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The Truth of What Was

I was never completely committed to ADF. I didn’t finish the Dedicant Path because I was unwilling to speak out loud the final Oath. I wasn’t willing to make that kind of commitment to Paganism, or — more specifically — that significant a renouncement of my Christianity.

There were plenty of people in ADF who could see this. The leadership in the ADF Mother Grove was divided on whether or not I should be allowed to create the Solitary Druid Fellowship, not so much because they didn’t think it was a good idea but because they did not think that I was necessarily the right person to execute it. It hadn’t proved myself to the community.

At the time when I learned of their hesitation I was resentful. I thought they weren’t being progressive enough. I thought they were slow-moving, unimaginative. I thought a whole host of things that placed judgement on them. I still think that ADF moves unnecessarily slowly about certain things, but that isn’t the point. They were right. They saw something in me that I was unable to see. I was not the right man for this, and not because I couldn’t create it but because I wasn’t in it for the long haul.

You know, I almost left ADF just before the launch of the Fellowship. There was a moment when the Mother Grove questioned my investment in ADF, and I almost left. I almost took the Fellowship with me, too. I’d registered the domain, I’d reserved the Twitter handle, I’d done all of the legwork in building a website and conceiving of how the liturgical model would function. I had this moment when I realized that I didn’t really need ADF to do this.

But leaving would have created yet another splinter Pagan group, this one in my own image, and I didn’t want to do that.

tim_ellis - Splintering Brach

The Truth of What Is

I had a moment a few days ago — during church, actually — when I said to myself,

“But I was already claimed by a God. I am already His.”

It was an unusual thing for me to think. It’s not a way I ever talked about God when I was a practicing Christian, and it was also the kind of language I heard from hard polytheists that made me a little uncomfortable. That idea of being claimed always felt a little dangerous to me.

But I thought it. It made sense. It felt true.

I have been changed by my time with ADF. I can’t deny that. I have different ideas about divinity now. I’ve come to recognize, even more so than I already believed, that there are many, many ways for people to live out a meaningful spiritual life. I trust that there are some people in ADF, and in Paganism in general, who came to some Pagan tradition and thought, “This! This makes sense in my soul! This is where I belong!”

The truth of the matter is that I had that very feeling when I was in church this past weekend.

This makes sense to my soul. This is the system in which I feel most comfortable, in which I find the most richness, wherein I think there is the most room for me to grow. There is a place here for a reverence of nature. There is a place here for compassion. There is a place here to acknowledge the fullness of life, and the nuances and complexities of morality, and the gale force power of Grace. I am willing to accept that I don’t understand all there is to know about divinity, and that the Gods that other people worship — some of whom have touched my life in an immediate way — are real in ways that are mysterious to me. But when it comes down to it I’m experiencing a simple call to return to the place from which I came.

And you have to go where you feel called.

vainsang _ End of the Road

The Truth of What Is to Come

I read these words last night. They come from what The Contemplative Life website said was the most famous of Thomas Merton’s prayers:

 

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.”

 

This is how I feel right now.

The prayer goes on to say:

 

“Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that

I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am

actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You

does in fact please you. …

Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost

and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for You are ever with me,

and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.

 

This last bit is all I can really hold onto right now. I can’t quite wrap my mind around whether or not I think that my desires to please the divine really earn me any good favor. That logic, like the idea of being claimed, feels strangely transactional and human-shaped.

But trusting in some kind of Unfolding — that is about all I can hold onto right now.

The words from Imbolc, “I keep vigil to the fire in my heart,” have always represented to me that some part of the divine was with me always, an inextricable part of me. I’ve always held that belief.

So I shall seek to continue to tend that fire, trusting that I am not alone.

Solitary Tree

I spent the morning catching up with an “online” friend, forging a new “on ground” relationship. The internet is amazing, really. To be able to initiate these kinds of relationship and build community having only the context of Facebook or an e-mail forum is phenomenal. I’m a transplant to this town, and yet there are people here who know me, and who are willing to show me such great hospitality.

My friend and I talked about ADF, about Druidry, and about our own personal, evolutionary spiritualities. I haven’t had many occasions to talk about my spiritual path post-ADF. My departure still feels pretty fresh. Part of what makes a former spiritual tradition feel like it’s former is having the opportunity to talk about it in past tense. There’s a great value in working through your thoughts with people who either understand directly what you’re going through, or who are simply willing to listen. I was grateful to have that opportunity today.

I heard myself speak of the things that frustrated me about ADF; things that I haven’t written about online. I’ve made a deliberate choice not to spend too much time writing publicly about what I see as problematic in the religion, its infrastructure or its practices. I have no intention of bad-mouthing ADF. I’m not that dude. I don’t think that would be productive or kind.

But bringing up my departure leads me to wonder how important belonging to a new group is at this point in my spiritual journey.

I’ve been going through a few of the OBOD gwers over the past few days and thinking about picking up my Bardic studies. There’s an OBOD seed group here in Portland, and although it isn’t incredibly active I find comfort in knowing there are a few Druid-leaning people in the area. This seed group is even leading the closing ritual at the upcoming Pagan Pride day event in Salem.

A part of me feels eager to develop some kind of religious community here in Portland, but then another part of me is hesitant. I don’t need a rebound relationship. I don’t want to find some new thing to dive into, to distract myself with, or to serve as a replacement for what ADF has been over the past few years.

I also don’t want to rush into taking on the mantle of a new tradition. This morning my friend told me that, from all outside appearances, I looked to be completely invested in ADF. And I think I was invested. Mostly. Almost completely. I think I was as invested as I could be while still holding a certain amount of space for my own doubts and uncertainties. I’m not sure I believe that any one tradition is 100% complete or correct, and because of this I always hold open just a little bit of space for the possibility that it won’t be the right thing for me.

Perhaps this works to my detriment. I don’t know.

But I think about going to PPD and introducing myself to the local OBODies, and I wonder if I can manage to do that without diving in head-first into a new group. I wonder if there’s a way for me to engage in fellowship without needing to fully become some new thing. It would be nice to place the focus on community building in a grass-roots way: slower, more deliberate, more patient.

This is a liminal space. I’m not really any one thing, and I’m in a position where I have to get to choose what I want to become. There’s something exciting about that, even if that excitement comes with a degree of uncertainty. I could become a full fledged OBOD member again, or I could look into AODA. I could hunt down something altogether different, or — perhaps the scariest choice of all — I could decide to navigate what it means to be Pagan without community. With as much work as I’ve done for solitaries, I’m not sure I know how to be a Pagan without belonging to a group, and I think it would be a mistake to rush through this process simply because the solitude feels uncomfortable.

Fast as a speeding oak always seemed like a terrible slogan. It used to bother me so much. It’s funny, though, because now it seems like sage advice for me. Perhaps the trees could have served as better teachers if I’d have let them.

I always thought that ADF moved too slowly, but I wonder how much of that was influenced by me moving too fast.

 

Photo by Jez Elliott

Results, by Rosa Saw

“There can be no direct results of ritual. The results are always just part of the fabric of all action.”

— Sean Michael Morris

As I prepare for my upcoming appearance at the Sacred Harvest Festival I’ve been giving thought to assumptions I’ve made about Paganism; assumptions that many of us make.

We assume the Wheel of the Year. Many of us assume a circle. We assume nature reverence, but I’m not sure how many of us connect that ideal to our own patterns and habits of consumption. We assume gender for things that (I think) are genderless. We often assume and ascribe a universality to European forms of Paganism, and sometimes take that one step further to assume whiteness where race or ethnicity should play no part.

We make a lot of assumptions.

And I think, to a degree, that’s to be expected. One studies in a tradition and begins to adopt aspects of the worldviews inherent to that tradition. If universality — true universality — is not central to that tradition, you’re bound to pick up certain tribe-specific ways of thinking.

In some respects, the training I received in ADF (which, I should note, was a partial, incomplete training) is one that seeks to inform modern Pagan practices with knowledge about ancient cultures. It works with the Wheel of the Year and is rooted in and influenced by Indo-European practice and worldview. One might say that ADF Druidry it’s prototypically Pagan, even with it’s differences and distinctions from it’s more popular cousin, Wicca.

And ADF assumes, as many modern Pagan traditions do, that rituals (especially public ones) should result in something. At the very least, an ADF ritual is designed to facilitate reverence and piety; the result is often a deeper and more meaningful connection with the Kindred. These rituals can also include some kind of magickal working, but even if there is no intent to do magick there is always the expectation — the assumption — that the ritual should do something (i.e. have a result) in the physical world.

But then there is this idea that rituals are “just part of the fabric of all action.” Rituals, when seen this way, are ordinary, poetic acts that, if done well, draw people into a deeper awareness of the extraordinary reality that already exists everywhere around and inside of them. The rituals themselves aren’t fabricating the awesomeness; they’re simply reminding you that the awesomeness is already there.

That could be result enough.

Perhaps it isn’t so much a question of articulating what results I’d like to get from the ritual I lead at SHF, but rather the intent of the ritual that I should focus on. It seems like intention is the only thing you really have control over when putting this kind of thing together. The results will be what the results will be. That really isn’t up to me. But the intention? That I can (and should) decide in advance.

So my intention is for this ritual to push through my assumptions about what a Pagan ritual can look and feel like; to play with ideas of sound and movement, silence and song; to inspire participants to find a still place within, the place where their creativity is born, and to bring that creativity out in a joyous way.

Here’s the description language of my Sacred Harvest Festival ritual:

Harvest of the Soul

When we harvest, we sing. When we pray, we dance.

This is the season of the harvest, a season to look inward and reap what we have sewn. In this musical, movement-oriented, participatory ritual, we will gather together and make a good song in celebration of the harvest, acknowledging the hardships and rewards of a season of good work.

This all-ages ritual will be influenced by certain aspects of ADF Druidry, and will seek to make welcome participants from a wide variety of Pagan paths. Bring an open heart and open mind, and prepare to lift up your voice in celebration of this sacred time.

Boom. That is my intention. The results aren’t something to concern myself with too much between now and when the festival begins on August 5th. If anything, it’s time to start imagining the “how” of the ritual…

I’m curious —

If you’ve ever designed rituals, what has been your process? Is it important for you to attain some specific result, and is this something you achieve by a magickal working? Are you aware of the assumptions that you regularly make, and do you focus any of your work on challenging those assumptions?

Photo and sketch by Mike Rohde (CC)Dear Portland,

I’m moving to you in August.

My husband and I are packing up all of our things, loading up our three dogs in the car, and driving for two days across Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, a bit of Idaho, and a good stretch of eastern Oregon to get to you.

Neither of us have lived in you before. Sean’s visited more than I have, but every time I’ve been I’ve really loved you.

Part of me thinks you’re kind of a pagan who doesn’t really identify as Pagan. You don’t like labels. But you compost, and your people seem more aware of their impact on the natural world. It’s not like you’re one big coven or something, but you do have a lot of trees. You’re kind of one gigantic grove.

That sounds lovely to me.

Moving to you during this time when I’m without a defined religious identity feels like it may be a portent of some new Way on the horizon. My husband reminds me, though, that this change I’m feeling is really about me, and what’s going on inside of me.

You’re just a coincidence.

But you seem like more than that sometimes. You seem like the promise of something better; the hope of a greener, more contemplative practice. You seem like fertile soil for the kind of religious life I feel drawn to.

I’m sorry if that’s putting a lot of pressure on you. It may be unfair of me. I don’t want to create unrealistic expectations of you. You’re a city, after all. You don’t really owe me anything, and nobody asked me to move to you. We’re moving, in part, because a number of changes are lining up to make this feel like the exact right moment to leave Colorado.

For one, our kid is starting college. He doesn’t really need us the way that he did before. We’ve been prepping him for a while about wanting to leave Colorado one day, and he’s even though about moving to Oregon after he has a few years of school under his belt. He’s still got his mom here, and we’ve promised to be back for some holidays and to fly him out for other ones. We think he’ll be ok without us.

We’ve also been offered a really terrific living situation once we arrive. Our friends are moving eastward, and they’re letting us rent their house. We won’t be paying any more to live there than we are to live here. All we’ve got to do is come up with the money for the moving expenses, and I think we can cover that.

More than anything, we just really want to be in Oregon. There’s been a pull toward that state for years, and neither of us has been able to understand why.

I guess I’m telling you all of this, Portland, because I’m trying to make sense of what this move means. I’m looking around at all of my things, all of them representing some period of my life — my Christianity, my Druidry, my time with ADF and the Fellowship — and I’m considering what it means to pack all of that up and move it to you. I don’t know which of these things are still important to me, or which I will have no use for once I’m there. I don’t know if I should get rid of everything and start from scratch, or if I should cherry-pick the things that seem worth taking.

[The fact that my stuff is such a concern to me is something worth noting, perhaps something worth it’s own post.]

I have 6 weeks to prepare myself to be in you and I don’t really know how to start.

So, I’ll begin with this letter. A one-way correspondence. You won’t read it — and that’s ok — but writing it helps me start to process through all of this.

Your future resident,

Teo

P.S. Did you know that John Michael Greer lives used to live only about 4 hours south of you? I love his beard. Maybe I’ll grow a beard like that once I arrive. Maybe I’ll start looking into AODA, too.

 

Puzzle Piece Heart

Photo by Horia Varlan

The thing about breakups is that you’re never really out of each other’s life. It’s an illusion to think that you can just sever ties (if that’s what you were hoping for) and then… Poof! No more connection.

It never happens like that.

When I made the decision, and then the subsequent announcement that I was leaving ADF and handing over the work of the Fellowship, I knew well and good that this wasn’t (nor did I want it to be) a clear, clean break. It was the beginning of a transition; one that may have begun a little suddenly and unexpectedly, but still simply a movement from one thing to another.

I’m not quite sure what I’m moving to in my own life. I don’t suppose it’s time to know that yet. But I do know that there are several people within ADF who, as I write this post, are working to make the transition go smoothly for the solitaries of the Fellowship. A priest is writing a new liturgy, a priest-in-training is considering the role of Organizer, and a number of thoughtful, considerate people have stepped forward to offer their talents to the cause.

This thing is going to live on.

And my work with the Fellowship will continue until the transition is complete. There are file folders, user-names and passwords that will need to be given to someone else. I’ve got document templates and drafts, all of which will have to be passed over, too. Perhaps most importantly, I’ve got to let go of that sense of ownership or authorship.

This was never mine, the Fellowship. It was never a thing to be possessed. It was an idea; a new way of thinking about service to solitaries. And the idea is out there now. It lives. And, with an inspired group of people behind it, it will grow in new and unexpected ways.

Last night I wrote what I think might be my last post on the SDF website. I needed to speak directly to the solitaries of the Fellowship and put this transition into a broader context — one that felt relevant to me, but that also might inspire them into reflection about their own lives.

I wrote,

Our religious lives may revolve around a liturgical calendar (the cycle of the seasons, the Wheel of the Year), but my experience has shown me that matters of the spirit and matters of the heart do not happen in a patterned, convenient fashion. They happen abruptly, and they demand that we readjust our thinking in the spur of the moment. In the process of doing so, while we try to reclaim our sense of balance as the ground still tremors beneath our feet, we do the real work of a spiritual life.

We experience a good and meaningful labor.

So, my charge to all of you — all of you who have shown up to speak or who have shown up in silence — is to continue your own good and meaningful labor in my absence. Take the tools which have been provided to you and fashion something relevant for your solitary observance of the Solstice. Or, use these words to get you started:

My heart is forged of good metal.
My spirit strong, unbroken.
I lift my hands and celebrate
This season of good labor.

May all my work be done with love;
Love for myself and for my kin,
And for my Kindred, known to me
Inside my heart and in the world.

This is the day of breaking forth
Into the future, arms outstretched.
I greet Unfolding Mystery
Rejoicing in this life I live!

I cannot begin to explain how grateful I am to have had the opportunity, again and again, to contextualize my own life in this way, season after season, for the benefit of a broader community. I had no idea it would be so meaningful to serve, or that baring one’s soul could act, in and of itself, as a kind of service.

It isn’t always pretty, what goes on inside of us. It isn’t always virtuous, or noble, or respectable, or admirable. But if it’s honest, it’s worth something.

It’s worth a lot.

It’s worth living for.

The Fool

Something broke today: a levee on the inside. My heart, tight and clenched for days, softened.

And when it did, I knew…

I have to leave ADF.

I spoke the words out loud, and they sounded right. They didn’t sound easy, or pretty, or anything remotely uncomplicated.

They just sounded right.

I’m not leaving because it’s convenient. Quite the contrary. Leaving ADF means, by extension, stopping my work for the Solitary Druid Fellowship.

That kind of terrifies me.

I have built this thing, virtually all by myself, and I don’t know what will happen to it. I don’t plan to take it away from ADF and have it be my own Druidic group. ADF leadership always feared I’d do something like that, and I assured them I wouldn’t. But more than that, I don’t really feel called to keep doing the work.

I’m in the middle of a 7-day series called “Shared Gnosis” that was supposed to wrap up with the release of a new liturgy. The High Day — Summer Solstice, the Feast of Labor — is in less than a week. But this series was a desperate attempt to re-inspire myself into doing this work at all. For the better part of the past month or two I’ve felt almost completely disconnected from the work of the Fellowship. I’ve been trying to encourage others to dive into a liturgical practice when I, myself, have begun to question the relevance of liturgy. I’ve been talking about hearth cultures and High Days, and I have felt almost no connection whatsoever to any of those things.

I’ve been doing ADF drag.

Leaving isn’t convenient, and it isn’t pretty. This doesn’t make me look good. In fact, this looks very much like a repeat of what is becoming a trope of Pagan culture:

• Person finds Paganism.

• Person finds tradition.

• Person is inspired by tradition, and moves into leadership position.

• Person has a crisis of — what? — faith? (I thought we didn’t have faith.)

• Person leaves tradition.

• Everybody rolls eyes and says they saw this coming.

• Repeat.

I’ve been around for only a few years, and I’ve already seen the cycle more than once.

And now here I am.

Leaving.

Shutting down the thing that I created.

Starting the cycle all over again.

The thing is, this is my life. This is me, right here, trying to be human.

And I think my biggest challenge in being a part of ADF was that I didn’t feel like there was anyone really speaking to the challenges of being human. In a devotional religion, the emphasis is placed over there, not in here. The things that cut deeply for me, that are real and sometimes really difficult for me — things like compassion, despair, forgiveness, hope, kindness, patience, honesty — I don’t feel like we spend any time talking about these things. I think we experience these things, but they always feel secondary to “right relationship.”

Frankly, I don’t care about right relationship. Or right action, for that matter.

I think those concepts are distraction from the messy, mucky, complicated, beautiful acts of being human that have nothing to do with how virtuous or pious we are.

I didn’t think I could earn my way into Heaven when I was a Christian, and I don’t think I can, through my own actions, earn my way into good standing with the Gods.

It’s the same thing to me. It’s a repeat, and it just feels wrong.

I can try to do well and I often fall short, but — amazingly enough — when that happens I experience a deep, profound, spiritual understanding that, in spite of what any ancient person said…

I am not at the center of the cosmos.

I cannot will things into happening exactly as I would like. My life, at times, feels really broken, and I don’t know how to proceed, and I need to own up to that.

But all of these things, these inner conflicts that I will mostly likely continue to process through here on this blog, are extremely personal and contextual to my own life. I can believe that ADF needs to place a greater emphasis on matters of the heart, matters of the psyche, the soul, with the same level of rigor and intensity that they’ve been looking at academic texts about Celts and Norseman for twenty years, but that’s not what the organization is all about. I can think, “who cares what the ancients did?!” every time it comes up in an ADF e-mail list or Facebook group, but the truth of the matter is that some people do. Very much. That’s very, very important to them.

And I respect that. I don’t want to try and dismantle that, simply because it doesn’t hold much (or any) importance to me.

So I’m choosing to step aside.

I don’t know what’s going to happen with the Fellowship. There are a number of people who have contributed to the life of this project, including some ADF members on the path to the clergy, and I’d gladly let them take the helm in they feel inspired to do so. If this project — this idea of uniting solitaries of a variety of traditions around a liturgical practice — is something that has a place in the world apart from me, then it will continue to live on.

If not, then it has done its work.

But…

I have different work to do.

Let me try to explain how I’m feeling right now.

When I exhale, my breath shakes a little. Not the crying kind of shake, but almost the laughing kind of shake.

My fingers are cold, which is partly on account of the freezingness of Colorado (and I’m using that word, regardless of what the auto-spell says), but they’re not so cold that I can’t type. A candle is burning on my desk, lit from the candle on my shrine, and I’m smiling.

I’m happy.

The first Solitary Druid Fellowship liturgy is now available. I just published it.

I suppose this feeling is related to nervousness, but it isn’t exactly that. It’s more like a nervous/pride/relief cocktail.

Photo by StrangeTikiGod

Photo by StrangeTikiGod

I didn’t know if this day would come. I didn’t know if this out-of-the-box approach, this new form –which even for me is an experiment– would live. For a while there, mostly through the months of September and October, I was a wreck about it. It was like I was living in suspended animation, unable to really move forward in any of my projects.

But once the approval from ADF leadership came, everything opened up. And now, just a few days out from the Winter Solstice, there are the beginnings of a shared practice.

I am chugging this cocktail.

All of what SDF is doing is necessarily incomplete. It is not a finished product, because it isn’t a product. It isn’t a thing that’s being sold. It’s a service that’s being shared, and it will necessarily evolve as we move forward and get a better sense of what kind of service truly needs to be provided.

So far I’ve been fortunate enough to get the support of two ADF members to post to the SDF blog, Kristin McFarland and Rev. Michael J Dangler. There are other writers on board whose upcoming posts will include reflections on the solitary practice for an ADF noobie, what resources a solitary Druid might seek out in order to deepen her practice, and [CALLING ALL ADF SOLITAIRES] how people from different hearth cultures incorporate their cultural idiosyncrasies into a solitary practice.

There has also been discussion about creating some kind of daily practice. I love this idea, and I haven’t really wrapped my mind around it yet. I almost think we’d need to develop several different kinds of daily practices to suit the needs of different solitaries. There could be a more formal liturgy for daily practice, which might be slightly  longer (say, 10 to 20 minutes). We could also have a brief, 3-5 minute liturgy, or even a series of brief prayers. There are already wonderful resources for prayers, like A Book of Pagan Prayer and A Pagan Ritual Prayer Book [Fields Bookstore links], but even the author of those books encourages us to write new words that resonate with us.

The long and the short? There’s a lot more to come.

About a dozen people have received the liturgy as of writing this post, and more keep coming. It’s surreal. I hope that they like it. And I don’t say that because I hope that they like me. I just hope that it resonates for them, and that it’s useful.

One last bit:

I’ve made the choice to keep SDF a mostly comment-free site. There will be posts where dialogue is invited, but there is also a desire to keep some of the pages and posts streamlined and clear of conversation. I think this allows for certain information to remain true to its published form, at least on the site itself, so that newcomers to SDF will not feel so much like they are walking into a conversation that is already taking place.

That being said, I’m a big believer in dialogue. If you’ve read my blog for any period of time you know that.

So, if there is anything that you’d like to voice about SDF that you haven’t been able to on SolitaryDruid.org, please feel free to open up that dialogue in this post. I’d love to hear from you.

Then, pop over and get your copy of the first Solitary Druid Fellowship liturgy!

*sips cocktail*

It is an exciting day in the world of Druidry and Pagandom!

(For me, at least.)

I’m happy to announce that the Solitary Druid Fellowship has launched!

The Solitary Druid Fellowship, an extension of Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF) is live and running at SolitaryDruid.org.

This has been a labor of love, and would not have been possible without the support the ADF leadership, the contributors to SDF, and the encouragement of the community of solitary Pagans and Druids I’ve come to know online. Thank you for your support!

In case you missed my first post about the Solitary Druid Fellowship, let me give you a little rundown on what it’s all about:

Rather than work to organize solitary Druids and Pagans into groups, or to use online technology to create a digital “hangout space,” or “virtual community,” the Solitary Druid Fellowship works from the idea that solitude is a good thing. Solitude, as you may have seen on the SDF Twitter page, is the staging ground for real, meaningful change. Solitude isn’t always an easy state of being, but there are certain things that can occur when one is alone, centered, settled into their personal practice, that are of tremendous value.

So, rather than try to simulate on-the-ground, group activity using online technology, the Solitary Druid Fellowship seeks to use online technology to enrich and strengthen one’s solitary practice, wherever they find themself.

The Fellowship begins with the premise that solitude is good.

As I wrote before:

Liturgy is an underutilized tool in the service to solitaries. Liturgy, when organized around and synchronized with the Wheel of the Year, is a way of uniting solitaries in a shared practice that does not simply mirror the experience that one can have in a Protogrove or Grove; it does something altogether different. Solitaries joining other solitaries in a shared liturgical practice makes possible a transcendental experience of congregation.By aligning with the Neopagan calendar, the series of holidays that ADF recognizes (and that most Pagans celebrate under one name or another) we will join one another through the use of a shared liturgy as a means of bringing people into rhythm with one another.

It’s all about the rhythm.

And it’s going to be a long-game kind of project. The Solitary Druid Fellowship’s website is up, and there is plenty to read and see, plenty to contemplate, but this is just the beginning. This barely scratches the surface of what’s to come.

As we move towards the Winter Solstice, SDF will release its first official liturgy. Anyone who comes to the site can get it, and everyone is welcome to use it. (Follow the Fellowship’s RSS feed so that you won’t miss it.)

After the Solstice, we’ll do a little reflection on what it was like to use the shared liturgy. We’ll talk about what felt familiar, what was new, where there were challenging moments, and most importantly, we’ll talk about what was relevant about the experience.

That’s got to be central to moving forward with the Fellowship. I’m going on a hunch that this will be relevant to a lot of people, and based on the initial response I think that my intuition is pointing us in the right direction. But as we go along, and as we begin to get more integrated into the shared practice, the shared rhythm of the SDF liturgies, we will uncover things about ourselves and about this process that none of us could anticipate.

It’s exciting, and a little scary.

This has been a long time coming. The idea first came after the ADF festival, Eight Winds (which I wrote about here), and it’s been slowly working its way into being ever since.

I have to admit, I’m a little nervous. When something lives for so long in a state of potential, it becomes difficult to conceive that it will actually be alive in the world. I’ll never be so fortunate as to carry a child, so my creative work sometimes substitues as a way for me to think about things like creation, potential, gestation… labor.

It pails in comparison to a flesh and blood birth, but it’s what I’ve got to work with.

The birth and new life of the Solitary Druid Fellowship is, for me, a commitment to living out the Wheel of the Year from day to day, week to week. It’s about placing my Paganism–my Druidry–at the center of my life, and doing so not only as a means of deepening my own spiritual practice, but as an act of service.

[Exciting.]

[Scary.]

But I go boldly forward — as boldly as I can muster. I launch SolitaryDruid.org, and invite the world to dig into the pages, to sign up for the SDF Newsletter, to follow the blog (which has 3 posts on it now — one by Rev. Michael J. Dangler — with more in the works). I invite people to be open, to be imaginative, and to be willing to embrace something new.

Join me, as we create congregation in solitude.

Photo By Svadilfari

A couple weeks ago I wrote about creating the Solitary Druid Fellowship, an extension of ADF designed to serve the broader community of solitary Pagans and Druids by providing them with a shared liturgical practice. I’m currently in discussion with the Clergy Council of ADF to work out the final details of the site launch (sign up here to be notified), and I’m spending a lot of time mulling over what it means to practice in solitude.

At the same time I’m also preparing to take part in an ADF grove ritual here in Denver. I’ve been asked to be the Bard, so I’m learning new songs, rearranging old chants, and trying to envision how to best use my musicality in the context of a group ritual.

The truth is, I find comfort in solitary work. When you do ritual alone, you are working with the agreements you have made in your own heart; agreements that you’ve made with yourself, perhaps with your gods, spirits or ancestors. These agreements cover what you believe about who you are, about who or what the gods are, and about your role in the cosmos. You make these agreements to believe, to suspend belief, or to practice your devotion. The agreements made by the solitary practitioner need never be put up for a vote, judged by a governing body, or scrutinized by committee.

With group work, though, agreements are a different beast.

Consensus must be reached in group, and there are politics to contend with. The needs of the many must be considered, as should be the overall welfare of the group. The agreements one makes in her heart are still her own, but they cannot be treated as law, doctrine, or as “the way it must be.” They have to be held up against the agreements everyone else has made.

Discerning how to do that can be difficult, especially when the agreements other people have made seem to be so different from your own.

You think,

But they’re talking about the gods like the gods are their best friends…

Or,

They’re talking about the gods like the gods are complete strangers…

Or,

They’re talking about the gods like the gods are judges, overseers, politicians, warriors, or any other purely human thing.

Or even,

When are they going to talk about something that’s relevant to me?

No matter what agreement you’ve made, what decision you’ve reached about what religion means to you, when you participate in a ritual led by others you will have to to examine those agreements, perhaps even question their validity. Questioning your agreements can be a good thing, though. If you’ve made the agreement that your truth is The Truth, for example, or that your way is The Way, it might be time to do a little questioning.

Photo by Alexander Henning Drachmann

When I wrote the first Solitary Druid Fellowship liturgy (which should be made public on the week of the Solstice), I made a point of keeping certain aspects of the ritual neutral. I indicated places in the ritual where one could substitute the names of their gods, or the language specific to their hearth culture. I wrote in sections that encourage people to use their creativity in order to create a meaningful solitary rite.

But one person’s neutrality is another’s loaded gun.

We do the best we can, I guess. We write the rituals or prepare the songs in accordance with the agreements we’ve made in our heart, and we try to remember the shared agreements we’ve made with one another.

Shared agreements! Yes — that’s key, I think. What are the shared agreements we’ve made with one another? One has to ask that of herself before participating in a group ritual, or even a non-religious group gathering. What are things we’ve decided to collectively hold up as true, relevant, meaningful, appropriate, necessary? These agreements we make should be — no, they are — at the core of what we do. The question is, are we having open dialogue about what those agreements look like?

Please take a moment to think about the work you’ve done in groups — whether that be in a grove, a coven, a church or a community group. Think about your shared agreements. How did you reach them? Were they a point of contention, or did they bring the group together?

How much of our shared agreements are assumed, passed down, unexamined? When do our shared agreements need to be mended, or amended? When do they need to be re-written altogether? How often are we, in group, holding up these agreements to the light? Are we looking for cracks, beauty marks, frayed edges, or are we seeing only a projection of the agreements made in our own heart?

What are some of your shared agreements?

Letters is a series on Bishop In The Grove that allows readers to initiate the dialogue. Submit your letter on the Letters page, and it may be chosen to be included in a future post. This first post in the series is centered around bringing Druidry and Druidism into balance.

Balance, by Kevin Makice (Flickr)

“You’ve talked before about wanting a balance between your revival Druidry and reform Druidism. Is this still something you’re trying to balance? How do you do it, practically – any examples?

– From someone trying to walk a similar path :)”

This question comes at an interesting time — both for me and for the community of bloggers I read. There’s a good bit of this v.s. that going on in conversations across the web, and I’m not quite sure how to make sense of it.

Just yesterday I witness an innocuous Facebook post unleash a somewhat heated debate about intellectual paganism v.s. non-intellectual paganism, an argument that seemed to suffer from a lack of agreement about terms and definitions. And there are blog post cropping up in every corner of the web about whether Paganism is reputable, or silly.

So when I read the question — how am I trying to balance these two streams of thought and tradition — I can’t help but notice how different that language sounds.

I’m an ADF Druid. I have been for a couple of years now. I’m also a member of OBOD, and (technically) a student in the Bardic grade. But I haven’t attended to my OBOD studies in a long time. The materials sit on my bookshelf, mostly untouched. So, mostly I’m ADF.

ADF Druidism is a religious path, and OBOD Druidry a philosophical one (to speak in very broad, general terms). In a way, I’ve been very much devoted to the development of a personal religion, one that is based in ADF principles. But then there are moments when I find myself asking, 

Yes, but what does it all of what I’m doing mean?

And in that moment, I feel that my Druidism has once again become Druidry.

To give you an example:

This morning I was at my home shrine, lighting a piece of charcoal. I lit the charcoal with a lighter that contains in it the flame of Kildare, passed on to me ceremonially during a CUUPS gathering. While the fire set the coal to sizzle, I spoke in my mind,

This is the flame of Kildare. May it burn brightly and may it…

I stopped myself.

I was going to say something invoking the Goddess, Brighid, but then I wondered if this particular style of invocation was something that the ancestors would have done. I literally stopped the movement of my own inspiration in order to evaluate if what I was doing was historically accurate in relationship to my hearth culture.

The intellectual, inquisitive, +1 for scholarship side of my Druidism got the best of me in that moment.

The next thing I thought was,

Who cares?! What am I doing right now, and what does it mean to me?

I find that Druidry, OBOD style, places a greater emphasis on personal experience and personal revelation than ADF does (broadly speaking). The “what does it mean to me” question is central to Druidry, but not so much to Druidism.

Druidism even has the term “unverified personal gnosis” to denote the things you “know” but that cannot be verified. The very idea that inner knowing needs to be “verified” smacks of intellectual elitism, even if the term is being used to keep people from making claims about their unbroken Druid lineage.

I’ve witnessed many conversations on the ADF lists where members display concern about whether they’re “getting it right,” and I worry sometimes that the standard we use to judge our work, the standard of scholarship and historical accuracy that ADF holds up so strongly, can lead us to overlook the simple, meaningful, unscholarly needs of the heart.

But with all of that said, I still am committed to the religious tradition. It’s a choice I’m making, and it serves me.

I balance my Druidism with my Druidry, first, by acknowledging that the two needn’t be mutually exclusive. Philosophy, after all, is an intellectual pursuit; one which can inform the way one engages in their religious practice.

So in your question — a very good question — I take note of the word “balance.”  It seems key here. I believe in bringing into balance the mind (critical thinking) with the heart (intuitive knowing); integrating and harmonizing the parts of ourself that seem to be discordant. The mind and the heart should be in dialogue, just as I think ADF Druidism should be in dialogue with OBOD Druidry.

Thank you for the letter, and for initiating this dialogue on Bishop In The Grove. 

Now I turn to you, my thoughtful readership.

If you are a Druid, one who has been exposed to ADF and OBOD, how do you bring them into balance? Or, do you?

If you aren’t a Druid but have had experience with holding the tension between multiple traditions, how does that approach affect your spiritual life?

In September of this year, I submitted an application to start my own ADF protogrove for solitary Pagans. I planned on calling it, Sojourner’s Protogrove.

Protogroves are the precursor to fully-chartered groves within the ADF organization, and their main responsibility (as with groves) is to provide public rituals for each of the eight High Days of the year. These open rituals are a hallmark of ADF’s approach to Neopagan religion. Allowing the rituals to be open and available to all was a central tenet of Isaac Bonewits’s vision for the Pagan church.

Sojourner’s Protogrove was to be, in many ways, just like any other ADF protogrove. In ADF’s system, the Protogrove Organizer has the freedom to organize their group around whichever of the Indo-European hearth cultures associated with ADF. Some groups are Celtic, some Norse, some Hellenic, and there are even some which mix and match their cultural influences (i.e., the eclectics in our midst). Sojourner’s Protogrove — or SojoPro, which I was fond of calling it — was to use the pantheon and mythology of the Pan-Celtic cultures, as those are the deities and stories that most speak to me.

But there was one way that SojoPro would not be like the other ADF protogroves:

SojoPro’s free, open rituals would not require solitary Pagans and Druids to meet in a shared, physical location. Instead, SojoPro would create congregation in solitude by providing to all of Pagandom (via the protogrove’s website) a common liturgical form.

In short, we would become united through a shared liturgical practice.

The ADF leadership had mixed reactions to my application, but they were unanimous that this couldn’t be a protogrove. The physical component was too important, too fundamental, it seemed. They gave the project a tentative approval, but with conditions. I’d need to have more clergy oversight, and I’d need to call it something different. So I came up with this:

The Solitary Druid Fellowship.

I wrote about my vision for the Fellowship in the most recent edition of Oak Leaves, ADF’s quarterly magazine. Here’s an excerpt:

Liturgy is an underutilized tool in the service to solitaries. Liturgy, when organized around and synchronized with the Wheel of the Year, is a way of uniting solitaries in a shared practice that does not simply mirror the experience that one can have in a Protogrove or Grove; it does something altogether different. Solitaries joining other solitaries in a shared liturgical practice makes possible a transcendental experience of congregation.

The one becomes the many.

This is where the Solitary Druid Fellowship enters in. The Fellowship, as an extension of ADF, is organized to provide solitary Druids, as well as any solitary practitioner in the general public, with an opportunity to engage more deeply with their ritual practice by adopting a shared liturgical form. This form is unique to the Fellowship, just as the rituals designed within Protogroves and Groves are unique to them. But, the form follows the COoR (Core Order of Ritual), and is in keeping with the traditional ADF rite.

From High Day to High Day, SDF will help transition ADF solitary members and non-member participants through the changing seasons. There is a blog on the Fellowship’s website, SolitaryDruid.org, and on this blog there are weekly posts which reflect on the seasons, on the meaning of solitude in the lives of solitary Druids, and on various aspects of Pan-Celtic culture, mythology, and religious practice. These posts are not instructive so much as they are reflective, and they will help create a contemplative environment in which solitaires can prepare for the coming High Day. Additionally, these posts will be written by other ADF solitaries, as well as solitary Druids and Pagans of other traditions who have insights to offer on the experience of solitude.

On the week of the High Day, SDF distributes our shared liturgy through the Fellowship’s website, and solitaries celebrate the High Day in solitude. On the following week, participants will be called upon to reflect on their experiences of shared, solitary worship, and the cycle begins again as we move toward the next High Day.

By taking part in this communal, albeit private practice, we join in a kind of long distance fellowship; in a shared celebration of our gods, our ancestors, and the spirits of the land on which we live, using many of the same words, invocations, and prayers.

All of this through liturgy.

There’s a lot of work to do in preparation for the launch of the Solitary Druid Fellowship, and even a few hoops yet to jump through. I’m considering how to write liturgy that is not exclusive to the Pan-Celtic hearth, but that opens up ADF’s liturgical form to any and all of the Indo-European hearth cultures of the tradition. In theory, ADF provides the tools for this already. I just need to craft something relevant for solitary use, and meaningful within a solitary context.

If you’re interested in joining us, visit SolitaryDruid.org and sign up for notification of the site launch. I’m hoping to have it up in time to offer a liturgy for the Winter Solstice.

What are your first thoughts in learning about the Solitary Druid Fellowship?

If you’re a solitary Pagan or Druid, do you think it would be useful to you to have a common practice with others, one that you could customize around your own relationships to the Kindred?

Should I let go of my stuff?

Should I have a metaphysical yard sale, in which I sell my Cunningham books, my surplus of pewter jewelry, and my…

…ahem…

…crystals?

GET your hand off that… It’s priceless.

Should I rid my closet of the long, green, hooded robe I’ve worn twice, my Guatemalan patchwork jacket I scored for $7 bucks, or my black ceremonial duds? How about my malas, my God and Goddess candle holders (don’t you just love P. Borda?), or my copper OM chalice?

When I look at the shelf above my desk, I read the titles:

  • A Book of Pagan Prayer
  • A Pagan Ritual Prayer Book
  • The Book of Common Prayer (i.e. Episcopal Church)
  • A Canticle For Leibowitz (thank you, Themon, for the recommendation)
  • Sacred Fire, Holy Well
  • Creation Spirituality
  • The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life
and
  • Pagans & Christians

Is that too diverse?

What about my entire shelf of Bibles? I’ve got the Green, the NIV, the Aramaic translation, the King James, the Revised Standard, the Edicion Pastoral, the Good News Bible, and the New International Version.

I also have a Humanist Bible, which is a whole ‘nother story.

I like stuff. Most of us do, to some degree. But I wonder if this surplus of metaphysical stuff I’ve accumulated throughout the years gets in my way.

How much of this stuff do I actually use?

Not much.

You’d think I was a Witch or somethin’.

These thoughts occur to me as I continue with my ADF Dedicant Path studies. I feel like I’m studying to be one thing, but the stuff around me suggests that I’m something quite different. I’m studying to be an ADF Druid working within a Pan-Celtic hearth, as it were, but my stuff indicates that I’m really quite eclectic.

This isn’t a crisis by any means, but it is something to consider. What does our stuff say about us? And, how much stuff do we need in order to do our religion?

Is an excess of spiritual stuff an indication that you don’t have enough religion?

Should religion curb your consumption? And when it doesn’t — when your spiritual/religious work winds you up with tupperwares full of serapes, tapestries, and unused statuary — is it really nature spirituality that you’re practicing, or stuff spirituality?

It may sound like I’m romanticizing asceticism, but I’m not. Like I said, I like stuff.

I’m just beginning to question why I have so much of it.

This post is not designed to preach what is the right relationship to stuff. I’m just hoping to inspire some classic Bishop In The Grove dialogue about stuff.

I want to know about your stuff. 

Take a look around you. Look at the stuff on your shelves, on your windowsills, and in your dresser drawers, paying close attention to all of the stuff that’s connected to your spiritual path or religious work (whichever term you prefer).

What’s there? How much of us it being used on a daily basis? Any? All? Some?

Do you save your stuff for the High Holidays? Do you haul out the cooler of candle holders for your coven’s rituals, or has it been collected cobwebs in the corner?

Let’s all take a minute and talk about our stuff.

In the morning, after (almost) sleeping through a night of 28 degree weather, I headed to the edge of the water to make my offerings. Pumpkin seeds were what I had to give, for they were what I had to eat. I proceeded through the same ritual I outlined in my post last week, only this time I did it while standing in the morning sun.

When I’m in the city, I sometimes lift my hands up toward the ceiling of my bedroom, my office, or whatever sacred space I’ve constructed, and imagine that I’m feeling the warmth of the sun. I also imagine that my feet become roots and extend deep into the earth, deep into the coolness of the underground waters. This practice is a part of the Two Powers meditation, a grounding and centering meditation used by ADF.

Standing beside the reservoir, I thought perhaps I should do the Two Powers meditation now. So I lifted my hands up to the sky, and when I felt the warmth of the sun — the actual warmth, and not the imagined warmth — I was taken aback.

I opened my eyes and I saw the water. The actual water.

The Two Powers meditation felt a little silly to do at that point, ’cause I was in the sun and I could almost feel the water on my skin. I didn’t need to imagine anything.

Instead, my mediation would be to open my eyes, open my heart, and feel with all of my being what was around me; to recognize that all of this was the Earth Mother.

This weekend in the mountains gave me some perspective on my religious practice.

Druidism will be a living religion so long as it continues to focus on the living earth. As bookish as we Druids may be, the soil is our truest scripture. The work we do at home, the practice we develop in solitude, should — perhaps even must — inform our experience of the living earth, not simply the metaphoric earth.

One can make the sun into a symbol, or the water into a symbol, or just about any tree, bird, and plant into a representation of some human experience, but concordances which seek to place all of nature within a human framework (this tree represents this emotion, or that god is good for this human activity) are little different than a Catholic concordance of saints. Plus, they can trick the city-dwelling Pagan into thinking that the natural world is only metaphor for the inner human world.

It’s more than that.

The tree doesn’t always need to represent something. It can simply be alive, and beautiful.

I came back to the city with a real desire to return to the mountains; to be outside. I spend a lot of time in my head each day, but not near enough time in the dirt.

I need to find a way to bring an awareness of the living earth into my daily life.

The question is, how? (My husband says, “Weeding, sweetie. There is weeding.”)

So, I turn to you, friends. You showed up in droves to share your intense nature experiences, and I’m going to ask that you join in the dialogue again.

How do you do it? How do you bring an awareness of the living earth into your daily life? Do you do it by getting out into your neighborhood? By gardening? Do you volunteer with the park service? What do you do?

Or, if you’ve found yourself in a state where you don’t do this, what could you imagine doing to bring this awareness into your life?

I fell into a frozen lake once.

It was winter, and we were on holiday from school. I was running ahead of my two cousins and my older brother, and I hit a thin patch. In no time, my tiny body was submerged.

The water was violently cold, and I was certain I was going to die.

I didn’t.

Photo by Roland zh, Wikimedia Commons

When I was about 10, I went to a summer camp for kids who like horses.

While riding one afternoon, a fellow camper got thrown from her horse. She was dragged for at least 100 yards. Her body looked like a rag doll flopping about, with one leg stuck in the stirrup, and her other leg and two free arms flailing uncontrollably.

Her head was one horse hoof away from being crushed to tiny, adolescent pieces, and I was certain she was going to die.

She didn’t die either.

Photo by Dan Shouse, on Flickr

A few years back, not long after joining ADF, I was on the road, sleeping in a no-name hotel, and I had a dream.

In that dream I heard a voice, one that was deeper and more expansive than any human voice I’d ever heard. The voice spoke in a language I couldn’t understand, and while it spoke I saw in the blackness of my imagination a white doorway, beside which were standing two white hounds. The voice was like an earthquake.

I jumped out of bed, body trembling, most certain that I was going to die.

That time, I think I might have died just a little.

Photo by Sean McGee Hicks, on Flickr

All things have their place, and there is certainly a place for the warm and fuzzy in Paganism. But I think it’s also necessary to remember that there are parts of nature, and aspects of the Kindred we worship, that can be violently cold, fiercely wild, and terribly awe inspiring.

I hear many people frame the human condition as being either a decision to live in Fear or to live in Love, capitals emphasizing the notion that these states of being are not simply human emotions, but rather that they are cosmic in some way. I like to think that things are more complicated and nuanced than that.

Even death, in its inevitability, is more complicated and nuanced than that.

I keep these things in mind today as I head up for a weekend camping trip in the National Forest. I won’t be riding horses, and the reservoir is far from frozen.

I will sleep, though…

…and dream.

Photo by Andrew.Beebe, on Flickr

While I’m away, I invite my diverse, thoughtful readership to sit for a moment and remember a time when you came into contact with an aspect of nature or your gods — either in a formal ritual setting or in an unexpected place — that was awe inspiring, or terrifying, or visceral.

When did it stop being an idea and start being something real?

I’ll return to the blog after the weekend, perhaps with stories of new adventures in the woods. When I do, I hope that the comment feed looks like a late-night round of campfire storytelling.

I’ve written a great deal about my daily practice on this blog. There have been periods of prolonged drought, periods of genuine doubt, and times when I felt like my daily practice was all that was keeping me invested in my Druidism.

In my ADF Dedicant studies (which will be a central focus for me until Imbolc), one of the tasks for the student is to develop a steady daily practice. A regular practice, especially for solitaries, is key to taking your religion out of the book and rooting it in your life.

I had almost no regular practice in August. I kept the High Day, but after that I woke up and started my mornings with only a casual glance at my shrine. I was busy in my head before stepping out of bed, and I didn’t take much time to slow down and seek out the Kindred.

But I have a syllabus now. I’m a dedicated religious student (as I mentioned in my Druid School post). I’m going gung-ho, and I’m starting as a beginner.

ADF member, Melissa Burchfield, wrote a piece on ADF.org on how to adopt ADF’s Core Order of Ritual (COoR) for solitary use. For those who don’t know, the COoR is what makes and ADF rite an ADF rite. It’s the foundation for all ADF liturgy.

On this article, Melissa lays out a series of “tiers” for the beginning student. In the first tier, she strips down the COoR to these components:

  1. Initiating the Rite – Bell Ring, clap of the hands
    Light candle
  2. Purification - Breathe deeply, nine times to center
    and clear the mind.
  3. Honoring the Earth Mother
  4. Statement of Purpose - "I have come to honor the gods."
  5. Inviting the Kindred
  6. Key Offerings - Made to the Kindred
  7. Thanking the Beings - In reverse order
  8. Thanking the Earth Mother
  9. Closing the Rite - "The rite is ended."

Notice that the numbers are a little wacky? That’s because the COoR has a total of nineteen steps in its full form.

I performed the first tier of this druid ritual this morning.

For step one, I rang triple Goddess bell. I lit my candle and said,

“I light this candle in the presence of the Shining Ones above, in the presence of the Ancient Ones below, and in the presence of the Nature Spirits all around me.”

Step two was easy, and surprisingly effective. Feeling tense? Breath nine deep breaths. It’s like magic  (*ahem* — magick).

Honoring the Earth Mother is always a strange moment for me. I feel like my prayers can never be big enough. I said something to the effect of,

“Holy Earth Mother, on whom we move and live and have our being, all praise and honor belongs to you. From you we are born, and to you we shall return.”

What can I say? I was a cradle Episcopalian. I like the formalities.

After the statement of purpose (which can sometimes be elaborate, as in the case of a High Day ritual), I invited the Kindred.

I like this part. This is where I speak out loud to the Kindred and ask that they be present in my ritual space. When I call to them, I describe them, and by doing so I engage my imagination. I get to see them in form, in color, with attributes. That’s how it was this morning, at least.

I simplified my offerings today. Taking cue from Melissa, I poured a bit of steel cut oats into a small, clay serving cup, and used it for all of my offerings.

I made offerings to the Three Kindred, ending with the phrase that I hear at most ADF gatherings:

Nature Spirits / Ancestors / Shining Ones…. accept my sacrifice.

I love liturgy. I love the repetition of meaningful phrases. I nerd out over it sometimes. Saying the phrase “accept my sacrifice” with the same cadence and tone that we did at Eight Winds makes me feel — just a little — like I’m still at Eight Winds. Liturgy allows my small rite to feel like a giant group ritual.

I offered my thanks to all, and closed the rite.

The whole thing took about five minutes.

I share all of this not to present myself in a special light. My practice should not garner me any praise; that’s not what it’s for. But, I do feel that people — solitaries, especially — need to see that there is always an opportunity to begin your practice again, to start from scratch. With a beginner’s mind, you can simplify your religious life and relearn how to be what you are.

It all starts with a single flame.

Have you ever stripped things down to the basics? If so, what was that experience like for you? Do you find that a ritual with a reliable form and structure makes sense, or are you more of a ritualist who keeps it loose?

What would your “beginner” ritual look like?

The harvest season comes, and the kids go back to school. I can’t pass a rack of school supplies without stopping to see if there’s anything I want need. There rarely is, but I still like to look. The eco-folders and notebooks, while more ecologically responsible, are nowhere as cool as my Trapper Keeper.

It was rad.

Not my actual Trapper Keeper.

I love school. Or, I love the idea of school. Perhaps I’m nostalgic for a time when I was unaware of the responsibilities that accompany adulthood, many of which creep up on you unexpectedly; a time when all I had to worry about was punctuality, or juggling homework assignments, or ensuring that I was just a little more cutting edge with my clothes than the kid with the thick sideburns was. School provided me with an environment in which to be outwardly inquisitive, inwardly critical, and overtly creative.

Yeah, I love school.

That said, it looks like returning to school to complete my Bachelor’s Degree — a desire of mine for some time — will have to wait a bit longer. (Sorry, Marylhurst.)

There are a few reasons for this decision.

First, college is stupid-expensive, and I don’t want to take out loans. The federal government was kind enough to toss me a few hundred dollars per quarter, but that barely covers books. This is a dry-beans economy, man. Who can dish out two, three, four thousand dollars ever four months on top of everyday-life bills?

Not me. Not now, at least.

Second — and perhaps more relevant to the themes discussed on this blog — I have some unfinished druidic work to do.

I began an ADF study program called the Dedicant Path (DP) almost two years ago. This blog, in fact, was first created to record my progress through the program (check out the first few 2010 posts in the Archives). As the blog evolved, I moved away from my DP studies and more into the realm of a public discussion and dialogue around all-things-pagan. I don’t regret this decision. I’m delighted at the evolution of our work in community.

But over the past month I’ve watched several of my friends, ADF members who started the DP around the same time as I did, submit their work to the DP review board, and pass. Some are involved in Groves and Protogroves now, and a few are even considering clergy training. I look at them, and I remember what I started. I remember looking at ADF’s course of study and thinking — this is a really legitimate approach.

From ADF.org:

Here is the outline of our Druidic Basic Training:

1: Right Action – It is proper to attempt to do only good for one’s self, family and community. We present a model of virtue based on Pagan lore.

2: Piety – Pagan ways are based on active individual involvement with the rituals and practices of tradition. To be truly involved is to attend or perform rites regularly and do the work.

3: Study – The study of actual archaeological, folklore and classical sources is vital to restoring the old ways in out time.

4: Basic Meditation – In order to open the mind and spirit to wisdom, improve well being and learn control, nothing is better than simple, silent meditation.

5: The Two Currents – Using skills of imagination and concentration, the student learns to connect with the primal energies of fire and water, sky and earth.

6:The Home Shrine – It is proper to set aside a corner of one’s home as a personal shrine where the student can deepen her awareness of the spirits.

7: Full Ritual Worship – The core of ADF’s work is our order of ritual, which brings closed contact with the God/desses and spirits. The student completes a set of worship tools and learn the order of ritual.

8: The Dedicant’s Oath – When you feel sure that the Pagan Ways are your ways, we encourage a formal oath to announce your will. This is the first step in the formal work of our Druidry.

9: Patronage – In polytheistic religion it is proper for each person to develop a personal relationship with a specific Deity or pair of Deities. We offer techniques to establish and enhance that special partnership.

As I look through the Dedicant Manual, which comes with the cost of annual ADF membership ($25), I see how the DP could absolutely be treated as one would treat a college course. There are a few time-sensitive activities, such as needing to document your meditation work for a six month period, and attendance at a year’s worth of ADF rituals (the latter of which I’ve kept up with). But, aside from those, most of this work could be done in the course of one or two college quarters.

So, that’s what I’ll do. I’m putting off college in order to keep some food-money in the bank, and to complete my Dedicant Path work. If I start now, I’ll be done with my studies by Imbolc.

It occurs to me that we’ve had dialogue on Bishop In The Grove about formal education as it relates to Pagan leadership, but we haven’t talked much about our individual experiences with pagan study programs. So…

Have you ever been involved in a formal study program through a Pagan group? What was that like?

If you’re an ADF member, have you done the DP? If so, what was that experience like for you (feel free to share links to your any of your DP work that lives online)?

How have you been schooled in your form of Paganism? 

I’ve spent nearly the entire week working on new ways to make ADF Druidism an accessible tradition to solitary Pagans. The work is still in its early stages, and I’m piecing together ideas which I hope to share once the leaves have fallen. My backyard maple is only hinting at new color, so it will be a few months yet.

Crafting religious practice gets me really excited, though. As perplexed as I was last week about the Gods (and I’ve been on the fence about capitalizing “god,” by the way — please share your thoughts about that grammatical choice in the comments), I’m having no problem with putting together new models for sharing my religion that might better serve people.

Religion, as I’m learning to practice it, allows each of us to be our own priestess or priest, our own empowered solitary practitioner. When we do religion in this way we become better equipped to serve our community, and we cultivate an intimate relationship with the Kindred.

Isaac Bonewits wrote in The Vision of ADF:

“Everyone is expected to communicate with Goddesses and Gods in her or his own way — spiritual growth is not a monopoly of the clergy. Every human being needs to learn how to contact the divine fire within, how to talk with trees, and how to unleash the power of magic to save the Earth. If there is such a thing as ‘spiritual excellence,’ we need to be striving to express that as well.”

Isaac placed great emphasis on terrestrial religious gathering (i.e. Grove rituals being held in physical locations), but I think the underlying message of the above quote speaks quite clearly to the path of the Solitary Druid. It is what a Druid does on her own — her devotionals, her studies, the development of her personal piety — that informs how she participates in community.

And I believe it is important to note that the work of the Solitary is the work of the community, because the Solitary who never participates in a terrestrial gathering is nonetheless a part of the greater religious body.

Perhaps this idea of a unified religious body is easy for me to conceive of, having been brought up in a tradition which understood the Church — capital C — to be the “Body of Christ.” All salvation doctrine aside, this concept of a unified body of believers was empowering, and created a sense of deep, spiritual belonging.

I think there is a Pagan analog, perhaps conceiving of ourselves as the “Body of the Mother,” or the “Children of Earth” (feel free to offer up any phrases in the comments that you think might be clearer, or more appropriate to Pagans).

We are less a “body of believers” than we are a “body of practitioners,” and in the case of ADF — a Pagan tradition which already emphasizes unity through practice — we have good cause to embrace this idea of a unified religious body.

See — I think Solitaries are the glue which holds a religion together. They (we) are not the cast-offs who simply can’t make it to the party. We are our own party.

We are, through the nature of our solitary circumstance, sometimes better equipped to engage in deep contemplation about the ambiguities, the paradoxes, and subtext which often goes unnoticed in group settings. In silence and solitude we hone our skills at cultivating the “divine fire within,” we uncover the language of the trees, and we connect in an intimate, personal way to the Earth Mother.

We have that available to us, that is.

I asked on Facebook, “Do you consider yourself a ‘Solitary Practitioner’ of a Pagan tradition?”:

Click photo to share your answer

There are a good number of people who are practicing their religious traditions alone, or mostly alone, and I think those of us who find ourselves in that position might do well to start exploring ways in which we can become united with one another in our solitude. That’s the work I’m busy crafting right now, and I’m at a point in the process where I could use some feedback from you.

Do you consider yourself a Solitary? If so, have you ever felt a sense of unity with other Solitaries? If you are an ADF member, what has been your experience of our community’s service to solitaries? Where have we succeeded, and were could our perspective use a little adjustment?

In his brief, “immodest third-person” biography, Isaac Bonewits called himself, “articulate, witty, yet reasonably scholarly.” I never knew the man, but I hear he was a bit cantankerous, too.

In the early part of 2009, a year before Isaac’s passing, I was encouraged by T. Thorn Coyle during an intuitive reading she gave me to make my way to a Druid gathering in California to meet Issac. The event would be a Lughnasadh celebration at the Pema Osel Ling Retreat Center in Corralitos, California, organized by the House of Danu, an alliance of California OBOD groves and seed groups. In attendance would be Phillip Carr-Gomm, Chosen Chief of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, John Michael Greer, Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America, and Issac, the articulate, witty, yet reasonably scholarly Founder and Archdruid Emeritus of Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship.

At the end of the reading, Thorn looked at me and said,

You really should go to this.

I didn’t quite understand her urgency, and she explained that Isaac wasn’t well and may not live much longer. This was also an unusual intra-faith gathering; it wasn’t often that ADF, AODA and OBOD representatives came together to celebrate their commonalities.

I felt such a pull towards the Pagan community at the time, and a real sense that Druidry would provide me the spiritual and religious tools that I’d been missing. The three leaders in attendance at this gathering had each made an impact on my early introduction to Druidism, and I knew that meeting them in person would pull me in deeper; seal the deal, so to speak.

But I didn’t go.

In 2009 I was gearing up for the release of an album, one which had been in the making for years. In preparation for the release I’d become hyperaware of my public image. Druidry, and Paganism for that matter, seemed more a little difficult to work into the marketing plan. I was afraid that if I went to the Gorsedd, I might wind up on a YouTube video in some compromising Pagan position — naked around a fire, perhaps — and that the work that I, and so many others had invested in would fall by the wayside before it had a chance to live in the world.

I’m not an advocate of regret, but if I were, this would be a moment I might indulge.

I didn’t go, and I didn’t meet Isaac. He passed the following year — two years ago today (August 12). On October 13th of that year I would join ADF and begin exploring my religiosity through the tradition he founded in 1986.

Someone asked today on Facebook whether or not Isaac would have wanted to be remembered. They wondered if, in death, he might still want that today. I read the question, and I thought back to my last few posts here on Bishop In The Grove. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering about the origin of gods, the evolution of consciousness, and all sorts of difficult-to-know things. There’s a time and place for the philosophizing — I like to imagine that Isaac would agree — but there is also a time to put aside the musings and simply do your religion.

I didn’t go to the Druid gathering because I was trapped in my head. I was over-thinking the implications of every little action, avoiding any choice that might interfere with my career goals. And while I was in my head, the Druids danced around the fire and celebrated the earth.

I’m choosing not to be in my head today.

Today I will remember Isaac. I will pin on his “Druid” name-tag, hold up my pants with his belt buckle, and I’ll be a Druid.

So I leave you with this video of Isaac. Enjoy it. Share it, or share this whole post. Then, share your memories of Isaac here in the comments. I’d love to know how you knew him.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGbN9FVU6Ro[/youtube]

In a recent discussion with a group of Pagans about the development of an American pantheon for use in ADF ritual, someone said this:

“When we look at historical evidence to find the ancient deities, we look at what was left behind and what survived for long periods of time, such as the stories that remained popular … These and many other things help us to form a picture of the beliefs of an ancient culture. I’m using the same types of techniques to examine our modern culture … Elvis is a good example.”

I don’t want to be mistaken for a god.

What if in some distant future, one populated by a new batch of revisionist or reconstructionist Pagans, there is an idea that the celebrities we follow in the present day, the politicians we support, the cultural figures we align ourselves with, were deities?

What if between now and a thousand years from now all of the precious archiving we do of our daily lives, through our blogs, through Twitter, or through the old-fashioned paper medium is lost, and as people are looking back to uncover what we were like they make a profound mistake when they stumble across a tiny piece of information about my life (or yours), and misperceive me (or you) to have been, not a person, but a god of some sort?

Perhaps you wouldn’t mind. Perhaps it would not be such a bad thing for some future Pagan (who I’m sure would be called something other than “Pagan”) looked back at the trace evidence of you and decided to make statues of your likeness, chant your name before pouring oil onto a fire, tattoo your mug onto their shoulder to let everyone know just who their god is. Would you be into that? Does that idea sit well with you?

Let me repeat that I do not want to be mistaken for a god.

At the very least, it would seem terribly inaccurate to me, because I know who I am. I am rooted in my humanity. I am also someone who has been in close proximity to a great deal of celebrity in his life, and I can guarantee you that celebrities are also rooted in their humanity. I get wigged out when modern celebrities are elevated to near deific status in the eyes of the public, and I’m even more troubled by the thought that they might one day, in that far off future, be completely mistaken for gods.

None of this seems like a problem if we’re willing to conceive of the gods as archetypes or ideas that affirm something about ourselves. The stories about humans can morph into stories about gods, and those gods can inform future humans about their own humanity. Through learning about our true, albeit fictional selves, the future Pagans learn something valuable about their own identities.

I’m down with that.

But hard polytheism makes it tricky.

If you or I become a god one day, and people worship us at their shrines and make prayers to us in their moments of need, hard polytheism says that you and I will be cognizant of that. We may even respond by granting their request. If the future reconstructionists do their homework, they’ll know that I like tortillas, coffee, hard cider and pineapple cake with cream cheese icing, and they will prepare such offerings when they want me to — what? — help them with a creative project, guide them on their travels, or — me forbid — change the weather. We will fall into their correspondence charts, and people will write songs about how amazing we were. Tuesday might even become Teo’sday…. or they may suggest that it was always Teo’sday.

I joke a little here, but mainly because I feel uncomfortable by the problems this introduces. I don’t know how to reconcile these ideas, and I worry that if they’re allowed to play themselves out all the way they will eventually call into question much of my current conception of deity.

So, I present them to you in the hopes that you might be able to offer up some fresh perspective.

Do you find any of this troubling? Would you mind much if people in the future venerated you as a deity, or does that idea lead you to reexamine the way you conceive of deity?

I approach my home shrine in the morning and prepare my offerings.

Into three small, porcelain sake glasses, which were given to me by my stepfather, I pour a small bit of sugar, oats, and oil. These were the foods that made the most sense to me, although I’m not sure why.

Whether I’m clothed or naked, I drape a stole over my shoulders. The stole it green and white, and was made by hand; made by a woman I met at a metaphysical fair in the fall of last year. She gave it to me as a gift after I purchased a longer red one. She told me the stole was a traditional rose pattern, and she felt I should have it. There was just something about me, she said.

I remember that moment when I drape the stole over my bare shoulders.

I light the charcoal which sits at the middle of my altar, and wait for it to turn red before placing into the concave center a few pieces of something fragrant. This morning, frankincense and myrrh.

Some things I will never leave behind.

Using a prayer from Ceisiwr Serith’s book, A Pagan Ritual Prayer Book (Weiser, 61), I purify myself by saying,

“From all that I have done that I should not have done, may I be purified.”

I dip my finger into the water, and raise my hand to touch my forehead.

“From all that has come to me that should not have come, may I be purified.”

Again, the water.

Sometimes I slip into saying, “For all that I have done…,” and doing so makes the prayer feel more Christian, more connected to sin. That isn’t the point of this prayer. Purification, in the way that it is approached here, is not unlike washing one’s hands before supper. It is done because there are things which one brings to the shrine that are best cleaned away before doing the business of worship.

The prayer ends simply,

“May I be pure, may I be pure, may I be pure.”

One need not believe in a god who washes away sins to see and experience the power in that language.

Then begins the ritual; the Core Order of Ritual (COoR), to be exact. My druid tradition is united, in large part, by an agreement about practice, and the COoR is the center of the practice.

I perform the ritual in silence, pouring the offerings out into a cauldron as I recognize the gods, who remain somewhat a mystery to me, the ancestors of blood, spirit, religion, tradition and place, and all that exists in spirit on this land.

I do all of this in the morning in order to affirm my place in the cosmos, or at the very least to try to get a better sense of what the place might be. I do this ritual to affirm my relationship with the Kindred, these aspects of the great mystery to which I belong, of which I cannot fully explain. I do all of this not to win the favor of the gods, but more to practice sincerity in my relationship to them; to practice honor, to practice reverence, and to practice hospitality and generosity.

Regardless of whether the gods can hear me, or if these bits of food are of any use to them, I perform this daily practice so that I might come to better experience these qualities I cherish. My daily practice is simply me holding up my end of the relationship.

I show up. That is all I can do. The rest is up to — what — fate? Grace? The will of the gods?

Ian Corrigan said in his response to my last post,

“I make a good sacrifice, using my limited mortal means, and the gods grant a blessing that while it might seem disproportionately generous is simply the obligation of their station. This is grace of a sort, surely.”

Obligation… what an interesting word to use in this context.

I wonder —

Do you feel that by making a “good sacrifice” you enable the gods to perform the “obligation of their station?” Or, do you have different language for what the gods do? If you have a daily practice, do you perform your ritual in order to win the favor of the gods?

Why do you show up at your shrine?

On the last day of the Eight Winds Festival, an hour or so before heading to the airport, I sat around the fire with my fellow ADF members and participated in a discussion with the Senior Priests about the future of ADF’s Dedicant Path (DP). For those not involved with the organization, the DP is a means of introducing people to ADF’s cosmology, philosophy and common ritual format, and it is the first step in a course of study that can eventually lead to priesthood.

There was a moment in the conversation when Ian Corrigan said that his was a religion of will, not of grace. Now, for those of you who read that sentence and drifted away to sitcom-land, come back to us — he was not talking about Will and Grace. He was saying — I believe — that will, the ability to direct, or at the very least, affect one’s own fate, reality, or circumstance, is more important — more central to his worldview — than grace, which he seemed to connect to a theology of sin and redemption, being fallen and needing to be redeemed.

Something about the idea of a religion that was all will and no grace sat wrong with me.

Grace, I think, is best understood from the human perspective. Getting inside the mind of the gods — especially if you understand them to be in possession of distinct consciousnesses — is no simple matter. Some say it’s impossible; a feat only a fool would attempt. The mind of the human, however, is something we all possess, so perhaps it is better to begin any theological discussion by first looking at how the theological concept influences, or is influenced by, being human.

From the perspective of this mortal man, I see grace as a process of surrendering to all which one does not have control over. As powerful a mage as you may become through your religious work, I don’t believe one can control everything. Your will, after all, is not the only will. I do not see one needing to connect grace to a particular theology, or to a single deity, in order for it to have relevance. An atheist, for example, might experience grace by remembering and recognizing that they fit within a greater, more complicated, more interconnected ecosystem. Grace occurs in conjunction with that kind of humility.

I’m still piecing this together for myself, but I think my religion might better understood as a relationship between one’s will and one’s openness to grace. Perhaps I’m attempting to strike the balance between the two in order to discover and negotiate my place within the cosmos. Perhaps thinking that my entire life is simply a product of my will alone is more pressure that I’m willing to accept. I don’t know.

These thoughts come up at the close of my Indiegogo Campaign, an attempt at raising funds for an EP of Pagan-centric music, which did not succeed. I’m close-examining my will, my intentions behind this project, and holding all of that up against the idea of grace. Perhaps one might encourage me at this moment to uncover the ways in which my will was not clearly executed, but I’m choosing not to do that. Rather, I’m attempting acceptance, surrender, and humility. I’m taking a moment to be soft with myself, and to remember that there are lessons to be learned in every situation, even when the outcome was not in line with one’s will.

Let me take this opportunity to thank all of the 75 people who contributed to the campaign, whether publicly or anonymously. You gave generously, you shared many words of encouragement, and your contribution and support will not be forgotten.

Thank you to:

David Salisbury, alan928, Lori Davies, Rowan Pendragon, ibyogi, handheldmgmt, gaiascolours, Rob Henderson, dennisray62, dottiemoore1, Pamela Jones, carmiac, Mary Davis, tis.caitlin, Brann Armstrong, Snowcrashak, Jhenah Telyndru, mzlott, jeffharrison, Valerie LaVay, David Dashifen Kees, karenfox1, kkimminau, starling.foster, bard3, John Halstead, naomijacobs10, davidhughes123, T Thorn Coyle, jaimelws, Stephanie Gunn, slleedodger313, jesse.stommel, themon, kairamoon, birchtreenymph, btmanassa, stevestaj, Elizabeth Abbott, prophat77, leonaoigheag, celticphoenix03, thedrewbrody, negelhoff, Jason Hatter, contribute1341274389, knottydragon, druidbetula, dandelionlady, Ellie Smith, Brendan Myers, Krisdrickey, Michael Smith, druidkirk, jtel99, Ivo Dominguez, libradragonmo, Ashtore Ash, icatsnitram, nancy.batty, hernesman, Brenda.titus, Urban Haas, vegaspipistrelle, vheiderich

May your own will bring the changes you wish to see. And when it does not, may you come to know grace in a way that softens your heart.