May Recap
During the month of May, Views from the Lorian Community featured interviews with two of our donors:
Bringing the Sacred Into the Profane: An Interview with Jerry K:
"How does Incarnational Spirituality relate to my quest to integrate the Sacred with my work to promote a sustainable world? It has to do with how I have been such a failure at traditional spiritual practice that seems aimed at becoming perfect, other-worldly, ascending. Incarnational Spirituality is about accepting that the world in its natural state is good, including the “cracks” in life and that sometimes you need cracks for your Light to shine through. So Incarnational Spirituality provides me with a worldview to integrate more fully with the wholeness of life around me and that is why I have found it beneficial."
Stars Come Down to Earth: An Interview with Odessa Piper:
One of the many wonderful lessons that I’ve learned from David and Lorian is about the sacredness of the ordinary. David used to sometimes eat at my restaurant and in a conversation David described a bread machine he got a kick out of. It was one that sits on the counter, stirs up your dough and bakes a loaf of bread. Still full of myself for having discovered this idea of cooking homegrown food from scratch, I pooh-poohed the idea. Having a bread machine was not the real deal! David very gently explained how much pleasure he took in interacting with this wonderful machine and the smells, aroma of baking bread. He taught me something very important.
Things can be deceiving; what is the high and mighty path? Sometimes the spirit of a thing lies in the relationship you form with it. There’s something alive, a real affirmation of life and spirit in the relationship we form with things.
Lorian blog writers also shared experiences of interactions with Sidhe acquaintances and how working with the Sidhe complements their daily lives and creative choices.
Meeting a Solitary Neighbor by Claire Blatchford:
So what do Talus and I “talk” about? I sense through him deep layers of meaning in hills, rocks, rivers, farm house ruins and old pathways. Also, the vigilant presence of certain Native Americans in the area we live in. But what is shared is really appreciation, rather than information. Appreciation for this landscape, this particular place we both dwell in. Sometimes I feel I am seeing the natural world though his eyes, rather than my own, and when that happens I see relationships rather than individual objects. For example, it strikes me how that tree over there, needs to be beside this rock. I may have looked at both hundreds of times without noticing till then how right their placement is, how they lean into each other. Or, with amazed delight, I see not just a line of green in the distance but an army of verdant young ferns marching up a hillside and on into the woods.
Dreaming of the Sidhe by Freya Secrest:
At first when the Sidhe, described to me as the “People of Peace”, came into my life, it was through hearing of others’ interest and experience. It seemed the commonly shared platform for meeting with them was one of creativity and artistic expression.
Then a number of years ago I had a dream which seemed to illustrate the essence of their peaceful world. In the dream I walked into a community of people living in a forest-like environment. There were no houses or buildings to be seen, but it was a center of their community life. I was invited to join them for a picnic. I found myself climbing a ladder high into the clouds where the picnic was being held. I was somewhat fearful of going up so high, very conscious of the danger of falling off the edge. There was a river in our cloud field and the children were playing, running freely with no seeming supervision. No one seemed to fear that they would fall off the edge of the clouds or into the water. In the dream I realized it was because the children, indeed all of these people, were so connected to the environment that they were a part of it.
A Thousand Portals by Ron Hays:
I pass through portals every day–from the sidewalk into my office building, from my front porch into my home, from my driveway into my car. Each time my identity shifts. Thoughts change, emotional states alter, and postures adapt to the new place. Most of the time the adaptation is mechanical and I’m unaware that I’ve crossed a threshold. A lifetime is a passage through portals of our experiences–some involuntary but others intentional. There is that moment when I cross a boundary, when worlds can shift on their axes. Marriages, births, graduations, illnesses, deaths are all portals that reshape ourselves and the world we live in. When we stride across thresholds with intentionality, we generate new potentials and opportunities for ourselves.
Engaging Sidhe by David Spangler:
I was deeply moved by Claire Blatchford’s recent Lorian blog, “Meeting a Solitary Neighbor.” Her description of her Sidhe contact Talus struck many familiar notes with me. There is a park not far from my house; part of it is open meadow and wetlands, the other part is a small forest. When I walk the paths among its trees, it’s like being in some deep wilderness, even though it’s surrounded by houses. It’s here that I met a being who very much resembled Claire’s Talus in appearance and demeanor save for one prominent feature. He had antlers like a deer.
He introduced himself, and like Claire’s Talus—or for that matter, like Mariel—his name was not pronounceable in English. However, he gave himself a title. He said, smiling and with no trace of irony, “I am the lord of this forest.” That this was a pocket forest in the middle of suburbia made no difference to him or to the responsibility implied by this title; in fact, I had the strong sense that to him, the physical forest I was in was only an outcropping of a much larger and more magnificent wooded wilderness that existed in his world.
From the Archives: The Sidhe by David Spangler:
The Sidhe reintroduces us to that sense of wonder, I feel. If such beings can exist, what else may exist in our world? How much have we circumscribed our reality by insisting that it is only what we can see and touch? What doors and windows have we shut to the mystery and awesomeness of creation, preferring to live our lives fixated only on what we see on our screens?
The Sidhe for me are like a touch of a larger world, offering an invitation to expand our vision and our sense of possibilities.
June
This month David Spangler's quarterly journal Views from the Borderland enters its 6th year of publication! Have you renewed your subscription yet? Are you curious, but have a few questions, or think it may be too obscure--too far out there-- for you? Blog writer Annabel Chiarelli recently interviewed David and learned exactly how accessible and down to earth his adventures into the subtle worlds can be! Views from the Lorian Community will feature their two-part interview next week.
Also, on June 24 and 26, Jeremy Berg (Lorian priest and author of Faerie Blood and A Knight to Remember: Visions with the Sidhe, will lead a workshop entitled Kinship with the Sidhe: Exploring our Links with the Faerie Otherwords at the Faerie and Human Relations Congress. In preparation, Jeremy shared some of his Sidhe insights in an upcoming interview.
Additionally, blog and guest writers begin an exploration into the beauty, resonance and clarity of the natural world.
Much gratitude for the support of our faithful readers! Happy Midsummer!
Views from the Lorian Community publishes essays from a team of volunteer writers expressing individual experiences of a long term, committed practice of Incarnational Spirituality (and the general principles shaping such a practice.) If you wish to share how your life has benefited from your relationship with Lorian and IS, please email the editor at drenag@lorian.org. We prefer submissions between 700-900 words. We rarely accept previously published material (including blog posts.) We also reserve the right to decline or to edit your submission. Any accepted submissions will be published in the order that best fits our topic schedule.