A maiden dancing, dancing
on the rim of the world.
Resplendent, Radiant.
I blush to see you rise from your bath
the colours of the morning drip from your bosom
as you open the ways for the sun.
Greetings, Usas, who opens the gates of heaven.

• I spent some time revising and revamping the Dedicants page on the ADF members' side so that it's a lot more descriptive, and also got the "new" edition (edited, finally!) up on the site.
• After that, I completed over half of Trance 2 on Saturday night at the Midnight Flame Festival (which already has dates for next year up).
• Then, this morning I completed and published the guidebook (see the cover on the right) for the ADF Order of the Crane. Once I have a copy of it in-hand (hopefully by Thursday), I think we'll be ready to go forward with the Order itself, which is completely "done" in terms of initial development.

druidkirk

Future Plans for Clergy Training in ADF

First of all, I have to give deep thanks to Ian Corrigan, Carrion, romandruid and druidkirk for the support and help that they've given throughout the process of creating the Clergy Training Program (CTP) up to this point. Right now, for the first time since 1998, we have a cohesive set of exit standards that one can complete and have approved that will lead to full ordination as an ADF Priest. This is one if Isaac's central vision points: a rigorous, solid training program for our Priests that gives them an education that can be compared to mainstream religions.

That said, it is not necessarily on par with mainstream religious training for priests. We have a very long way to go.

Our training currently consists of outlines of exit standards: CTP Cicles 2 and 3 have complete guides available, but CTP 1 does not at this time. The guides for CTP 2 and 3 are in need of expansion into a real program, fleshed out to provide training, not just test it. Resources need to be consistently updated, and CTP 1, in particular, needs to be drawn into a guide that provides a lot of preliminary information and resource work.

Further, additional hands-on instruction needs to be developed: between videos of rituals, individual mentorship programs, and week-long (required) intensives at various points around the country, there's a lot of ground to cover. Rubrics and exit standard clarifications need to be provided.

One place that we've begun to move away from is the notion of assigning remedial Dedicant Path work: rather than finding a DP "inadequate" to the CTP training, we have started to draw on the full set of courses within ADF's various study programs and recommend additional work in order to provide further training instead of returning to old work and forcing repetition. This rests on the notion that challenging students with work that builds on previous work will bear fruit in a way that revisiting central concepts along may not. . . and will hopefully help them reinforce any core concepts that they may not completely comprehend. Remedial work is still a possibility, but it's far less likely now.

I mentioned earlier that this training program isn't perfect: it probably never will be. The original CTP Circle 1 was designed to be a bit more clergy-like than it turned out to be: this is a result of a need to pass something to get the ball rolling (it turned out that this was an excellent idea). Because of this, CTP 1 is identical to the First Circle of the Generalist Study Program, and it does not teach some skills that are probably necessary for clergy work.

To correct this, there are already plans to rebalance the CTP, to reduce the front-end weight of the academics and distribute several already-approved-but-not-required courses through the CTP in a logical way. We are patiently waiting for a few more students to work through the current program before we begin revisions, as we want to have experience behind us when we seek to revise. The current time-frame for such revisions rests at around 2011 or 2012, at which point we hope to have many more people having worked through CTP 1, 2, and 3.

There's much to do yet with clergy training within ADF, but it is a clearly evolving (and planned) process that we have going on.

• The Fire On Our Hearth (affectionately known as FooH): This is, as many of you know, the Grove's devotional book. We intended to get a "second edition" out around April 1 of this year, and it just. . . didn't happen. Mostly (okay, entirely), this is my fault: see above. But, as I look at a July that's pretty free of festivals and compulsory travel, I think we may be able to finish this out before Summerland, which would be pretty awesome.
• The Chronarchy.Com Store: This was originally going to supplement my income (it already has, to an extent, even though it's not open for business yet), and the stock includes things like portable altars, rune dice, Discordian Furthark dice, actual elder futhark rune sets, sigil dice, Greek divination tiles, and amulets. The issue has been an inability to create the requisite stock to actually open a store (I have a sneaking suspicion that the demand will be highest when it opens, and then it'll drop off). So, materials are prepared, I just haven't managed to make enough dice, rune sets, and altars to actually be comfortable opening the shop. I'd like to manage that soon, but it really requires a weekend without distraction to make three or four sets of any of these things.
• WotY: Edition 3: Since the "new" Dedicant Path handbook came out (sort of) recently, this is creeping up the list of things I need to do. For the most part, I need to update it so that it reflects the page numbers in the "new" DP book, as right now it's still referencing the old DP book. The current WotY outline can remain, of course, but Ian Corrigan has brought up an interesting point about it: it could be far less academic and far more of a real "working" document, with ritual texts, meditations, and deeper guidance. This concept excites me, and I honestly very much want to make it something less like a homework schedule and more like a course of spiritual study (though the homework schedule would remain). And this leads me to the next item:
• An IP and CTP WotY: Recent discussions about Orders within ADF, the IP work that Ian Corrigan is doing, and some of my own comments about things I'd like to see within the CTP itself have led me into considering a more "as I go through this" sort of approach to a new WotY for the IP and CTP. There's room for as many IP/CTP training documents within ADF as we'd like to create, I think, and the more I think about this, the more excited I become about the whole prospect. This is a real thing in my mind, something that'll happen one of these days. As of now, though, it's partially unstarted, though the notes I'm taking are already taking some shape.
• The Trillium Project: sleepingwolf and I got this started at Trillium, and we've been working to expand it. . . This is likely to be the first project I finish, as I hope to send my part off to him sometime this week, if work doesn't hit the fan again.

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!

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.

seamus_mcnasty

The residence of Roger Drawdy, his wife Kate, and 5 month old daughter Sky, was consumed by flames beginning at about 2AM, 03/12/09. They are all safe and Roger also woke their downstairs neighbors, thus saving their lives as well. All got out of the building with the clothes on their backs and little more.

This is my 1,500^th LiveJournal entry, and I want to thank those who have read this journal since 2002. My longest readers are the most special to me, and I often think about what you must have seen as you've followed this blog. Don't worry, there is much more to come.