Blogs for my comrades and peers in the Birthing of New Cultures

I wanted to point out to everyone interested in my Living Love Revolution work that I have met a few colleagues whose work is also potent, deeply considered and transformational. When I say colleagues, I mean other people whose lives are committed to generating (R)Evolutionary cultural contexts in their daily offerings. People who are walking their talk. People whose praxis is present in their presence (LOL tongue twisters for the alliteration junkies). People who are creating new ways of being and teaching others as they go. I also mean: NOT heroes, but role models who are transparently human, intentionally embedded in community processes and real about their limitations.

Blog #1 Rain Crowe  

 Rain Crowe is someone whom I deeply admire because her presence causes me to be more intentional and compassionate towards myself and others.

Rain Crowe teaches classes that help people confront and heal their shadow material on both a psychological and sociological level

Rain Crowe is a Priestess who leads ritual without grandstanding, dominating or dictating, they share power consciously and inspire others to do the same.

Rain Crowe is an activist who gets out on the street, creates ritual group processes quickly and calls others to join the struggle.

Regarding her teaching, I will let her upcoming class speak for itself by linking to it here:

Wednesdays Jan 7th -Feb 11th 6-9pm PST

The Burning Times Never Ended: Ancestral Resistance and the Movement 

if you prefer to see it as a Facebook event click on this

The class description opens like this, “How does the legacy of the witch hunts impact our magick and political organizing today?What does it mean for us as witches and activist-organizers to deliberately grow our radical political analysis together?How can healing the historical trauma of the burning times strengthen your work as a maker of new worlds?…”

The class uses the book Caliban & The Witch by SylviaFederici  and will also include excerpts from Green is the New Red, The Shock Doctrine, Women Who Run with Wolves, Rewilding Witchcraft and other supplemental articles. Class times will have “lecture”, breakout discussions, some guided visualizations and basic spellwork. Students will receive resources and tools for engaging personal traumas that might arise.

Here are some of my own thoughts about the shadow of the burning times and its affects on our collective unconscious. I believe that there is a fundamental connection between our current struggles to find worth and meaning and self-love in the face of our capitalist oligarchic government and the burning times. Please reflect upon why our working class, working poor and homeless nomadic communities exist in their current compositions and how this is connected to the burning times. See that there is also a connection between the burning times in our inability to support each other and validate each other as worthy and valuable. It is time to heal the social wounds that keep us from helping each other and being more deeply loving to ourselves.

Synchronicity comes along and supports an opportuntiy for Sacred Economics

As many of you know, I have been planning to teach Cascadia Holistic Peer Counseling again and have been playing around with the format, wanting to create a longer term experience that leaves class participants with a sustained sense of community and belonging. I had set the dates, (changing what has been an 8-12 week class to an 8 month course from Jan 12 – August19th) and began registering people in my personal close communities, when I first saw the announcement for Rain’s class. A few days later I saw a post Rain made asking if anyone knew of a handbook for radical peer counseling classes. I realized I could offer CHPC to anyone who took her class as a way to ensure people receive emotional support while learning about the historical oppressions of the Burning Times. That helped me open up my ideas about gift economics even more and decide to allow people to pay from $20-$600 for the class and  even allow that to be completely in trade if that is what will make it affordable to them. I want to be clear that I am able to be generous in this way because Mark Welch, Bruce Bartlett and the 20 people currently enrolled in my in Priestess training program support me and pay for the costs of my room and board. I have steadfastly developed relatedness and gift economy so that I have clear exchanges and love is in the center of my work.

I am so excited to have the opportunity to support Rain Crowe’s teaching in this way and to help ensure our mutual communities’ can do more work on healing our collective shadow regarding the Burning Times.

Why I want to support Rain’s teachings

More than two years ago I was having breakfast with Oakry near his home. At the time we were meeting almost every Saturday at our regular hangout. We had become so comfortable and familiar with each other and our routine that we openly and unashamedly shared about our experiences hosting Sacred Sexual events and developing small group magick rituals. On this particular day, the restaurant was overcrowded and we ended up sitting sideways on the counter and there was a man, sitting to my right who could not help but overhear some of our conversation. By the end of breakfast I had been invited to a Beltane Gathering and heard about how Rain Crowe’s excellent facilitation and group processing skills had deeply helped the Radical Fairy communities.

About 3 weeks after this encounter, One of my Sacred Intimate Queer Tantra teachers from Seattle called me with a referral. This work took me into a situation where I was working directly with Rain Crowe and a number of people living together in intentional community at Tryon Farm. I was able to see Rain work and benefited from her compassionate and measured pace. When I joined Nomenus Church and attended the Great Circles, there was Rain making certain that consensus processes were followed and that all voices were heard, when I attended events at Wolf Creek, Rain was present actively leading and providing group dynamics infrastructure. Last year I attended the Village Building Convergence as a presenter, but I also went to attend a workshop addressing the cultural appropriation concerns of first nations’ people. Rain Crowe was the facilitator of a fish bowl that gave people of colonial settler descent, like myself, the opportunity to hear first nations’ people’ experience without interruption. A few days later, I took Rain’s class on “Feeling for Right relationship” designed to help “white people” of european descent be with  guilt and anxiety about cultural appropriation and racism. That class helped me investigate my life long aversion to owning and honoring my own German bloodline. A few months later I was offered the opportunity to teach at Cascadia Free Witch Camp, where Rain offers her Priestessing and group leadership skills. I then had the opportunity to lead a path on the Norns and Norse Mythology, directly applying my recently researched information regarding Germanic/Norse Magick. I learned about the Volvas and prayed for a staff to work with.  Two days later The cedar tree in my yard offered me a branch that I turned into a staff and took with me to the camp. I had many opportunities to co-create rituals with Rain at the camp. I was able, on several ocassions, to see some of my own stuck patterns around authority and social anxiety and because of Rain’s quiet centered self-awareness, I was able to let several fear based patterns go.

It is such a delight to be met energetically as an equal and to be helped, simply by another’s presence and way of being.

http://raincrowe.wordpress.com/  

Rain’s writing makes my bones sing. The way she shares her internal process as she deepens her self love and self worth is fiercely empowering . Her birthday blog brought me to tears and caused me to become more committed in my efforts to support her. I shared the blog in my LLR Priestess training group as an example of the kind of self reckoning that is required if we are to meet our goals of becoming role models of Transpersonal love for our communities and the lived environments we exist within.

Please, do yourself a favor and take the time to look at Rain’s classes and writings. And If you take the The Burning Times Never Ended: Ancestral Resistance and the Movement  class, then I will be with you enjoying her teaching, let’s see what kind of healing and mischief we can create together!