Between the Prayerful and the Playful, with JJ Middleway

JJ Middleway

I share here a very moving interview from The Elder Well podcast. It is with our very own Honorary Bard and long-term OBOD member and friend JJ Middleway. The Show Notes are below and you can listen to the full interview here on The Elder Well site. 

Our guest this time on The Elder Well is John James Howell, also known as JJ Middleway, most often simply JJ. JJ is a celebrant, ritualist & poet based in Stroud in the west country of England. He is father of four children and seven grandchildren in partnership with a woman, Polly , who he calls his greatest teacher during the 53 years since they first met.

For much of his life, JJ has been significantly influenced by Sufism, Shamanism and what he has come to call “Silly Foolism”. For the past four decades, JJ has primarily been guided and influenced by Druidry and is an elder in the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. By the many people whose lives he touches, JJ is recognised as someone who embodies the qualities of Singer, Seer and Sage.

JJ has been living with a terminal diagnosis of cancer and describes himself as “…being in the middle of the eighth decade of this particular incarnation, loving and living in a state of grace, contentment and peace.” He says his guiding affirmation in these, the latter days of his life are: “To inspire as I expire.”

In this intimate and at times very moving conversation,

JJ invites us to recognise and honour the pain, the joy, and above all the sacredness of this wild and precious life.

Describing a process he calls “humilification”, JJ speaks of the tempering nature of life, in particular, sharing how a diagnosis of terminal cancer has been many things for him, including a catalyst of profound joy, connection and celebration;

Elsewhere in our conversation, JJ shares the deep teaching he received from a bee-keeper about the potent and profound life wisdom encoded in a bee-sting;

Towards the end of our time together, JJ shares the story, sacred to these Isles, of The Well Maidens and how this myth is reemerging, pointing as it does to the current state of rupture between the masculine and the feminine in the prevailing culture. He names what he sees as a vital need for the collective reconsecration of the sacred feminine and a collective remembering of the sacred masculine;

Throughout our conversation, JJ weaves in prayer, poetry, story, and song. We are very grateful for the time we spent with him, and hope you enjoy, as we did, his playful, prayerful presence….