1. How do you affirm that we are a community of Druids walking personal paths, and your desire to be one of us?
The Druid Order of the Three Realms embraces concepts like integrity, respect, community, service and interdependence - all values that have been deeply embedded in my own spiritual path even before I learned to call it by the name of Druidry. The encouragement and support I've received from DOTR members, and from my mentor B— in particular, during my year as a DOTR Aspirant have been invaluable to me as I've worked to refine and expand my Druid practice beyond what I've learned as a member of OBOD and AODA in the past.
The Druid Order of the Three Realms also embodies a balance of community engagement and personal exploration in a nonhierarchical way that moves beyond the usual organizational models of modern Revival Druidry based on the old social fraternities, and I find myself very much in tune with this new approach that remains open to the changing reality for religious institutions in a (post-)postmodern world. I would be honored and proud to count myself a member of the Order, and I look forward to be an active and contributing member in the future!
2. How do you affirm a vital relationship with the Earth, our mother?
In my daily life I adopt a handful of "green"/eco-friendly practices, including a vegetarian diet of largely organic, locally-grown foods (recently promoted by the UN as the most effective lifestyle change a person can make to help reduce their impact on the planet). I also strive whenever possible to avoid using plastics and to reduce my energy consumption; my husband and I also started a composting program for our old apartment building (and happily, the apartment complex we're moving into in Seattle has a composting program already in place!).
I'm the founder, project manager and a contributing writer for the Pagan Newswire Collective blog project, No Unsacred Place: Earth and Nature in Pagan Traditions, where I coordinate essays, articles and news pieces promoting ecological awareness and environmentalism among Pagans and exploring the many ways that Druids, Witches and Pagans embrace nature spirituality in their diverse traditions. I also contribute to Aontacht Magazine as their new Wild Earth feature editor, and as a writer and blogger I share my experiences and contemplations about our sacred relationship with the Earth on my blog through poems, stories and personal reflections.
In my personal spiritual practice, relationship with the Earth and the natural local landscape holds a place of primary importance. While living in Pittsburgh, I made hillwalking in the nearby wooded nature preserve a regular part of my practice and often held personal rituals and meditations out doors (in all kinds of weather!). My altar and household shrines reflected the changing seasons of the local landscape and honored the plants, animals and other inhabitants sharing the land with me.
Now, moving to Seattle, I hope to continue making time outside connecting with the natural world a central part of my spiritual life. I've applied to volunteer with the local parks service as an amateur naturalist, for which I'll receive seasonal training about the ecology of the local bioregion(s) and then be able to pass on that learning to others through public and student-oriented educational programs and guided explorations of the many urban green spaces in the city. I might also have the chance to adopt a few acres of a nearby park as part of the forest restoration effort.
3. How do you celebrate the Sun and its sacred days both alone and together in the grove?
My husband, Jeff, and I have been celebrating each of the eight holy days (the four solar festivals and four Celtic fire festivals) together for the past few years, and we're often able to include Jeff's kids in the celebrations as well. Our celebrations are usually very simple, and include making offerings to the three realms of land, sea and sky, as well as singing songs and telling stories that resonate with the spiritual significance of the time of year. Usually for the summer and winter solstices, we rise before dawn and make our way to the local park where we climb the highest hill and greet the sun as it rises above the horizon (the kids' favorite song to sing on these occasions is They Might Be Giants' "Why Does the Sun Shine?"). This past year, Jeff and I planned our wedding to coincide with the autumnal equinox, in celebration of our relationship of balance between masculine and feminine, light and dark, day and night, activity and receptivity and the many other sacred dualities that go into forming a sacred marriage. (We were also very lucky to be able to include our families and friends in our Druid ceremony on the beach, on the threshold of the three realms, for which we feel especially blessed.)
On certain occasions, I will also hold personal observances of the holidays in a more formal ritual fashion (Jeff is not as keen on ritual). For these rituals, I usually build off of the DOTR outline and incorporate my own chants, prayers and meditative trance-work. This is the closest I'm able to come to participating in DOTR grove rituals as a long-distance member, but I hope that someday down the road I might be able to find others in the local area who want to work within the DOTR ritual model and hold in-person rituals together, too.
4. How do you hear the call to the inner life, and how are you weaving a wisdom that is both personal and communal?
It is mostly through my writing and my poetry that I engage with my inner life and explore the work of soul and spirit in their many different forms, but I also use meditation, trance-work and dreams to connect to this inner realm. Besides the DOTR Three Realms Working, I've developed a daily meditation of my own (Peace of the Three Realms) based on the Druid Prayer for Peace, that helps me to align with the energies of land, sea and sky as well as with the Druidic elements of nwyfre, gwyar and calas, and I've also begun to explore (although only a little) working with the Three Cauldrons from Celtic tradition. Through trance-work, I explore my inner landscapes with the guidance of Badger, my primary spirit/animal guide; and in dream, I seem practically unable to avoid bumping into Manannan every once in a while!
I also use divination to connect with my gods as well as my intuition/soul/subconscious (whatever you want to call it!). Mostly this is through tarot cards and occasionally other oracle card decks, but I plan to embark on a more serious study of the ogham as soon as I'm settled in Seattle!
I've also been studying astrology, and particularly the psychological approach to astrology best exemplified in the work of astrologers like Liz Greene and Stephen Arroyo, for the past year, complimented by a deeper exploration of Jungian archetypes and mythological patterns found in the works of Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade. This work has afforded me a great deal of insight into my own psyche and the patterns that underlie some of my approaches to life, the world and other people. I'm looking forward to exploring ways that I can utilize this insight and the framework established by astrological study to serve my community by understanding better what unique gifts I have to offer and maybe even by providing astrological counseling for others at some point. (I've started offering to do free natal chart readings online and have already had about two dozen clients!)
5. What special work have you taken on, for yourself, for others, for our community?
As I mentioned above, I've been exploring the possibility of providing astrological counseling as a service to the community in the near future. I've also worked as a writer and editor to help create opportunities for discussion and exploration in the Pagan community through articles, essays and blog posts focusing on our relationship with the Earth. On a few occasions, I've helped draft rituals or liturgies as a part of an online group celebrating together (these have mostly been through my work as a Flamekeeper with a Brighidine Cill, exploring Brighid's role as a solar and stellar goddess).
To be honest, since most of this work has been online in one way or another, I've sometimes struggled over the past year to remember to make any special spiritual/religious work a priority for myself as well as for others. It's been a challenge to take time to devote to my personal spiritual life and seek out work that benefits me even if it doesn't seem to have any greater benefits for the communities I belong to. I want to strive to do better at this in the future, to nurture the wellspring of my own personal spirituality as well as continue to be committed to my community/public work.
6. How do you find balance in the three: the sky, the earth and the sea? How are the Three Realms becoming a way of life for you?
The dynamic balance and relationship of the Three Realms informs my spirituality at the deepest level, and provides a flexible, adaptive context for all of my spiritual work. I begin every ritual or meditation session by attuning to the energies of the Three Realms and honoring the deities, the ancestors and the spirits of the land.
At times, my view of the Three Realms is of them as overlapping spheres: below, above and sacred center (or axis mundi), or the immanent, transcendent and the manifest worlds - which roughly correspond to sea, sky and land. At other times, particularly when I'm outside in natural landscapes performing rituals or sitting in meditation, I connect with the Three Realms much more immediately as the very real spaces that make up the local landscape - the winds, weather, sun and stars of the physical sky, the rolling hills and dense forests of the physical land, and the murmuring waves and rocking tides of the physical sea and the waters that run through the earth in rivers and streams. I try to hold these two understandings of the Three Realms - the literal and the theological - together as a kind of sacred paradox, instead of reducing one to the other. So I see in the sky the transcendent theological realm of the gods, and in the sea the immanent sacred waters of life of which all things are made... but I also see the physical sky and sea, too, in all their complexity and overlapping, interconnected relationship.
The expression of the Three Realms through the three Druidic elements of nwyfre, gwyar and calas has also given me a way of understanding the different processes and energies in the world and how they balance, interact with and give rise to each other. I understand nwyfre as force, energy and source; gwyar as flow, change and relationship; and calas as form, manifestation and natural limitation or boundaries. I see these as different from the traditional/classic four elements of earth, air, fire and water. While these four are more like "building blocks," the stuff that all things are made up of, the three Druidic elements of nwyfre, gwyar and calas are more like aspects or principles describing the basic, essentials ways that the four elements express and interact. The metaphor I've used before (and the best I've been able to come up with so far) is that the four classic elements of earth, air, fire and water are like the notes of a scale, and the elements of nwyfre, gwyar and calas describe the shape, progression and process of joining these individual notes into a melody.
7. Can you say that this path of the Druid is your path and that you wish to take it up as your practice for your life in this world?
Yes! Most definitely, whole-heartedly, a thousand times yes!
