This past Autumn Waymarkers hosted a Rewilding Retreat based on the Celtic story of the Selkie. This seal-skin/soul-skin mythopoetic lens was a meaningful way of leaning into one’s personal story and recovering lost aspects of one’s True Self.
Read MoreWhile I have loved well my garden and all the growth that has occurred through the process of cultivation and design, I have found in recent years a deep and demanding need to leave the order of the garden, to see it as a threshold inviting me beyond to the forested fringes or the wisdom found within wild waters. I have desired prayers and practices, rites and rituals that would remind my bones that I am related and dependent upon beaver, bluff, and bird, and how they fare becomes a litmus for my own wholeness and wellness. This kind of wholeness which balances on an ecosystem approach, can only be gained by a journey that takes one deep into the woods, through fields, tracing watersheds to the sea, and climbing up to the high climes of the mountains.
Read MoreThrough the archetypal movements of pilgrimage, one finds deep meaning and spiritual connection through both the exilic wandering and the renunciations associated with the journey; moreover, as a result, one finds themselves deeply connected within the community of creation, and profoundly rooted and at home in their pilgrimage place.
Read MoreThis 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.
Read MoreWe 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?
Read MoreThis is merely a note to awaken you to what is emerging here at Waymarkers. I graduated with my Masters in Theology & Culture from The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology and a specialization in Thomas Berry's Universe Story from Yale University this past June. Waymarkers is soaking this up and becoming a sacred guide, a presence that will take us deeper into the wilds where Creator can be heard speaking through all created things.
Read MoreFriends,
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.
Read MoreI 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.
Read More
