LumensGate Update - Emerging from the illusion: the ecstasy of Liberation!

Photo by Bonnie Jean Starr

This past Sunday was the first meeting of the new planning staff for LumensGate. On the one had, I was confident that it would go well. I've worked with Mar - the new staffer - for years in other positions and knew that she would be up to the job. On the other hand, the old crew had developed such a tremendous rapport over the many years we worked together, and I was slightly concerned that moving from a staff of four to one of three would be difficult in some unforeseen fashion. Thankfully, I was wrong. Everything went quite smoothly. 

We had an ambitious agenda, including the setting of a theme for next year. I was also wondering if we would be able to do this in a graceful manner. We generally have a bit longer to ruminate before we choose a theme, however it has become clear that we really need to get moving on it if we are going to make the positive changes and generate the kind of interest - and attendance (!!!) - we need for next year to be a success. It was almost strange the way that everything fell into place, each piece building on the ones before, until it became quite evident that the LumensGate gestalt - made up of all those who have gathered around the HeartFire over the past 18 years and are still connected to us in some inexplicably wonderful way - was speaking to us all very clearly. We all were having similar sensations and perceptions of where we need to go, and - with some verbal juggling - came up with the wording for the '09 theme: Emerging from the illusion: the ecstasy of liberation!

At first glance, that is a BIG theme. Okay - even at second and third glance, it's a big theme. But consider that the actual spiritual experience is very personal and immediate, and it is that experience that we are aiming to engender in our participants. So, no matter how big the theme may sound, it will eventually come down to the real experience of those who are gathered around the HeartFire next year at Hope Springs - turning those words into their/our shared reality. 

We spent a good bit of time going over the marketing suggestions made by Mar's daughter Sarah. Excellent suggestions, which we are trying to implement to the extent which we can. Some we've done before and then gotten lazy about, while some are simply beyond our means at this point. But there are quite a few that are very much what we need right now. So we jammed on that for awhile and were getting ready to break for lunch when we started looking at the idea of holding small events to get out information to prospective attendees. Sort of "meet and greets" for those interested in checking it out - AND a chance for those who are already "gators" to get together and enjoy the pleasure of each others company.

Photo by BJ Star

I was still thinking in terms of a "Brunch & Drum" - very old school, neopagan sort of get together - and Patricia came up with the great idea of a "Tea Tasting". She also suggested that we hold it at our offices instead of at home, so that it would be accessible to a wider group of people. All three of us started throwing ideas into the mix and there was a moment when they all gelled and I could feel the hair raise on the back of my next as we came up with the same idea at the same time and practically finished the sentence together. It wasn't the idea itself - which is that we hold the tea tasting at Essencha Tea House - but that we came together so powerfully, that provided the extra oomph. 

So, it seems that the new staff is more than up to the task and that things are off to a great start for next year's event already. It's exciting to know that the magick is continuing, even as Keter and Donna head off on their own new journeys. May it be a blessed year for us all. 

namaste

LumensGate coming of age

Over eighteen years ago, Keter and I - along with Elise, Sam, Tara and a few other folks - founded Lumensgate. The idea was to have a venue for effective transformative ritual. We started at Brushwood Folklore Center near Sherman, NY. Primitive camping, co-ed showers and rained out rituals were the norm - along with the occasional seasonal camper showing up during our ritual cycle and freaking out our participants. We were too small - less than 100 people - to reserve the whole space for our private use and so after six (?) years we moved to Four Quarters Nature Sanctuary, near Artimas, PN. The primitive camping, outdoor showers and rained out rituals continued. But we now had shelters to eat under and Holly began creating the beginnings of a meal plan. 

And it was all worth it. Each year we created a ritual cycle on a theme that we received from the LG gestalt. We re-united the Virgin and the Whore; the God and the Goddess; the magickal and the mundane. We opened our hearts to Community; connected with the Divine; and, retraced our ancestor's steps through the Dreamtime. As a gestalt, LumensGate has grown and matured over the years, taking many of its participants with it. 

The heart of the event was - and is - the heartfire that is lit at the opening ritual and extinguished at the closing. This fire is where the three worlds come together and the One Center opens to allow us to do the work we come there to do. 

Three years ago, with many of our staff and participants no longer so willing and/or able to handle sleeping on the ground and getting rained on for several days at a time, we made our second move from Four Quarters to Hope Springs Institute - near Peebles, OH. This move brought with it many changes. Our costs skyrocketed. (Moving from primitive camping to a retreat center will do that.) Our attendance, already small, dropped off. Many of the folks who had thought of LumensGate as a magickal or neo-pagan gathering, didn't like the shift to a more expensive venue. That first year at Hope Springs, we were not sure if we would be going forward - but by the end of that event it was quite clear that we were. 

Hope Springs has been great. It feels like this is the first location for LumensGate that is a real "fit" for the work we are doing. Their sense of maintaining sacred space and stewarding the land reflects our own perspectives. In many ways, it's like finally coming home. And this partnership has helped to support my own sense of LumensGate's continued growth and momentum. We've even discussed the possibility of adding additional "editions" of LumensGate in different parts of the country, using the spiritual tech we develop for the one at Hope Springs. Very exciting! But the best thing that has come out of the past several years is the maturation and integration of our planning staff. Keter and I are the only ones from the original crew, but Donna has been with us for 16 years and Patricia has been on staff for 9 years. Over the past few years we've joked that between the four of us we have a single brain. This has been a powerful experience for me - never having been much of a team player. I have had the pleasure, honour and challenge of serving with a group of unique and amazing peers. 

Last week, Donna - our Registration Goddess for the past 16 years or so - invited Patricia and I for lunch. It was a great lunch in her lovely house, with her dog Gandolf keeping us company. There she informed us that she is leaving in September for Montana and would no longer be able to serve on the staff for LumensGate. This was hard to accept, but it was clear in her voice that this was coming from the root of her being. All we could do was honour her choice and be prepared to grieve when she leaves. 

Just yesterday we had our first planning staff meeting for LG '09. At the top of the agenda was "staff transitions." I was thinking that this would be a discussion of who we would be asking to join staff and how they would be brought onboard. Instead, we found out that Keter too will be leaving LG. We knew that she was planning to move to San Francisco, but there had been talk about her flying back for staff meetings. Now it is clear that this won't happen either. It was an emotional and difficult meeting for all of us. 

I feel that both Keter and Donna are doing what they need to do to be true to their inner voices. I respect that - even as I grieve their loss. We will not be able to replace either of them, and there will two big holes in the inner landscape of LG for a long time to come. 

Now the question is: Where do we go from here? It would almost be easier to let go of LumenGate - to allow it to dissolve. But that would not be true to MY inner voice. So I find myself in a difficult place. I feel the need, not only to continue, but to grow LumensGate - to establish additional events that use the rituals and exercises we create for the main one. But in order to do that, we need funds - resources to invest in promoting LumensGate to a much broader marketplace. LumensGate is the premier ritual event in North America, and there are many people who are hungry for what we have to offer, but hardly anyone knows about it. 

I realize that we cannot make this happen with the resources we currently have. We need people who understand promotional work and who can help take us to this next level. So I am putting this dream out to Spirit. And humbly asking for help.

namaste

The Miraculous Quality of the Mundane

One of my earliest memories - I think I was seven - is of riding in a truck cab with my father, listening to the radio. Quite suddenly I was struck and overwhelmed by the vast, complex and intricate network of people, skills, interaction, cooperation and efforts that made radio possible. It wasn't just that someone had invented the radio itself but that there were people who paid for advertising products, which generated income which allow allowed other people to make music and play it over the radio so that others would listen to their music, and the advertising, and perhaps even purchase the products advertised, thus completing the cycle. I don't know how long it lasted, but I was pretty stunned by the complexity of it all. 

Quite a few years ago, when I was twenty something and was meditating for hours a day, I once went for a walk and realized I could feel the sidewalk humming. I saw that even the sidewalk, made of crushed sand and grit, was still alive - that everything was filled with Chi. This realization left me quite blissed out for hours afterwards. Since then I have always tried to keep in mind that the whole of the world is alive and conscious at some level. Not just the trees and animals but the stones and even the dixie cups. 

Yesterday, in the shower, I found myself looking at my twin bladed razor and thinking "this too is alive." It was tempting to laugh it off - seeing myself as ridiculous. But it's true - and miraculous. Consider the miracle of the razor: Not only is it an item that could not be produced by our bare hands. Not even a skilled blacksmith with a complete set of modern tools could craft this simple product. It takes the completely (apparently) unconscious and unskilled attentions of a robot factory fed on the remains of long dead monsters that once roamed the earth, to slap together a construction of plastic and steel that would not even exist if not for the current trends in human society to 1) be clean shaven, 2) compete with each other for resources, 3) constantly strive to find and meet previously unrealized needs in order to more effectively compete with other monkeys for

  increasingly scarce resources....and it occurs to me that sometimes miracles are not things emerging from puffs of green smoke but instead arising from the fog of the everyday trance - that even awakening from that trance, even for a moment. That is a miracle. We humans - building trash heaps of wasted resources on which we sacrifice the future of our unborn generations in the vague hope of another moment of unknowing - and suddenly acting out of compassion we transform everything - with a single smile we change the world. It is worthwhile - valuable - beautiful. . . and never to be encompassed by mere words. This magical, ecstatic Mystery that we are. What grand visions we mistake for mundane refuse. 

namaste