My goodness, how times flies. Some things diminish with the passage of time, others, blessed with a Proustian resilience, stay fresh and vibrant for long after the fact. I recently travelled to Germany to ordain our first European Priest, Rev. Elen Schibli-Lazzaro, and this is one of those events that is indelibly etched in my memory.

We are an offering religion, offerings based on the concept of *ghosti, or hospitality. I am always touched when I find myself in a new or unusual situation and am met by spontaneous hospitality. It renews my faith in humanity and also in my religion.

I recently traveled to Europe to meet with Druids and to ordain our first European priest, Rev. Elen Schibli-Lazzaro. What I found as I hopped from Luxembourg City to Frankfort and then to Padenborn was a different country and a different people. From the air, I saw wind turbines everywhere I looked and interesting stone formations every here and there. I was impressed with what I saw from the air.  I was met at the airport and while I had spoken to Elen on Facebook, email, and the telephone, I did not know what to expect when I arrived. What I was soon to learn about my hosts was their kindness and hospitality. I found this to not only be the case with my hosts, but with every person who passed through their door.

Over the next few days, I was made to feel very welcome. On the day of arrival, we did some sightseeing and saw some amazing sights. We went to the Externsteine, which is a sandstone formation in the Teutoburg Forest. There were carvings and grottos, altars and enclosures, things of great beauty and age.

The topmost photograph was a small carved-out area that has an altar-like area within it and I was drawn to the circular opening in the rock on a location known as the Höhenkammer, or High Chamber. I have to wonder what that looks like with the Moon shining through, perhaps even on some solstice or equinox. The bottom photograph is known as the Sargstein or tomb stone. This type of structure is called an Arcosolium and I must say that laying in it was a moving experience. The cool temperature of the stone and the depth of the carving generated a very calming and grounding feeling. The vault overhead echoed when sound was made and I would think that this would be a powerful place for a funeral or initiation. It would make for a profound all-night vigil with the stone overhead, the mountain and grottos behind, and the water very near to the side. The length of the enclosure is approximately 2 meters.

One of the other features of this place is a medieval carving known as the Kreuzabnamerelief or Christ’s descent from the cross. It is an image of some complexity, but there is a component on the sculpting which suggests the Irminsul of the Saxons, although there is no archeological evidence to indicate this site’s use during that period. In this image, Nicodemus is standing on the bent-over Irminsul, although his legs have been missing since the 17th century.

Our next excursion was to the Doernberg area. The Doernberg is an elevation of 396 meters upon which were reputedly found the remains of a ring wall site from La Tène times. A Celtic fort was to have been located on the highest point of this area. It is an area of stunning views and a great place for quiet reflection. I felt that the wind that has blowing here had many stories to tell. There was a stone formation upon which one could recline and it gave me a feeling of deep peace and grounded-ness. I could feel the Earth Mother’s presence everywhere around this location.

There was also a small labyrinth located on the site which we walked and given the location, the subtle wind blowing, and the general feeling of peace that surrounded the entire area, I found the walk to me quite moving.

Being treated to such interesting and historical sites was a wonderful gift from my hosts. There were many more instances of hospitality for me to experience. On the day of the Ordination, people from different parts of Germany arrived. They were so very different and such good guests (from the guest perspective that I enjoyed). They weren’t here to celebrate ADF per se, but the ordination of one of their own, a new German and European priest. People spoke German, French, English, and probably a few other languages. People wore different attire, clothing which represented their traditions, their philosophies, and perhaps even their locations. Many people stopped to speak with me and I was very pleased to speak with people who spoke English so well. I had a fascinating discussion with a philosophy student concerning his views, especially some interesting thoughts about gift economies. The concept of a gift economy is especially interesting to people who follow a path of hospitality.

As a participant in the ordination rite, I was honoured to be a part of this historic occasion and pleased to see the progress that this priest had made. I am very encouraged by our European presence and especially excited about the first of what I believe will be more priests. As an observer in the ordination rite, I loved to see the various people and their presentations, both is clothing and in attitude. Everyone made me feel welcome and I felt a kinship to these wonderful people. I felt like a novelty at this event, but these people, these kind people, made me feel like one of them for an afternoon.

As the ceremony ended and the celebrations began, many people stopped by to say “hello”, paused to talk, and openly shared their thoughts and joys at the days events. I was like a sponge, absorbing the wonders of the days, and holding on to this feeling with a great desire to make it last, in my recollection, and in the workings of the future, both in Europe and around the world.

I had a dream of seeing ADF grow in Europe and that dream was solidified by this ordination event, this priestly and personal success for Elen, and this gathering of peoples to see her become an ADF priest. Our ritual was celebrated in the shadow of a medieval fort, high on a hill. It was like the past was looking down on us in silence and in a gentle, reverent observation. Our many robes of many colours were like flowers in a garden that was blossoming in the late spring. Each observer, each participant was seed, carried to the winds with their departure. This garden became their garden became a patchwork of hopes and good works.

The hospitality I experienced from my hosts is difficult to express because of the breadth of caring and sharing that came to pass on those few days in the green fields of this green land. As I walked into the airport and then flew high over the land, I saw the many windmills that stretch across Germany and I thought about the seeds in the garden in Hessen planted by and planted in a group of people, scattered in the winds by the windmills that dot the landscape, borne about by the sunshine of hope and beauty that community bring. We are so much greater when we link hearts and hands in the work of the future.

To these people – I will call them friends – I look back and pledge never to forget and I pray that I may return again, like the Nature Spirits remind me each year. I take those seeds and I plant them as words in this story. Please, give them water and sunshine and treat them like a cherished guest, as I was.

There is an ogham called “Tinne” that is associated with the Holly tree in the Colin Murray system. This ogham is located right in the middle of the fifteen ogham consonants: B-L-F-S-N-H-D-T-C-Q-M-G-nG-Z-R. For this reason, I always tend to associate Tinne with a balance point, a place right in the middle, a location in between.

The equinoxes are a “Tinne” type of event for me. The days and nights are balance across the equator, and I like to believe that there is this fine line, this separate moment at which point all is in balance and then the world either moves towards longer days or longer nights. Wait! It happens at the same time! In addition, as one side moves to greater light and one side moves to greater night, it is done so in balance.

The concept of the Wheel of the Year, while valid for a given location doesn’t really seem valid on a global sense. We see the world through a very local lens, but, as modern pagans, we must be cognizant of a more global view. We may have our local Earth Mothers – as our ancestors did – but the Earth Mother extends everywhere. The famous image of the view of the Earth from the Moon really drove this point home. Our Earth is a world in motion.

Since the world is in motion, I do not believe that a two-dimensional wheel properly describes the scenario of the seasons. It isn’t just the calendar dates that move; the winds move over the surface of our world; the seasons express themselves in varying and different ways through the crust of the Earth; the waters that travel the surface of our world are always in motion, such as rivers and streams and ocean currents; the still waters, be they lake or pond or bog are also in flux due to evaporation. The waters deep in the Earth, the underground waters that flow as the lifeblood of the Earth Mother, past the Ancestors, through the caverns deep in the Earth, are constantly in motion. The molten core of the Earth is also in motion and moves to points of expression throughout the surface of our world.

I am not sure how one would describe this kind of motion, but it isn’t a simple spin of a wheel. It is more like perpetual motion with intent and spirit behind it. It is motion that expresses itself in many ways and in many directions yet, when matched against the calendar, this constancy of motion does move in a linear path through the year with opposite events set apart across the equator. As the days get longer, the nights get equally longer on the other side of the equator until the Sun seems to stop on the Solstices and the motion turns around. The days and nights then move towards a balance which is achieved at the equinoxes and then the cycles continue. Here we have the movement of the various streams over, on, and under the Earth set upon a backdrop of the Earth’s own movement through the solar system.

Tinne is the balance point. I like to think that for one brief and fleeting moment, all of the Earth and the seasons are balanced like a cosmic dance which never ends, is always in motion, and pauses just ever so slightly, when music and motion and constancy stop only to enter into motion once again.

My festival season is most of the year. I attend festivals representing ADF from February through November and it is a task I gladly undertake and enjoy. This year, I looked forward to attending, once again, Hearthstone Grove’s Texas Imbolc Retreat, held at the U-Bar-U Ranch in the Texas Hill Country near Kerrville.

I flew into San Antonio because it is the closest airport to Texas Imbolc and it is a smaller, cozier airport. I landed, picked up a rental car, and headed out on the road. I arrived at the turnoff a little over an hour later and the journey began.

The road to the U-Bar-U is very, very hilly and some parts must be taken with caution. Going down these roads too quickly would cause a person to bottom out and to most likely incur some damages along the way. I took my time, I watched the scenery, and I slowly started to relax into the serenity of the land.

This view outside of my window was dry and arid, with many rocks and goats and gnarled trees along the way. The spaces between places were wide and vast and almost empty. I followed the road until it ended and then took a left turn. I followed the slow, rocky path to the U-Bar-U ranch and my adventure began.

When I first attended this festival – five years ago, I believe – there was no bunkhouse. There were two large rooms with bunk beds in the lodge proper and everybody slept in one or the other. It was very “cozy”, but not very private.  Two years ago, a new bunkhouse opened that is just beautiful and that has modern facilities and fewer people per room than before. The design of the bunkhouses is such that it blends fairly well with the local scenery and is in no way an eyesore.

The first thing I always notice upon arrive is the stillness of the land. There is often a breeze that blows, but it is more like a whisper than a shout. There is a beautiful stone fire pit and there was already a fire burning when I arrived. I was greeted warmly upon arrival – as always and as everyone is.

I saw many familiar faces: the Hearthstone Grove, the Nine Waves Grove, and the Blackland Prairie Protogrove, even the faces of the U-Bar-U staff were familiar. I saw John Beckett, ADF members, mystic Old Testament Christians, Wiccans, heathens, and a wonderful cross-section of folks and friends. While this is distinctly an ADF festival, it really is a lot broader than just that. Or perhaps ADF is broader than just that.

The opening rite was a great way to start a festival. Nine Waves Grove gave us a ritual to remember: well executed, effective, and welcoming. I was very impressed. It was a good omen for the weekend to come.There was a really interesting and beautiful Slavic Ritual that wasn’t ADF Core Order, but it was it was nice to see something quite different from what I have experienced before. At one point in the ritual, an apple was passed from person-to-person, touched to the next person’s forehead, and then passed along. I thought that was a gentle way to share a sense of community.

This was the story of the weekend. An easy information flow from presenter to audience with a sincere desire to inform, to entertain, and to help. The food was good, the company was better, the weather was so pleasant, and people came together and shared. Isn’t this what festival is about? The original festival movement in the latter part of the previous century was centered around the exchange of information and the joyful discovery that there were other people out there that not only had the same interests as other people, but a similarity of practice as well. This weekend was no exception.

One of the other benefits of the weekend was for people to meet face-to-face to talk. While this is not always possible, this is an ideal way to exchange thoughts and ideas that reduces the chance of misunderstanding and increases the possibilities of really communicating. It makes a difference when a person can see the other person and I hope that such encounters can continue at the U-Bar-U for years to come and that these events, more and more, can either be videotaped or broadcast live to people who did not have the ability to attend.

The Core Order of Ritual was the structure used for the opening, main, and closing rituals. As I have noticed time and time again, the Core Order is broad enough to allow people from different traditions to worship together while allowing room for individual expression and tailoring, especially in the personal offering and workings section of the ritual. The Pre-Ritual Briefing remains a powerful tool in helping people to know what to expect and to understand any local variations that might occur.

I want to thank everyone who attended for their attentiveness in the workshops, rituals, and general times of sharing. The weekend passed by all too quickly with a minimal amount of drama and a great deal of understanding and patience.

I spent a lot of times outdoors at this festival, relishing the beautiful weather and the land that made me feel timeless. The liminal times of the day were so still and so powerful, with that slight breeze blowing, the sound of wind through branches, and a brilliant dawn and dusk. The Full Moon was a beautiful gift to a peaceful sky, out amidst the stones and the trees. Venus shone like a bright beacon and it slid slowly towards the horizon as the night overtook the remnants of the day.

I stood outside and I listened. I closed my eyes and let the Sun dance on my face and the breeze tell me stories that it had told before, would tell again, and would re-tell, even if no one was there to hear. The Hill Country moved slowly through time, and I moved slowly through them both, as though my life was Tai Chi and my religion was that dance. I felt as though I could be a tree under that sky. I would open my soul and be like a rock or a goat or better yet, a tree. The wind from the West would tell tales. And I would listen.

We gathered together for our Brazilian Beltaine Celebration on a quiet morning during the first weekend of November. We drove to a city park in Curitiba and grabbed our gear and began our walk to the celebration area. I was told that this particular park was off the beaten path and that the area was fairly primitive. The walk through the park was very quiet and the striking beauty of the trees and the silence of the morning were a powerful counterbalance to the work that was to be done.

Upon arriving at the location, we were asked to gather whatever firewood we could find and to clean up any garbage that had been left by previous visitors. I thought this was an excellent idea to not only gather what was necessary, but to start our work by making the area better than it had been left to us.

The first thing that I noticed was the sound of a small, rushing stream. I walked over to the border of the area where we were setting up and there was this narrow but rapidly moving stream. It sounded so melodious and, with the absence of many urban sounds, it was the one thing that I heard at the edge of my consciousness. I walked over to it and watched in wonder as it made its way past us and onwards to a larger and perhaps wider purpose.

I was given a beautiful white tunic to wear and it really put me in the ritual mood. As we gathered brush and picked up stray things here and there, it felt as though I was quietly spiraling in towards the ritual mind set that we so often look for. We were joined by several more members of Fine na Dairbre until we had all of the members of the Protogrove, including Shaz Cairns, the Asia-Pacific Regional Druid, and myself. The surrounding natural are now cleaned, the efforts were now focused on clearing out the fire pit, which was the center of the ritual experience. Ample wood was gathered and stacked to last for the entire ritual and mention was made that everything that wasn’t used was to be returned to the Earth.

At the very beginning of the rite, we were instructed to go out into the ritual field and find a place to center ourselves and to commune with our spirit guides and animals. I had never heard this expressed in quite this way and it was an great experience for me. Ever since I had arrived in Brazil, I kept coming across ants, formida, at just about every place I looked in nature. When I was just about to close my eyes to center myself, I looked down, and I saw an ant sitting on me. It then struck me that the reason they had seemed so ubiquitous was that they were trying to give me a message – they were now one of my Spirit Animals. Then, as I closed my eyes and let my conscious self sink into the sounds of the location, I once again heard a very familiar and insistent sound – that of the nearby stream. I questioned myself: could a spirit guide be something other than an animal of some sort or an insect? Could it be the movement of something like water? Upon reflection, the answer was given to me: yes. I discovered, along with my ants friends, that moving water, such as in a stream, was also a spirit guide. Here, on the other side of the equator, I discovered a new spirit guide and one that had been with me for a very long time. I felt very fortunate and gave thanks to my totems and the spirits of the place.

The ritual began with an acknowledgement of the Outsiders. Two of the ritual participants went to their designated location for Outsider offerings and the made acknowledgements and left offerings for the Outsiders. Next, everyone was welcomed and the purpose of the ritual was discussed. It was really interesting to listen to the Portuguese parts of the ritual because Portuguese is a very melodic and lyrical language and the sounds seemed so very much in harmony with the surrounding that we were in. Next came the purification, and this was a real treat.

Purification was done in two steps: with fire and with water. Purification by fire was done with a stick or branch that had a type of cloths wrapped around the end and for each person, the branch was lit and the fire was waved near the head, for purification of thought, near the chest, for purification of the heart, and near the solar plexus, for purification of the soul. Purification by water was done by the presentation of a bowl of water, and each person dipped their fingers into the water and then anointed their head, the heart, and the soul (as in solar plexus). The repetitive nature of the blessings in Portuguese was not only soothing but also had a compelling rhythm to the words.

One of the features of the Fine na Dairbre ritual was the use of an amphora to a) call the spirit of the Earth Mother into; and b) to use later on for the sake of the omen (using an open system of divination). The amphora was filled with herbs, if I remember correctly, and with red wine. The Spirit of the Earth Mother was honoured and welcomed into this vessel and the amphora was placed onto the altar.

Bardic Inspiration was called and my recollection was of the silence of the area punctuated by the meanderings of the stream, as if the Nature Spirits had the last word in the matter. The Hallows were called to and offered to and the gates were opened with the help of Manannan mac Lir. We had done a previous rite to Manannan mac Lir earlier in the week, and with our numerous visits to the ocean, Manannan mac Lir seemed very close at hand. Offerings were then made to the Kindreds – the Ancestors, the Nature Spirits, and the Shining Ones – and I remembered observing with glee and reverence that when the Nature Spirits were called, two dogs came out of the forest and stood near us as the rite progressed. The Nature Spirits were called; the Nature Spirits arrived.

The deity of the occasion for Beltaine was An Dagda and his offering was a meat porridge which was deemed an appropriate gift for this deity. The pot of porridge was held aloft and the offering was made upon the ground. Once the Dagda was called into the rite, individual offerings were added by each person in attendance and  I have to admit that I enjoyed watching each and every individual make offerings and listening to their prayers in Portuguese. For me, it was if the individual words disappeared and the offerings that fell from each person’s lips were sweet songs that painted the rite in such resplendent colours that the area seemed to glow with music. During these offerings, I noticed that one of the Nature Spirits had come over and was enjoying the Dagda’s porridge that was set upon the ground and I looked at the other Nature Spirit and I noticed that she must have just had pups – they had previously made their own offerings to the Earth Mother and we were blessed, celebrants and Kindreds, communing together. After the Dagda’s feast was consumed, the two Nature Spirits lay on the grass and eventually went to sleep. In this way, these sacrifices had been accepted.

The Prayer of Sacrifice was offered and then it was time for the omen. This is where the amphora and an open system of reading was used. The amphora, filled with wine and the spirit of the Earth Mother, was put into the fire as an offering. There was perhaps 250ml of wine in the vessel and once the wine heated to sufficient temperature, the wine overflowed onto the outside of the white amphora. The omen was read by looking at what the wine did on the vessel itself. Someone commented that the on one side of the amphora, it looked like the head of a wolf, a large black wolf and, lo and behold, a large black dog came out of the forest and walked around the area in which the Outsider offering had been placed. The person reading the omen decided that this was indeed a good omen and that the offerings had been accepted. A little while later, someone called to my attention that there were two ogham on the inside of the amphora and indeed there were. These two ogham are Ohn and Ur. In any event, I found these ogham to be benevolent signs and also concurred, albeit later, that the offerings had been accepted and that direction had been given by the Kindreds and An Dagda. We then feasted, with our canine Nature Spirits sharing a part of the feast, and we unwound the ritual as usual. All offerings not used were either poured upon the ground or offered to the fire so that nothing would remain. We would leave the area as we had found it, less some wood that we had gathered for the fire.

As we packed up and left, we walked the distance back to the gate, accompanied by our canine friends. They walked with us to the metal gate which served as the way in and the way out, and stayed behind as we walked back into the mundane world of the parking lot. I looked back to take in the beauty of the park again, and to say goodbye to our canine companions. I would be leaving Brazil the next day, and I was sad to leave this behind.

I apologise for the long delay between Beltaine and this writing, but I have played the events of that trip, of that journey, of that day, over and over in my head and it remains a pivotal and important journey, not just because of the miles traveled or the people met and remembered and the beauty seen and experienced. It gave me a chance to see a different way of worshiping and the knowledge that I had found some other totem beings to help in my travels. I came away from Brazil with longing for rejoinder with that place and with those people, but I also felt that my understanding of the Earth Mother and especially the non-linear nature of Her way was to become much more important in how I looked at my Druidry and the world on both side of the Equator. More about that soon to come.