Christmas Greetings from the Druid

and a few thoughts about the year ahead

Our druidy Christmas tree

Just a quick note to thank all of you for reading The Druid Stares Back and to wish you all a Merry Christmas and blessed New Year. I know how many demands are made on your time, so giving a little of your attention to read my scribblings means the world to me.

In 2025, I hope to finish a book, The Color Blue, a collection of essays. At the moment I am thinking through a piece on Dylan Thomas as tragic druid which is actually making me pretty excited. I get up most mornings at 5:00 to read and think—and at the moment Dylan, Sri Aurobindo, the Celts, and Atlantis are all running through my brain.

I also am hoping to start on a recording project of a number of songs I’ve written—including a couple I wrote in my early twenties—as well as a kind of Celtified version of “Scarborough Fair.” I’ve been working on arrangements and have already started talking to musicians, including my pal, Thomas Donohue, maestro of the uilleann pipes. I also intend to include a suite of the songs I wrote for Shakespeare’s The Tempest (that reminds me: there is still a little room in my Shakespeare, Magic, and Religion course set to begin on January 4th. Check out the details here if you’re interested) as well as one or two from Twelfth Night. I intend to marshal the troops for the project, including my three daughters and at least one of my sons. I might even try to coax the missus into participating. So stay tuned.

Here’s a song my wife wrote and that we recorded long ago. She sings like an angel.

I also plan on more courses. In the short term, those will include an online course on Blake’s Jerusalem starting in February or March and an in-person weekend workshop on Biodynamic Gardening here at the farm. Probably in May.

Here’s one of my songs from Twelfth Night, featuring some of Detroit finest musicians: Terry Burns on vocals, Jason Kuehn on twelve-string electric, Ron Pangborn (of Was Not Was, Marshall Crenshaw, and Matthew Sweet fame) on drums, Takashi Io on bass, Thomas Donohue on pipes, Paul Goodmen on accordion, the amazing Ryan Joseph (of Alan Jackson’s band) on fiddle, and yours truly on guitar and mandolin:

Making music, writing poetry, and farming for me are all expressions of the same impulse: a way to stave off the darkness of the world and allow the light to shine forth, certainly the leitmotif of this time of year. Which is why St. Paul’s words from Romans ring so true to me: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (8:28). We all have a vocation, something we are called to. And that doesn’t necessarily mean what we do for a living, but what we do to live.

Many blessings to all of you at this Holy Time.