Week 18: Personal Religion

Related to Requirement: 
#10 – Personal Religion;
#9 – Relationships to Kindred
Required Reading:  

• Our Own Druidry, p. 19 (The Hearth Oath)  
• Our Own Druidry, p. 123 – 128 (Personalizing Your Paganism)  
• Our Own Druidry, p. xv – xvi (Appendix 1: Adapting the DP to Specific Ethnic Paths) 

Optional reading:  

• Our Own Druidry, p. 62 – 74 (Hearth Cultures and High Days)  
• Our Own Druidry, p. xvii – xxvii (Using the DP for Grove Building);  
• Reintroducing Solitary Work into Your Life by Rev. Michael J Dangler <http://www.adf.org/articles/solitary/reintroducing-solitary-work.html>  
• "Ratri" by Adhitin Ratrija <http://www.adf.org/articles/gods-and-spirits/vedic/ratri.html>  
• "The Case for Choosing a Pantheon" by Ian Corrigan <http://www.adf.org/articles/gods-and-spirits/general/case-for-choosing-a-pantheon.html>  
• "Dual Trad Daily Devotionals" by Tanrinia, <http://www.adf.org/members/training/dp/articles/dual-trad-devotions.html> 

I've fallen frightfully behind over the past month on this. Just have had absolutely no motivation to work on anything more complicated than my sewing. I suppose at least part of it is that May is always really busy and I feel like I should have been out playing at the local ren faire. Instead, I've been lazing, gardening, and reading.

Answers to Week 1 are Here.
Most of my answers are still the same.  The study group has pretty much fallen apart so I'm doing it on my own anyway, which I was trying to avoid, but much of everything else is the same.

Except not really. I still have no more idea now how to meditate than I did 21 weeks ago. The Daily Devotionals are teaching me how to be at peace with myself and the world for about 20 minutes a day, but it's not really what I expect meditation to teach me. Or maybe I'm just comparing too much.

I certainly need to just learn to trust the Kindreds and my own intuition. Even if my conscious mind is freaking out, I was led to this path and I think I need to walk it a while. I have no more idea now if I'll stay with ADF long term or just for a while, but this is my home for a while longer. I

First Oath
I made a point of my first oath being things that I could do. Not necessarily without stretching, but I didn't want to set my obligations so high that I would fail more often than I succeeded. I am seeking the Gods, I am doing my best to be charitable and kind, and I am learning. I'm not teaching yet, but that will come in time.

Hearth Culture
I'm sticking with Norse for my personal hearth. Most of my hobbies right now are leaning that way and this way all my research will feed back into itself. My I-E studies book hasn't changed how I feel about any of the cultures (I'm not sure that my book should even be listed as IE Studies), but that also wasn't its goal. I do want/need to re-work my devotional a bit to make it fit Norse better, but right now is not the time.

Patron/ Matron
Oh, I wish. I hear the same silence that I always have from that corner. I may have felt something like tingles when I was planning the Beltane ritual, but those left as soon as the ritual was over. I'm just doing daily offerings to the Deities as a whole and Freyja and Joerd (friend is seeking help in conceiving). Its a lot like being at Camp Half-Blood: eventually someone will claim you, but in the mean time, hang out and do the best you can.

Week 12: Ancestors, proper write-up

The proper write up from last week. Since I didn't get it done over the weekend and I'm apparently a week ahead of the study group, so I actually have a bit of time.

Since my practice prior to this hasn't really included the Ancestors in a personal sense, I started with an Invocation. I partially combined the Invocation from the Dedicant Manual and one of the Invocations on the ADF website. I added some other things because they felt right (offerings to the Earth Mother and Heimdall).

As an invitation to the Ancestors, I offered some rosemary (for remembrance) and lavender oil (for calm). The Earth Mother and Heimdall both got a libation of hard cider.

After I finished the Invocation, it really felt like I had folks just yelling at me, "name me! I'm at this party!" For the most part, this was fine, even if they are all folk I would consider to be blood family. I'm fortunate in that there are very few people in my family who I would invite or who would show up at an open invitation. However, my (blood) grandfather did show up. I would not have invited him if at all possible. At the advice of the Grove, I think I'm going to commune/ talk with his first wife (my grandmother) and mother-in-law. See if they can't corral him.

I suppose I probably didn't need to put forth an open call, however, not putting forth an open call would have meant that relatives I didn't think about didn't show up. One of those cases where having a very small family is not the best thing ever. Relatives who were dead before I was born (in 1 case, before my parents were born) want to be acknowledged.

I need to put together a box of remembrances for those whose influence is most especially felt in my life. Crochet hooks and knitting needles for Grandma T and G-Grandmas L and H, maybe a bit of yarn or a quilt block. Grandpa K was always proud of his teaching career and cooking. Grandpa B gets a golf ball. The thing that springs to mind for P is a car, but that might also just be my sick sense of humor. Ora and Lillian also wanted attention, but I didn't get the sense they wanted to be constantly thought of?

I need to put in more work. I know who wants attention now, so I need to give it to them.

Week 12: Ancestors, The Mighty Dead

Related to Requirement: #9 – Relationships to Kindred

Required Reading:
 Our Own Druidry, p. 120-121 (Kindred Attunement Work)
 Our Own Druidry, p. 42 (The Ancestors)

Optional Reading:
 "Ancestors Invocation" by Jennifer Ellison
 "A Beginner's Guide to Genealogical Research: or How I Connected to My Ancestors" by Meghan E. M.
 "Ancestors For Those Without Ancestors" by Renee Rhodes
 The Solitary Druid by Rev. Skip Ellison, p. 85-86

I'll come back to the ancestors later. This entry is mostly going to be catch up.

Nature:
It's spring. the trees are having sex and I can't breathe. I've not gotten as much yard work done yet as I really wanted to do, but there's time. Well, for most of it.  Looks like I should have gotten the strawberries in 2 weeks ago, as opposed to in 2 weeks when I have time and money to make it happen. But I should be able to get the mint in this spring. Or at least start getting the soil amended to what both strawberries and mint want.

This is my outside. Lawn and garden. I'm trying to not tear up too much stuff and to keep things still decently wild (or wild for suburbia) so that the Nature Spirits don't deal with too much change at once. Once the fence is re-built, I'll plant a bunch of butterfly bushes and other critter friendly plants.

I really dont know if this is what they want for nature awareness.

Meditation/ Mental Training:
This, contrary to all my expectations, is going ok. I'm not going to say it's going great, but the forcing myself to take time in the mornings is at least making me feel less anxious (most mornings). I'm still continuing with the Anywhere Devotional that I started out with. I do still need to create a proper rune set. In all the copious spare time I have for crafting.

Luna is being problematic in the mornings now that it's nice out. She makes it her goal to be as obnoxious as possible so I'll let her out in the mornings. Which means yowling at the top of her lungs, drinking from the well, trying to set herself on fire...  It's a bit distracting when I'm trying to be reach out to the kindreds.

I need to continue working on the two powers meditation. Will probably do that tonight after dinner while working on the stuff for ancestors.

I-E Studies:
I haven't touched this in weeks.

Week 1 with Study Group

I am going to the make-up initial study group meeting on Thursday, but here's what the group is doing this week (copied directly from the study group post):

• Take the time to read up through Week 1 in The ADF Dedicant Path Through the Wheel of the Year (in the Files section) and prepare your materials. 
• Read p. 11-20 and Appendix B of Our Own Druidry (in the Files section). 
• Read the DP FAQ (https://www.adf.org/members/training/dp/faq.html) 
• Consider starting a DP blog and linking the group to it when you post. This can be a really great way to generate discussion, and many DP students prefer to keep their journals electronically for convenience and ease of sharing. 
• Read Journaling the Druid Path (https://www.adf.org/members/training/dp/articles/journaling-the-druid-path.html) 
• Read Uncertainty and the Dedicant's Journey (https://www.adf.org/training/dedicant/uncertainty.html) 
• Think about the questions Rev. Dangler asks in the Homework section. 

At this point, I've done all the readings (at least once) and, obviously, started the blog/journal.  I'm going to do the OOD reading again tomorrow morning with the physical book.  While reading it as an ebook is more convenient for work, carrying it with me, and doing a quick read through, I don't feel that I'm going to do as well for actually learning unless I can take margin notes, highlight, etc.  I'm out of practice at this whole studying/ read for content/ notes thing as it is, learning a new way of doing it might not be the best plan either.

Journalling is probably going to be an amalgam (really, that's how that's spelled?) of physical paper journalling and online. If I do the notes and initial pass on paper, then I can clean it up and actually make it legible online.  Typing things makes me actually do the mental work to make scholarly sense of things anyway.

Right now, I expect the most difficult parts of this to be the regular meditation practice and creating a relationship with patrons.

I've been trying, off and on, for 20 years to start and maintain a daily meditation practice.  It never seems to go anywhere.  It might be time to admit defeat on the standard western meditation style of sitting crosslegged and clearing ones mind.  So back to the beginning, and what is probably the nerdiest calling to paganism ever: the Jedi calming breath. Which actually isn't Jedi at all, but vaguely Buddhist (I think?  The site I learned it from went defunct so long ago that the Internet Archive doesn't even know what I'm talking about).

Patrons/ Deities/ Gods.  I've never had a relationship with them.  Even when I was young enough to be going to church and sunday school every sunday... I never got it.  Never felt like there was a personal connection with any deity or spirit.  I spent most of late elementary and junior high searching for the force (ok, apparently Star Wars had a bigger impact on my personal development than I thought) before discovering paganism and Tolkien.

I might come back to this in the morning, I might not.  But right now, it's long past my bedtime and my cat is freaking out that we've not commenced the routine yet.
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