Vow of Friendship (from the Druids)
I honor your gods.
I drink from your well.
I bring an unprotected heart to our meeting place.
I hold no cherished outcome.
I will not negotiate by withholding.
I am not subject to disappointment.
I cared for a 98-year-old man last autumn who played piano every day since he was a boy. I admired his discipline. When I worked with him, he’d play me a song, then I’d play him one. I chose Gillian Welch and Alice Coltrane. He hadn’t heard either to my surprise. He’d listen fully and completely and afterward, he’d say “WOW!” He was always in awe like that. He was the type of person who wanted to know everything about you and actually listened to what you said. He had lost his sight, so he’d listen without seeing. He was my teacher in that way. How to listen fully and completely and with curiosity.
In the month of July, I helped his daughter to move out his belongings from his house. She couldn’t do it alone, physically or emotionally. I was honored to help. I learned so much about him and his life by his books, art and treasures from around the world. The house still had his gentle, sweet presence. We were on our last day cleaning out his music studio and I was feeling some troubles of the heart that day about a relationship and his daughter picked up this notecard with the Druid Vow of Friendship and said, “I think this is for you.” It provided such a sense of relief and understanding to my current situation, but since then, I see it also as how I enter into my work as a caregiver and a doula. Especially:
I honor your gods.
I drink from your well.
I hold no cherished outcome.
He had another discipline until the final weeks of his life, he would walk up the hill to share consciousness with his special tree, one that was split in two - one part black, dying, and one part, light, vibrant. He’d put his hand on the tree and share consciousness with the tree, he said. I knew they had a lot to share. Having lived almost a century, I imagine he’d had many parts of him die and many to be reborn and birthed anew. When he was dying, we placed a piece of the bark of the tree at his altar and I suggested that he could still share consciousness with that tree even without his hand there.
A song he played me that I still think of often and can hear his voice singing…
“A little white light will lead you right to my blue heaven.”
