The Rites of Pan, Being a Subversive, Harvesting Garlic...
stuff you do around Midsummer
When last we talked, I told you I would be writing about St. John’s Day. Well…it didn’t work out that way. What did work out was that I was asked, sometime ago actually, to write a piece on faeries for The Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Biodynamics. As it happens, the Muse visited this week and I wrote that one, entitled “The Rites of Pan and the Garden,” which you can read here. A little trivia: one of my earliest publications was a poem published in the JPI newsletter in ancient times (before Al Gore invented the internet), 1995 to be precise—a Saturn cycle.
Being Subversive
Those of you who follow The Regeneration Podcast may have noticed that we did not have a video drop on YouTube this week. Well, we did have one drop, but not on YouTube. We interviewed my friend, the poet, philosopher, and eminent Rilke scholar Daniel Polikoff about his new barn-burner, Reset or Renaissance: Life, Liberty, and the Quest for Enlightenment in a Post-Covid World: Volume 1: Two Roads. It is not poetry. Instead, it is a scathing indictment of all of the madness we have experienced over the past four years and (if that debate last night is any indication) continue to experience. The interview is available in audio format on Podbean, Spotify, and other platforms—and you can see the video here on Rumble. If we’d put it on YouTube, they would have booted us for good. Yes, we go there. We actually recorded this episode with Daniel while he was visiting my farm over this past weekend. He and I had a great time talking astrology, eating biodynamic produce, reading poems, and getting eaten alive by deer flies—and he even joined us for house church, reading a poem for St. John’s Day. Just lovely.
Mike and I recently recorded an interview with my soul-sister, Therese Schroeder-Sheker, about her new album, Blessings of the Road. The interview should drop this weekend. You’ll love it.
Speaking of biodynamic produce…
Check out that garlic!
Our garden (about an acre) is really in peak health this year.
Also—two weird related stories. Some of you may know that we have a small CSA we run out of our farm, where folks buy a share in our produce over the growing season (June-October). This year we found out that one of our members grew up in our house (he didn’t know it when his wife enrolled them) and another member grew up a block and a half away from me on the westside of Detroit—we even went to the same school and were members of the same parish. What are the odds?
Christian Romanticism
My online Christian Romanticism Course is almost full. So, if you are planning on joining, now is the time. I’m getting very excited about this one. I am thinking about following with courses on The Metaphysical Poets; Shakespeare, Magic, and Religion; and some other things. Let me know if there is a course I could offer that you’d like to see. I usually do a biodynamic gardening class here on the farm in the Spring (though I skipped this year). I would also like to do intensive weekend workshops/courses here, for those who would like a more embodied experience. So let me know.
Encountering Face to Face
As I mentioned before, I will be speaking (and probably playing the guitar/singing) at the Estuary Northwest Conference: Encountering Face to Face. The only bad part is that, if you attend, you have to see my face. But I play a really mean guitar.
Finally…
Earlier this week, while listening to an interview with Dr. Simon Young of The Fairy Census, this video from the BBC in 1976 queued up afterwards. In it septegenarian Elsie Wright, of Cottingley Fairy fame, talks about her experiences with the faeries with her younger cousin Frances Griffiths when they were girls in Yorkshire during the First World War. She starts speaking at around the 4:53 mark. I love her.
A note on the fairies At the end of an old trail in Prairie Creek Redwood park is an old fire scarred redwood. I’ve visited it for the last 47 years with regularity as I’ve gone up and down the west coast. As it’s been bypassed by the new trail, one has to bushwhack some to go down and sit with it. While sitting there once several years ago, I encountered a fairy. Not hardly a shy small being; but a very large very dark presence easily larger than a bear . And seemingly somewhat pissed about the state of how its realm was being treated. Acknowledging it presence with some reverence it quieted a bit and after a few hours I left. One has to respect those beings and understand that they are fine with those who do.
The last time my partner and I visited that tree. She burst out into tears of recognition and I said “ What’s happening old tree? “ The answer I got was unexpected. “ The tribe is marching north. It gets warmer and the tribe marches north . It gets colder and the tribe marches south. We’ve outlived the reptiles. We’ve outlived the dinosaurs and we’ll outlive your kind also. The tribe is marching north. From a being 1200 years old a bit of proper positioning of us.
Jesus filled with the Holy Spirit walked with, talked with, and knew the Father. Because of Jesus as being the Door and Baptizer in the Holy Spirit we can do the same as he did. Now that is where the real action is! Faeries at best are minor stuff on the side and kind of irrelevant though interesting in a small way.