Interview with a Celtic Visionary: Frank MacEowen

by Jim Mullin-Norgaard

Poet Shamanist Author Frank MacEowen is easily one of the foremost creative channels of the Celtic Spirit today. His books, The Mist Filled-Path and The Spiral of Memory and Belonging, have provided many readers with a deep well of healing and soul-retrieval, laced with the magic and lore of the Celtic otherworld. His training and vision broadly embrace his contemplative studies at Naropa University and his research into peacemaking at Northland College in Wisconsin. Of Irish, Scottish, and Welsh ancestry. Frank now divides his time between Ireland and the United States. In his work as a retreat facilitator, Frank MacEowen employs a blend of shamanism, transpersonal soul work, Shambhala Buddhism, and Irish Earth Spirituality towards “healing our common wound”—the subject of this interview.

JMN: What’s your prognosis for life on the planet today? Your hopes and fears?

FM:The prognosis for life on the planet is a mixed bag, and it always will be. There are things to be very, very hopeful about and other things that truly cause me to shiver.

On the fearful side, I’m concerned about the sustainability of our economic systems and the implications of this for the environment and future generations.

I fear that the basic choice before us as sentient beings: to be conscious and awake and to evolve, or to remain habitually-driven addicts, will be one where we will collectively make the wrong choice. As Kitaro, the musician and holy man has said, “The wars of the world don’t come from outer space. People create them, people who have a war within themselves.”

On the hopeful side of things, there is and always has been a process taking place: through time, through history, involving human consciousness, involving the inter-relationship of individual human life and society, and I believe that process is, an evolutionary one.

We’ve had certain avatars and mystics, such as Jesus, Gautama Siddhartha, Hildegard of Bingen, and other wise teachers of today, such as Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron, Father Thomas Keating, the Dalai Lama, who have tried to continually remind us of this evolutionary process and our part (or potential part) in its unfolding.

JMN: The unfolding?

FM: Call it Divine Will, or Buddha-nature, or simply, as author and teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn refers to it, “coming to our senses” through mindfulness, but there is a process of consciousness-evolution taking place within humanity and, so, if I had to place my bets, today, I feel like I’d place my bets on humanity waking up.

So is it Break through or Breakdown? I take issue with this “either or” view. I see the breakdown has already begun, and the breakthrough will follow from this.

JMN: You are author of two outstanding books that deal with Celtic spirituality and healing, and a beautifully moving poem that readers of Healing Garden Journal saw in the last issue entitled “The Common Wound.” How would you define “the Common Wound” for HGJ readers?

FM: It is interesting to be open to this concept. “Wound” implies suffering and pain, yet I think this wound is potentially healing because it binds us and we all share it. Seeing it in global events opens us to what Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche refers to as “the genuine heart of sadness” in his classic work, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior. The Common Wound is that dimension of our human-ness that does not distinguish between gender, race, socio-economic standing, or religion. It’s that quality of human experience where all the pretenses, all the conditioning and messages about how we’re all different get melted away and we understand our unity. Tsunamis and 9/11’s do that. Busses blowing up in Israel and kids dying in collapsing buildings in Palestine can do that.

On a more personal level, I think it’s where how we think it’s “supposed to look” gets stripped away and we just see life, reality, suffering, tenderness, our own faults, and our own brilliance, starkly, and for what it really is.

You watch Schindler’s List by Spielberg, or Kundun by Martin Scorcese, and you can’t help but feel the Common Wound and realize it’s not just “their” wound we’re talking about, but it’s my wound and your wound too. When we have the kind of courage where we can step out of our own little dramas enough to really open ourselves up, be vulnerable, and allow ourselves to feel that raw transpersonal dimension of things where anyone’s suffering is made our own, then we’ve reached the level of the Common Wound. I think all of the great contemplative traditions aspire to cultivate this in practitioners, and I think this is what good literature, good film, and good music can and should be about.

JMN: Please describe the nature of your work today, and what approaches you see as most valuable in helping to heal the Common Wound.

FM:As far as working with the Common Wound, and ways we can address this today, I think first and foremost we have to trust in the inherent intelligence of the wound. We have to cultivate practices and a quality of attending to the wound in ourselves, each other, and the Common Wound wherever we might encounter it and trust that when we do encounter it that it doesn’t seek to swallow us up, but that in actuality it seeks to take us somewhere new, to another level, what some people call healing. If we can learn to trust in the nature of the wound, open ourselves to the teachings that wounds hold, it will enrich our lives. John O’Donohue, the author of Anam Cara, laments what he calls “the culture of woundology,” where in self-help circles people can get stuck in their wounds. I’m not talking about that, but I am saying that alongside any “culture of woundology” that might be present there is just as much a “culture of wound-avoidance” and that will not bring about transformation. It will only set up a pattern of re-creating the same conditions, much as we see in the deplorable environmental situation and the global conflicts. If we avoid wounds and do not truly engage them for the purposes of awareness, this is when we are truly wallowing in it because we actually model and mirror this to our children.

JMN: “Tara’s Meadow” is an eight year old healing community endeavor, springing from a wild piece of earth on remote Beaver Island. This summer we will be opening an indoor “healing hexagon” space to compliment our meadow and forest camp. How can such a remote, wilderness-based healing center serve best the global goal of healing the common wound?

FM: Right off the bat I would say to establish some way to get people into that space who wouldn’t ordinarily have access to it. Work with inner city youth or work in conjunction with a program that seeks to introduce the healing power of nature and community to young people who might otherwise only have access to street-corner drug pushers or the dead-end road of gang culture. I know that sounds like a tall order, but you asked!

I would also say that allowing the space to be deeply saturated in, and governed by certain tenets will go a long way, whatever happens there. Peace, Conflict Mediation, something of a Contemplative Edict, you might say. In other words, fostering a particular kind of spirit so that when people come in contact with the place they leave with something of that life-changing spirit on them. Churches aspire to this. Buddhist temples. I think the inherent aesthetic of Japanese architecture literally drips with this sensibility. The spaces we inhabit and those we visit have a direct effect upon our consciousness. If you were to, say, have a group of inner city youth come up to Beaver Island, they would come into contact with a space that would plant a seed. You may never know whether that seed will take root or bloom, but you will have been faithful seed-planters.

Jim Mullin-Norgaard is a peacemaker, life coach, and carrier of the Celtic Spirit. He is assembling faculty and resource personal for “Tara’s Meadow” new Center for Peace & Native Wisdom on Beaver Island, Lake Michigan, including Frank MacEowen and other gifted healers. Contact him at 231-347-7957.