Rewilding Prayer: How Caim Invites Protection for All of Creation

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Rewilding Prayer: How Caim Invites Protection for All of Creation

This week my youngest son started pre-school. And while his mornings will be spent within woodland walls and upon forest floors at a nature preschool, both he and and I were experiencing a deep anxiety around this fundamental shift in our daily rhythm together. I awoke early on his first day of school for a time of meditation and prayer practice on our behalf and for personal preparation.

I began with an embodied, ritualized form of prayer, the Celtic circling prayer.

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Trials and Trails that Wound: How We Learn from the Dragon

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Trials and Trails that Wound: How We Learn from the Dragon

We are coming into the season of Michaelmas, the ancient festival time of St. Michael who is connected to myths and lore around harvest abundance and more prominently, dragons. St. Michael is an archetypal representation of our inner light and courage that is called forth when scarcity is nigh. This scarcity and its corresponding fear is our dragon, one that we all must meet.

Yes, dragons and the dark woods within which they live, can scar us. But instead of killing the beast in return, can we learn to ride the dragon, and see our scars as sacred?

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Seminary Musings: Connected to the Other through the Stars and Soil

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Seminary Musings: Connected to the Other through the Stars and Soil

Friends,

On this Day of Epiphany, and before my next term at school holds my time hostage once again, I wanted to take a moment to share some of the emerging thoughts that have been personally prominent these past few months.  As we take time today to reflect on the legendary Three Wise Men, kingly magis who had deep knowledge of the links between the Divine and the cosmos, may we too ponder how we invite our celestial neighbors to inform our sense of awe of the Grand Story in which we continue to participate. 

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Connected Colors-A Gift from the Garden

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Connected Colors-A Gift from the Garden

This week has provided space for some much needed self-care. Seven weeks into my first term at The Seattle School and we have a week "off" to read, write, reflect and rest.

With most of my reading already caught up, I was all too eager to get my fingernails dirty and be outside! My spirit rejuvenates in the soil of my garden. It is where I get connected and find connectedness. It is where I engage awe and wonder in ways that only the natural world can provide. As I wrestled overgrown perennials and dug deep into the damp earth to plant promises of spring, I was struck with the diversity of color that still surrounded me, even as Autumn begins to shed her vibrant hues.

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Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: Island Journey

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Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: Island Journey

The pilgrimage around Iona visits places of sacred significance and historical importance on the island.  There are 18 sites in all and can take nearly all day to get to each one.  Our group broke the pilgrimage up in a few days-hitting the Abbey's specific spots while we did our tour and hiking up Dun I on a quiet afternoon-so that we could enjoy the heft of the hiking down to the south end of the island to really spend some meaningful time at St. Columba's Bay and enjoy the reflections at holy sites along the way.

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Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: Lectio Divina with Wind & Stone

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Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: Lectio Divina with Wind & Stone

Lectio Divina is an ancient contemplative prayer practice used to allow scripture to speak to our hearts and to help us to discover the multiple ways God dwells there. It means "sacred reading," and this practice can be extended beyond just the reading of scripture or inspired poetry. In the Celtic Christian tradition, the created world was seen as a revelation of God, and could be "read" to learn about and experience the Divine. Lectio Divina is a wonderful way of engaging the natural elements around us by inviting the "rocks to cry out" and the wind to whisper (or in the case of being on Iona, EXCLAIM!) to us the things of the numinous, the sacred, the divine.

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Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: Solviture ambulando

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Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: Solviture ambulando

Here on Iona, where it is often stated in promotional material that sheep outnumber people and cars, everyone walks.  There is but a single road and upon that one walks to get to the ferry, get to the Abbey, get a cup a tea.  It is both a means to a destination and a value in and of itself. The road becomes a liturgy and walking the prayers. 

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Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: Arrival-Hospitality

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Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage: Arrival-Hospitality

The warm invitation that this island, and its people, extend to new comers is quite profound.  There is a very real sense that there are no strangers in our midst.  In the context of the single road, the hostel or the beaches, there are ready smiles to lift yours, gregarious laughter rushing out to include you, and generous invitations to share tea, a meal or a bit of chocolate.  There is a sense of general community and conviviality that spans generations and gender.

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Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage-Departure: Fire and Fear

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Iona Pentecost Pilgrimage-Departure: Fire and Fear

The last load of laundry was finally folded and last minute pre-travel errands run.  Whispered prayers and silent repetitons of the “do not forget list” infused rain gear, woolen layers and inspirational books as they were packed tightly away in the suitcase.   Today I departed for my pilgrimage to Iona and I couldn’t be more eager to get past this stage!

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Taking the Outdoors In

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Taking the Outdoors In

By bringing in something in from the outside world, we are creating reminders of where we are.  As a result of big-box home stores going global and all the home decorating catalogs that infiltrate our front doors, our home interiors can begin to reflect a homogeneous look and feel.  We could be inside and really be anywhere.  Our regional landscapes give us bold reminders of where we live and inform a sense of our identity and spirit.  This connection to place is critical in a global, technological driven era.  Simple objects from just outside your front door can distinguish your homescape and provide a native anchor to your home.

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Easter: The Place of Our Resurrection

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Easter: The Place of Our Resurrection

This Easter evening we resurrection-believing types are likely sitting down, basking in the power of today's symbolism, while licking the stolen-from-our-kids'-Easter-basket chocolate off our fingers and pondering what to do with all those hard boiled eggs.  Our Lenten journeys over, we are quickly back to sipping on our coffees, wine or whathaveyou's, secretly grateful that that discipline practice is over and we can return back to ordinary life.

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Lenten Walk Series 8 (Sacred)

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Lenten Walk Series 8 (Sacred)

I spent this past weekend convening a women's retreat around themes of pilgrimage and Celtic Christian Spirituality.  We spoke at length about the inherent blessing of all creation and practiced seeing the sacred in all we encountered.  As this tradition relates to pilgrimage, we also learned about the hope-filled practice of the Celtic peregrines who would make pilgrim-voyages in their tiny coracles, which were often sailless and rudderless, so that God might allow ebb and flow to take these early pilgrims to wherever God wished them to go.

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Lenten Walk Series 4/5

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Lenten Walk Series 4/5

Gratitude for legacy and heritage have been on our praiseful lips these past two daysas we have made our way to Big Sky, Montanta for a week of skiing with family.  We overnighted in Butte, MT the birthplace of both of my parents and a landscape both sets of my grandparents intimately knew and loved

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Lenten Walk Series 3

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Lenten Walk Series 3

Walking through the streets of Seattle's New Rainier Vista neighborhood can seem somewhat like a maze.  If you don't keep your bearings on Mt. Rainier (easy to lose for non-natives on a cloudy day), you can effortlessly get turned about.  As we walked along the sidewalks of this redevelopment, the children picked up garbage; it seemed the only familiar act in which to respond to the ever-present litter lined up along some of these unfamiliar lanes.

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Lenten Walk Series I

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Lenten Walk Series I

The last couple weeks leading up to Lent, my children were bemoaning the Lenten possibility of eating only rice and beans for dinner (as we did last year).  While I am really glad we did that practice last year, it didn't seem to fit where we all are this year.  Giving up coffee, chocolate or wine are never very realistic options for me for obvious reasons, but on the whole, I'm just not inclined towards the "lack" this year.  We all seem to be needing something more....

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Great Impressions

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Great Impressions

There are some souls you come across in your life whose imprint they make on your own is more than the hands you hold every day.  Richard Twiss (Taoyate Obnajin: He Stands With His People) was such a soul.  And today, as the world cries, dances and drums their response to his death, I am humbled and challenged by the deep and lasting impression Richard made on my life.

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Threshing Time

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Threshing Time

We wait for much, do we not?  And conditioned are we to defend ourselves against this posture and we use every tool we can to avoid that quiet distance between departure and arrival.  Whether it be at a stop light, in a ferry line, or stuck in red-light traffic, we quickly deploy means to lessen the wait.  Let's be honest, despite the laws of safety in place to prohibit such behaviors, we may quickly check our smartphones for an email response from a friend, update our Facebook status and even get caught up on Twitter.

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Hearth Places

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Hearth Places

This has been a day to gather around the hearth-places to find warmth and inspiration.  For centuries the hearth was considered an integral part of a home, often its central or most important feature.  These brick lined structures were a place of survival from where nourishment and story came; food would be served from this seat of heat with a healthy side of laughter and conversation.  This was the gathering place.  This is where socks and tears were dried.  This was the place that centered and from which one left to go out into the world.

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