...Your account of your journey
is very moving - and the visits to Greek and Cretan sites stirred
up so many mem ories of my times in those places. Including the
knowledge that the "official" (Evans) version of Knossos was
missing a deeper truth. I like so much the simple naturalness of
your account - its everydayness - which makes your naming of the
sacred dimensions come across as
true and compelling...
&emdash;With
appreciation, Christine
(Christine Downing,
author of Goddess, Department of Religious Studies, San
Diego State)
...Loved your Goddess book. It
lives among our treasures! ......................................-
Love, Roger
(Roger Woolger, Past
Lives therapist; author of Other Lives, Other
Selves)
A review by Anne Mossop
I've just devoured Rushing to Eva
and loved it for various reasons. I realise how seldom I make the
time to sit and get lost in a book and it was just so lovely to
sit by the fire last night and read until very late - it's
something I miss and almost feel guilty about doing as I seem to
put reading for myself on the back burner. I really enjoyed your
journey and the way you write and brought it all to life.
Lots of little things have stayed
with me - most of all the adventuring in search of places and the
something more, those who love travelling but not the package tour
or fancy hotels, are looking for. It's the enjoyment of the
unexpected small things that happen and that you give the flavour
of a place.
So there are two, really three,
journeys going on at the same time, the journey through England,
Scotland, France, Italy and Greece taking us to ancient sacred
sites connected to the power of the earth as Mother, and all the
serendipitous small events and encounters along that route that
make those two strands so real. Then there is the third journey of
the inner life of the traveller that weaves in and out adding a
whole other dimension without taking over from the delights of the
first two.
I think I felt a strong kinship
with your way of travelling, taking the chances fortune brings
along, turning up late at night but always getting somewhere to
stay and then you manage to make your journey more than a travel
book, also an inner journey without becoming heavy. I think I like
that journeying to the underworld as part of the travelling. I
could exactly picture the airport, the journeys through the rain
on English motorways and that feeling of gripping the steering
wheel so tight.
Lots of things seemed to come back
to me as I read the English and Scottish parts, as just after I
left school I cycled from Glasgow to Oban and through Skye and had
all sorts of adventures trying to get ferries but being driven
back by wind from the Uists. I was with the one friend I still
know from school days - Mich. On the way, we met a young American
and the three of us had such fun together and it rained almost all
the time. We had carefully chosen the time called 'Hitler's
heatwave' early in June when the weather can be sunny but it
wasn't. Ron, the American, was living in England or Wales and told
us all about sacred places, goddesses, Avebury - and I know he
brought the forces of the earth alive so that I can see certain
places very clearly in my mind's eye even though I really don't
know anything about the ancients. We had funny adventures in
Scottish youth hostels, so strict and Puritan compared to Irish
ones at that time. Mich and I collected asterisks on our youth
hostel cards we only later realised were for grave infringements
of the rules.
So many observations are spot on,
like the compartment in the French train. I know exactly how the
French can look one up and down and find one wanting! Yet I love
them and also love how coffee or breakfast in each country is just
that bit different and the way on trains the unexpected happens.
That's what I love about travelling, the unexpected meetings,
events and so often wonderful little encounters. I went back to
Venice, Chartres and maybe that's one thing I learnt ( I've been
wondering just what I did learn and concerned if it's the 'right'
thing!) that I have felt something powerful, or something in
particular places but never thought about what it was or why.
Delphi is the only place I've been to in Greece and it is one of
those places I always can go back to in my mind. With Mich, the
same friend as in Scotland, we took the train from Belgrade to
Greece but it stops somewhere before the mountains and we had to
get off and weren't sure where to find a bus, so started walking
and a Greek tourbus picked us up, welcomed us, gave us retsina and
took us up to Delphi where I had pomegranates from a tree for the
first time and felt what a special place I was in.
Anyway, thank you for the book and
for its riches when you write about the soul. I picked up Thomas
Moore's Care of the Soul which I have also been reading, a
little at a time, and feel I understood about the 'magic aureole
of love (that) descends when no one is looking.' I think I'd like
to rush through the journey again for that. Maybe this could be a
beginning! I hadn't thought I would say anything except that I
hadn't written anything. So Rushing to Eva takes the reader
on a journey to sacred sites, special places filled with the
presence of the Great Mother, in remote, as well as familiar
places in England, Scotland, France, Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece.
At the same time as witnessing the powerful and ancient sense of
place, it is an intensely personal journey on every level.
What stands out from the mosaic
right now is still the excitement of the start of the journey, the
drama of getting or not getting on the plane, the backstreets of
London to that little place to hire a car and recognizing that
feeling of it being 'home' because you'd been there before, the
searches for b&bs or small hotels, some the pits and some
radiant because of the open hearted warmth you find, the motorway
in the rain, the poignancy of human aloneness and of the stories
that could be books in themselves of the Cathars, of Peter, of the
fire in Kilburn.
It is a book full of the riches of
an inner journey of the soul, and journeying to the underworld is
part of the travelling. The inner, the mystical and the spiritual
interweave with the journeys, lightly and full of joy. Tightly
gripping the steering wheel, driving through the rain on English
motorways, taking the chances that fortune brings along, turning
up late at night, but always getting somewhere to stay. So many
quick and clear observations, encounters, the compartment on a
French train, the delight in breakfast or coffee, always just that
little bit different in each country, and the unexpected, always
there around thecorner ready to surprise us.
This is a truly beautiful book.
It's a journey to get lost in, to enjoy, and memories come
crowding in. I think the dedication by Chrstine Downing, author of
Goddess, Department of Religious Studies, San Diego State
University expresses beautifully what I felt - about the sacred
within the joyousness of travelling: "...Your account of your
journey is very moving - and the visits to Greek and Cretan sites
stirred up so many memories of my times in those places....I like
so much the simple naturalness of your account - its everydayness
- which makes your naming of the sacred dimensions come across as
true and compelling..."
Click here
for several excerpts from Rushing to Eva
