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August 26th, 2009
03:16 pm - Summerland '09
 Really, I had a great time. There were highs and lows, as there are at every festival, but let me tell ya, the highs greatly outweighed the lows.
I managed to put together my tent on Wednesday night, though it was a hell of a battle in a very humid and hot afternoon. Then, I ran off to the Dayton airport to pick up Kathleen.
Thursday morning, I got in early and took care of distributing a few things around camp. Then I settled into my workshop. It interested me that people were excited about this one: I'd gotten such poor turnout at Wellspring, and here I found that people were actually looking forward to the workshop at Summerland. Oh, such different festivals :) There's an Oak Leaves article in store with this, and I hope to get it polished over the Winter.
I ended up going to bed very early on Thursday night, as work pressure just hasn't been letting up (I got called about an issue, even though my calendar was clearly marked: "vacation," though I didn't mind too much, really).
Friday was pretty good, starting with an awesome dawn ritual and culminating in the bardic circle and auction, where it turns out that we had way too much awesome stuff to auction off. I think the best part of the evening was watching Maggie run around in a backless red dress to show off auction items. Just before the Circle, though, I had some work to do: the ADF clergy have made a standing appointment based on lunar cycles, and I wasn't about to miss it. I'm so pleased I did, too, because it led to a grand experience the next day.
And, dude, if you missed the posting about several 3CG members engaging in a Barbershop (Barbarian) Quartet version of Led Zepplin's Immigrant Song, you just click that link and check it out.
On Saturday, I ended up doing a lot of Ancestor work: writing an invitation to them for the Unity Rite, I found myself going far deeper into the process than I expected to go. The result was a deeply meaningful understanding of the Ancient Wise, who they are, and what they do. This understanding led me to draw on images and lore that, until now, had been locked mostly within my own mind, and allowed me to introduce some of that imagery to the Folk of ADF. . . if they were paying attention, I guess. I hear, though, that the Ancestors invitation went very well for the most part.
On Saturday night, I participated in a panel discussion about various aspects of the future of ADF, which was something I was looking forward to talking about, but I admit to feeling somewhat disappointed: after all the work I put into my portion, I see that very few people found value in it. People have remarked about boredom during the discussion, or that it was a farce of unimportance. To those who engaged with it and enjoyed it, thank you for making it a useful and good discussion: I've seen one or two people describe it as useful, and several people engaged positively with it during the event. I really do this sort of stuff on the notion that a single person learning a single thing is enough for me, so I'm so very pleased I did it. Still, I have a notion that the discussion might have been better served in a workshop slot that was a bit less "okay, everyone attend"-like. It might have made me feel better in the long run, and less like the work I've done and continue to do is generally not worth the time of others.
Saturday night also led to several good conversations, some of which were rather eye-opening and theologically deep. I love this sort of thing at festivals, even if I did end up missing pretty much the entire concert as a result. I also understand that I went to bed at just the right time to avoid drama (really, going to bed before 1 AM is the best way to avoid drama at most festivals, as the drinking heats up around that point and so do the arguments: it's like clockwork).
Sunday involved the taking down of many tents, cleaning, cooking (I love being in the kitchen with the Cranes) and lots of hugs. Then a collapse at home for a couple of hours' worth of napping.
Awesome festival, though, like always! I love meeting new and interesting people from around ADF, and I was so very happy to see that so many people came from so far away to attend and sorely missed the people who couldn't be there. I hope that those who came felt as honoured to be our guests as we felt to be your hosts!
Current Location: Southeast of Disorder
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/smile.gif) cheerful
Current Music: "Bob Robert's Society Band", -JB
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May 2nd, 2009
08:24 am - An understanding of death
 It was a sort of odd feeling, in the wee hours of the Trillium morning [review], when I came to an understanding of death and what it meant to me.
I was writing my workshop, entitled, "An Awfully Big Adventure: Signposts on the Final Journey of Indo-European Souls," and was describing the things met along the way to the Otherworld: the two fires that separate the soul and the body, the various wells and waters, the ferryman who carries you across, the dog who devours, and the king of the dead himself. Over the past few months I've been dealing with death in various ways, considering my own views on it.
I probably ought to back up for a moment: I'm not much of one to dwell on afterlives. In general, my attitude has always been one of "we don't know, and won't until we get there." This has served me pretty well, honestly, for many years, and I have never thought of a coherent afterlife theory as being a requirement for leading a religious life. I had a (perhaps very Indo-European) view that it's not where we end up in the next life that matters, but how we act and what we do in this life. Sort of an expansion of the "it's not the destination, it's the journey" notion that folk often spout out.
Anyway, as I was finishing up the workshop, I found myself putting the pieces together in my head. Using Bruce Lincoln's Death, War and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice, I discovered that I was coming to very different conclusions than Lincoln did about what happens after death: his theory was very pessimistic; mine turned out not to be.
In the end, Lincoln responds to the IE myth by saying that there is nothing after death at all: "the otherworld," he says, "[is] nothing more than the grave."
My own response is very different. Death, in an IE sense, really means something: escape from the greedy monster of old age, escape from worry and care, an opportunity to live forever in bliss or knowledge, and (perhaps most importantly) a chance to maintain the cosmos in an ultimate way: to be bound by the Rta or Xartus in the most physical and lasting way possible, by reversing the cycle of creation and thus maintaining the cosmos.
I took my cue for this from the Rgveda, of course. . . Hymn X.16, a hymn regarding the funeral.
May your eye go to the sun, your breath to the wind: go to the heaven and to the earth according to rule, or go to the Waters, if there it is ordained for you! Among the plants to take your place with your limbs! In other words, when you die, the things that formed you at your creation are returned to the cosmos, to live forever within the cosmic order.
I summed this up some time ago in an ancestor prayer you may have seen, not knowing that I would return to it during this workshop, and find myself understanding death as a result of my writing it:
When you were born,
The earth became your body,
The stone became your bone,
The sea became your blood,
The sun became your eye,
The moon became your mind,
The wind became your breath.
When you passed to the Otherworld,
Your breath became the wind,
Your mind became the moon,
Your eye became the sun,
Your blood became the sea,
Your bone became the stone,
Your body became the earth.
When we were born, you did the same for us:
You called forth the earth and rocks;
The sea arose and the sun descended;
The moon shone down and the winds sang.
For those who come after, we shall do as you did for us
When we are gone, we shall do as you did before. When I gave that workshop later in the day, I suspect a sense of my awe at the epiphany was pretty conspicuous, though I tried to hide it as best I could.
In many ways, I'm not ready to face the death of someone I dearly love, no matter how near that possibility may have just been for me, but I find myself now with a more complete toolkit for dealing with it when it does, inevitably, happen to me.
Current Location: Southeast of Disorder
Current Mood: surprised
Current Music: "Tryin' to Reason with Hurricane Season", - JB
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October 30th, 2007
11:19 am - An Ancestor Prayer
I wrote this prayer not long ago, and I'm thinking about it over time, trying to figure out where to improve it and think through it. It may be that it's just "done," as is.
Ancestor Prayer
When you were born,
The earth became your body,
The stone became your bone,
The sea became your blood,
The sun became your eye,
The moon became your mind,
The wind became your breath.
When you passed to the Otherworld,
Your breath became the wind,
Your mind became the moon,
Your eye became the sun,
Your blood became the sea,
Your bone became the stone,
Your body became the earth.
When we were born, you did the same for us:
You called forth the earth and rocks;
The sea arose and the sun descended;
The moon shone down and the winds sang.
For those who come after, we shall do as you did for us
When we are gone, we shall do as you did before.
Ancestors, we honour you.
I spoke part of this prayer at Samhain for the Grove (all of it, simply put, felt like it would have been too long, and it was cold). But I wanted to post it here, before Oct. 31, in case anyone else liked it as much as I did.
The prayer is particularly influenced by general cosmos creation patterns in IE mythology, and also by a couple of essays by Bruce Lincoln, which can be found in his excellent Death, War, and Sacrifice.
Enjoy!
Current Location: Southeast of Disorder
Current Mood: working
Current Music: "Wonder Why We Ever Go Home", -JB
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October 23rd, 2007
08:33 am - Meditations on the Ancestors
As I was reading the other day, I began to think about our ancestors as a long cycle of cosmic recreation, the microcosm becoming the macrocosm becoming the microcosm, and on and on. Stone becoming bone becoming stone becoming bone.
I even wrote a little preliminary chant (I'm showing my age):
"Bone to stone, stone to bone:
Never end, always change.
Breath to wind, wind to breath:
Rising up, crashing down.
Eyes to sun, sun to eyes:
Ever seeing, always knowing."
Really, I actually just wrote that down on the fly while writing to someone last night. It's not even thought out, honestly. I haven't thought of a rhythm or melody for the chant, or even checked it to see if it scans reasonably. I think it's really just an idea, not an actual attempt at any sort of chant.
But this led me into doing something I actually like to do, which is writing prayers, evocations and presenting pretty liturgical language.
I suspect I'll have my final version of what I wrote last night (much better than the chant) posted here by Samonios.
My eyes opened last night in such a way as they haven't before, to the way the Ancestors and the cosmos interact.
Can't wait to see all those "Pagan New Year's Resolutions" start floating about LJ. . . My own resolution? Well, it's more of a hopeful desire: I want to get back to updating my website, Chronarchy.Com, with more regularity. I'm already started, and things are going well. I'm working particularly hard on my Dedicant Path documentation, updating that with better-quality essays. And yes, my old essays will remain available (part of the value of my website is to show that even a monkey with a typewriter can do the DP); I really did want, though, to provide some decent essays, especially after discovering that some of my essays which would not pass under the current requirements have been held up as "examples" of "what could pass." Even notes on some things saying, "This passed under the old requirements, and would not pass under the current Preceptor or requirements," haven't stopped folk from pointing to it. Just because I'm mediocre (at best) doesn't mean your work shouldn't be excellent.
So, I expect that to be a major update. But, now I've typed more than I intended, so it's back to the grind: I have so much to do today, and so little time to do it!
Current Location: Southeast of Disorder
Current Mood: busy
Current Music: "California Promises", -JB
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