many circles of
gathered women.
She brings
The Magdalene,
making meaning
of Oestre, the Goddess
behind
Easter time.
She knows
her words by heart:
“To live in
this world you must be able
to do three
things…”
Surrendering
into illness, making Vigil
in the way
she needs.
Punctuating
silence with coughs and sneeze.
She who
connects the women past,
to the women
present and knows how to befriend the women
of the
future.
Wise in her
rites of passage between this world and the next.
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| Vigil at Dawn. Photo by Avi Allen |
6th Woman
6th
Woman is new to the circle, though she has
been with us
before.
Dancing at
dawn in her bed, then not present
but present,
And now
present, so present.
She stills
the air around her by her presence.
I sense she
is no stranger to the Vigil.
She has sat
with many during the dark hours.
This woman
of the dusk and the caverns of the heart.
A
gentlewoman who knows her worth.
She brings
with her, the language of
the land.
She can
speak to this Capel y Graig,
This chapel
of the rock.
She can
speak in song, and lights up
the early
hours with her voice.
She could
sing from the pulpit, was born
with an
ability to do so, but
has chosen
instead to step away,
to leave
this place, vacant and open
Its power in
the possibility of potential.
7th Woman
Woman 7 is
all animal.
Her 4 legs
and long hair might distract from her fierce
sensitivity and
strength.
She is a
woman who can attend the mystery.
An alchemist
of the space between things.
She arrives,
always last with her twin other.
She will
half-Vigil.
Knows she
will be present for the darkness.
Knows she
will be gone by first light.
This Vigil
is her first of 7 Sundays in Spring.
Though her
name has been weaved into all.
She, perhaps
the invisible thread or
the needle
that pulls it.
She is one
of a line of women.
Gives herself
as witness of
the beauty
and the sorrow.
She is all
heart.
She is all
brain in her body, animal
in her
being, presence
in her
absence.
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| Vigil at dawn. Photo by Avi Allen. |
8th Woman
Woman 8 has
travelled far, to the East and back,
and beyond.
Host of the
first of these 7 Sundays, she knows
she needs to
be present for this last.
It almost
wasn’t so. It’s always thus.
Almost wasn’t
but always is.
She is a
woman who can Easter and April Fool,
is happy
home with either.
An artist to
the core, who gives it
all away.
Nomad, at ease
in all places.
She glides
through the Vigil in restful sleep
and seeks
out another when we’re done.
She’s lived
through life and death and makes it her
business to
keep on doing so.
She finds
her place closest to the pulpit,
dream-sleeping
with God.
As at home
in a capel as a coffee shop.
Soft
presence, gentle snores sculpt the night’s light.
9th Woman
The woman of
the three-times-three
is no
stranger to Vigil.
She comes,
celebrating and mourning the tatters of her soul.
Brings her
personal to the planetary sorrows.
Has lived
the political life, the examined life.
Restlessly
questing in service of Earth.
She was
never not going to be here, though
it has cost
her much.
Making an
art of positive disintegration, she holds
a bright
candle through this dark night, sings
her
full-heart, full-throat voice.
She is
moving, introducing herself
to this new
land.
Coming home
and being received in a life beyond Vigil.
Knowing the
full moon darkness lights the way to the
beginning of
all things.
10th Woman
This 10th
Woman knows the ropes.
Has come
from the borders, but
knows this
territory well.
She is ready
to Vigil and brings her
Priestess
ways.
Anointing,
blessing, perfuming the dark.
She has been
making Vigil alone
these past 7
Sundays and
will
continue to do so once Easter has come and gone.
She brings
with her the mythic.
Separates
the dark from the light,
the water
from the land.
Her hands
have weaved oracles
and spun
shrouds before now.
She brings
with her the weight of silence and mystery.
Though new
to our circle, she has been here
many times
before.
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| Vigil at dawn. Photo by Avi Allen |
11th Woman
Woman number
11 needed a rest.
Needed to
simplify, do less, but
still she
came.
She’d felt
the pain of life in her belly since she was 12.
And now it
rises again, forcing her horizontal.
She is no
stranger to witnessing the grief of the world.
Has brought
it with her, been welcomed by it
on arrival.
A fierce
humour and dark intellect she carries.
It makes her
strong. It cracks her open.
She sleeps.
Drifts in and out.
Listens to
the poems.
Mary Oliver,
Rilke, Wendell Berry.
She’s heard
them all before.
She has already
walked a hundred miles on her knees.
And knows
she does not have to be good.
And still
she shoulders the pain.
And now she
lets it go, surrenders into sleep.
Sleeps so
that the wakeful ones have the gift of watching over her.
12th Woman
Woman number
12 – mother, host, nurse, minister and midwife.
She is
custodian of the Capel chapel.
Gently guards
the space, communing.
Determines
what comes in, what needs to be left at the door.
She lights
the fire.
Has dreamt Capel
into being, or been dreamt into being by it.
Our Vigil is
homed here.
Is offered
space and chance to nest.
Woman number
12 documents the proceedings.
Makes it her
work to be guardian of the little understood, almost invisible,
not yet
born, space between things.
She speaks
Vigil. It is her art-form.
She mourns
the bird.
It breaks
her heart.
It has been
broken countless times and shall be again.
It is hard
to have a practise of the broken heart.
She tends
the bird.
Knows the
hour of its death.
Lights the
candle.
Buries it,
returns it to a dawning sky.
Towards the
light of Easter/Oestre Day.
This was a Vigil for many things.
In the end, it became a Vigil for a small bird who came to us in the hour
before we took our places in the Capel.
Vigils extend from eventual death
to burial, ritualistically to pray for a loved one, but more so their body is
never left alone.
In the past 50 years in Britain, through the intensification of agriculture, we have destroyed well over half of our biodiversity, and the populations of birds, butterflies and wild flowers that once gave the landscape such animation and thrilling life have been utterly devastated – the figures are there. Most notable is the case of farmland birds, which by the government’s own admission declined by 56% between 1970 and 2015; it is estimated this represents a loss of at least 44 million individuals. The Guardian.
Fern Smith is an Arts Council of Wales Creative Wales Recipient and has just discovered with with the help of a close friend, that she is an 'Experiential Ritual Artist'.
Future work includes:
Practising the Art of Living (co-guiding)
https://courses.cat.org.uk/sustainable-living/practising-the-art-of-living-detail
Woman Time (co-guiding)
http://www.woodlandjourneys.org.uk/wild-camps--quests.html
Vision Quest (assisting guiding May 18 - 27)
http://earth-encounters.org.uk/events-prices.html
For more information see www.emergence-uk.org
With thanks and appreciation to Avi Allen and Capel y Graig for making us welcome. Thanks and respect to Donna, Gilly, Ailsa, Chris, Christine, Jess, Jo, Janne, Lis and Kelli.
