While Waking the Words are Written; While Sleeping They Come to Light

And that's a bit of a turnaround I have to say.

More typically it is the Dream which is hard to decipher, but in this case it seems the reverse is true.

Well, I can't exactly patter onto my keyboard in my sleep, although I've done it with my eyes closed at times, which has occasionally resulted in having to translate gibberish.

Regardless, it is in sleep that epiphanies sometimes occur.

I took a power nap because I have a difficult time ahead of me with my part time shift-work job.

When I woke up I had come to understand something.

The tables have indeed turned about in some ways.

Remember when Dunnottar hosted Adaun and his cronies and nobody could figure out why they put up with them for as long as they did?

They stuck around even after Alianora and Drustann let fly at them.

Drustann Speaks

I feel like finishing up that mead that the younglings and I are working on and drinking the lot of it! 

                 

Not really.  It won’t be good for drinking until next year anyway – but I tell you! 

Those strangers have some nerve!

They come into OUR home, they eat OUR food, they enjoy the warmth of OUR fire, and then they PREACH to US – and tell us that OUR ways aren’t going to be tolerated?!? 

When everyone else got up and left I wanted nothing more than to just go too – but Alianora and I stayed as long as we could stand it. 

By the time they were through we were steaming and trying very hard not to show it.  I thought we might just walk out with dignity but then we just COULDN’T.  We could NOT just walk away and leave them un-answered. 

So maybe we lost our tempers a little.

Alianora Speaks

Well of course we lost our tempers.  Better OUR tempers than those of some of the others! 

Those men!

Do they think we will listen to what they tell us and just sit ourselves down and shut ourselves up? 

THEY can sit down and shut up!

And so I told them. 

I do not apologize, either. 

They have not the right to come here to our home and tell us what to believe and how to celebrate our faith. 

They most especially have not the right to push Rome on us.  We will not accept it any more now than our people ever have, from many generations before even the Cuimhne Daoine can remember.  The Holy Trinity is our authority, not Rome. 

Our faith is in GOD, not some religious organization.  The Trinity, Father, Mother, Son – that is the centre of our faith, not some guy in Rome or anywhere else who thinks we need otherwise. 

We have been many places, Drustann and I – and yes we see the impact that change has been having.  It’s not that impressive, to tell you the truth.  We haven’t seen that it has brought to anyone anything as good as we have here on Dunnottar, let alone better! 

These strangers are full of crap. 

And so I told them.

Now, these words are pretty Dunnottar-specific, but the sleeping thing was not.

I woke up thinking, 'I hope Scotland has strict immigration laws.'

And that sort of surprised me as I'm not against immigration in the least.

Then it came to me: the sort of 'immigrants' that come in and try to change a People's way of life and replace it with one of their own really ought not to be there in the first place.

What happened to Adaun and his followers? One of the later books tells: 'They came jeering; they left in bonds.'

Nobody hurt them, mind you - instead they were firmly escorted back to where their points of view were more appropriate.

And the thought flowered.

Is not a similar situation currently in play?

Not in Scotland per se, but elsewhere in various places? Do we not have those who would change our culture coming among us? Which isn't to say that cultures don't change over time; they do. But in their Own time, and of the volition of their OWN people. 

Being American, my eye falls first on my own nation.

Yes, we as Americans have the right to criticize our administration, and we do. Unremittingly, scathingly, we criticize whoever is currently in power. It is perhaps the one of our many rights that we tend to fully exercise. *wry chuckle*

And we quote Arbroath although most of us have never heard of the Declaration of Arbroath (which is a Scot thing, by the way) when we say if we don't like the way somebody is leading us we can and will oust him and choose another.

Anyway, the point here is that if a person chooses to move and live in a different place, and they expect that place to change to become more like the place they left ... they ought to return (or be returned) to somewhere that's more in tune with what they want. They won't be happy here and will end up making everyone around them unhappy, and perhaps angry, as well. How is that good for anybody?

On the other hand, there's room here for diversity. So long as each and all follow their chosen paths in Peace without causing friction or a ruckus, let them live in their Peace, and preserve our own by doing so.

What the heck.

How many of us have ancestors from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Germany, Ukraine, Poland, Italy, Scandinavian countries, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Spain ... the list goes on ... who are but the Celts of old?

And really. Who has ever been able to tell the Peoples of this heritage ANYTHING? They rarely even listen to one another! Ah, but when they do ... Rome stops expanding and falls, Attila stops expanding and falls, what could be termed 'internal bad attitudes with intent to do harm' are stopped although it might take a world war or two to do it, and attitudes are adjusted.

Many and many lineages have combined and recombined over the years, the decades, the centuries, the millennia ... but one thread seems to run strong and true throughout all of the combinings and recombinings, and that is something that resides within the spirit of each and all, hiding perhaps, or biding, but as surely there as the breath of life. 

Me, I call it the Will to Choose. Others call it other things, some with positive connotations, others less flattering. Either way, there it is and there it will most likely remain until the last of us is gone. Which isn't likely, all things considered.

So yes, people can choose to come to our nation. If they choose to leave their own behind, that's up to them. But, once here, they really don't get to impose their own ways on those to whom they have come. If they want their old ways, why did they leave where they came from in the first place? If they see something of value here, and want a piece of it, how does it serve them to try to change it? All it does is piss people off.

Keep in mind that I'm not talking about those who show up on our shores or borders with a sincere desire to make themselves an integrated part of what we have going here, or who are fleeing for their very lives.

And I'm not particularly talking about our southern border, either. If the People of Mexico are so bound and determined to become Americans, they have a path before them should they choose to take it. Cultural integration in our southern areas has been a reality for many and many a generation already. IF the People of Mexico want to join with the United States of America, let them do so in the proper manner. They're not doing themselves any favors by sneaking when an open approach would better serve.

Be that as it may ... 

I'm finding myself wondering just what all else is going to show up while sleeping in regard to the words pattered onto a keyboard while waking ... here I thought this mystic journey was done and over with at the completion of the Mamm Books, that I could get on with getting on.

Yet, in the writing of them, I had not the time to really think overmuch about exactly what was being written, just trying to keep up with the Characters was hard enough!

And now I come to find that perhaps they really DO have more to say than I thought, these Characters from long ago.

So I'll say it again:

What the heck.

I better sit myself down and read them I think.