(Transcript from video)

Courtney Brooke: Hi Steve.

Steve: Hi.

Courtney Brooke:  I was just noticing you know in my life the longing for more mentorship and elders. So I’ve been asking some people in my life who are who are more experienced and farther along the journey. If you could give yourself some advice when you were 20 years old, what would it be?

Feelings and Needs

Steve: Wow I like the question. Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is the concept of feelings and needs.

It’s the amazing realization that everything that I do is an attempt to meet a need. All of my feelings are this amazing elegant feedback system that my body mind has to guide me. So I would encourage my 20 year old self to get more in touch with my feelings and learn what the basic needs are. You know that I think that would have been incredibly powerful.

Pain Can Inform Life

I think maybe the other thing would be that when painful things happen, it doesn’t mean necessarily that there’s something wrong or that I’ve done anything wrong or anyone else has done anything wrong. When you look out in nature you see death and destruction all the time that leads to life. So I would tell my 20 year old self: yes, feel the uncomfortable painful feelings. Don’t deny those and don’t repress that. But also don’t jump to conclusions that just because this thing is painful that is necessarily bad for me. I have a lot in my own life, I had a lot of stories about that, that made everything much more difficult. That pain is a way for life, to get information about life.

Failure = Living Systems Educating Themselves

The third one is kind of similar. It is around the concept of failure. I had a dear friend who years ago told me this: “there’s no such thing as failure, there’s only feedback and learning.”  If I could have had that wisdom when I was 20; I used to beat myself up so much about having failed at this and failed at that. Then eventually adopted a more evolutionary and nature perspective of reality. Like the quote “failure things happen all the time but they’re just part of living systems educating themselves.”  That would have given me a lot of relief.  I had much more energy in my life if I had less of that failure thought and more of just realizing that “oh, this is just a living system, I’m a living system learning.”

Reclaim the Sacred…Earth, Feminine, and Relationship to Our Bodies

Let’s see the fourth one I think would be around the concept of the sacred. What does it mean for things to be sacred? What things are sacred and what things have lost their sacredness in our culture that would be really helpful if I could reclaim? The three that come to mind is something that I think I heard from Starhawk. I’m not sure exactly where I heard it.  The three aspects of life that got most damaged in the patriarchy has been our relationship to the earth, our relationship to the feminine, and our relationship to our bodies. I would I really encourage my 20 year old self to reflect on and pray and read and whatever would help to reclaim my the sense of the sacredness of earth and feminine in my body.

Courtney Brooke:  Wow thanks so much Steve. Thank you.

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Our annual Ancestors Feast brings members, residents, friends and neighbors together in the Council Hall to highlight stories of beloved friends, family and teachers who have gone before us.

When we all gather for a feast in the Council Hall, it takes all our tables arranged in a tight crescent to fit us around the altar. We get to mix with folks we may not see much of. At one table, Aidan sat next to (clockwise) Amelie, who sat next to Chuck who was across from Mary, Dorien, Sue and Geoff. Earlier, we sat silently in a contemplative mood of pictures of our ancestors and our memories of them.

The Ancestors Feast is a unique and treasured annual event many of us look forward to each yer. We offer a special bow of appreciation to Kaitlin Johnston for organizing such a beautiful and sacred event for us!

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The air is brisk and cool, the leaves turn the beautiful shades of autumn, the summer is gone and the season calls us inward. It is time to prepare for winter—not only physically for the cold but a slowing down in other ways too.

We are approaching Halloween, All Hallows Eve, a cross-quarter holiday between Fall Equinox and Winter Solstice. In many cultures, this is the most sacred of days. All over the world people honor and communicate with the dead at this time, as it is said that the ‘veil between the worlds’ of the living and the dead is at its thinnest.

The Celts celebrated their new year, called Samhain (pronounced “Sow-in”), on the eve of November. They believed the spirits of the dead walked the earth on this night. To protect themselves, people would wear masks or cross-dress to trick the wandering dead.

Trick-or-Treating has its roots in a medieval custom of the British Isles called “souling.”  Dressed in masks and costumes, the poor would go about offering prayers to a family’s departed relatives in exchange for soul cakes (little oatcakes or square pieces of bread containing currants) or a handout of apples, nuts, or copper coins. The more gifts they received, the more prayers they would promise to recite to expedite the passage of the deceased souls from limbo to heaven.

As we have grown up disconnected from our ancestors and our grief, many of us have made an effort to incorporate these elements into our lives. To that end, we hold a Samhain Ritual and Ancestor Feast at Earthaven each year. We bring pictures and mementos of our ancestors and beloved dead to the altar. We also bring a potluck dish from our heritage for the feast. While we feast, we give toasts and tell stories about our ancestors and loved ones who have crossed over.

Of course we also have our share of fun at Halloween! The kids trick-or-treat around the village in a big group and our Halloween costume party is one of the best of the year.

As the days grow darker, we remember that we are in the ‘cauldron’ of the year, the dark time of change, until the sun is reborn at Winter Solstice. Encourage yourself to slow down. See what changes are afoot. As the veil between the worlds grows thinner and thinner, take a look around. Who knows what you’ll see?

Kaitlin Hetzner is a ritual and ceremony leader at Earthaven, organizes special womyn’s gatherings under a Red Tent, lends a terrific hand to our office and administrative work, and just became a Full Member!

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