Little Druid on the Prairie

Four months ago I started this journey to ‘reboot’ my spiritual practice. It had turned from something vibrant and wonderful into really nothingness, after a year of complete personal upheaval. So I started at the beginning, with nothing but a flame, and gradually rebuilt my practice into something that I think is both suitable for me at this stage in my life and adequate for my practice as a Senior Druid and priest-in-training.

My current practice includes:

• Full COoR ritual once a week (usually Tuesday nights, sometimes Fridays too), which includes divination
• Lunar retreat days as part of the Clergy Discipline
• “Crowdsourced” Full Moon rituals with my grove
• Weekly study meetings with my grove
• (Mostly) daily practice even if it’s just 3 minutes at my altar to light some incense
• Regular offerings to the Gatekeeper, Earthmother, Ing Frea, and to my house spirits
• High day rituals with my grove (which I write and coordinate)

Which doesn’t feel like a lot of spiritual practice, but looking at it written out, I’ve come a long way in four months. I enjoyed that the purpose of this course was to develop and observe a “domestic hearth cult” practice, and I think in the last weeks I really have done that. My rituals aren’t complicated, but they work, and they keep me from losing the spiritual focus in my life, even if it’s just to say a quick prayer and light a little flame most days.

I haven’t talked here about the Flame of Hope project, as I didn’t feel when it began that I could commit to lighting a flame every day, and I still am not sure I’d be ready to make that kind of commitment, but I do think about it often, and my prayers often mirror those posted by others walking the path of Hope.

I am looking forward to how this practice will evolve over time – I’m sure like anything else it will wax and wane, but all of life cycles that way. I did my final “journaled” week of meditations last night and pulled runes (as has become my custom with this work). They were as follows:

• Rad – the journey – something that takes time, and that always seems easier when you’re not on the road doing it
• Gyfu – the gift, reciprocity
• Os – a mouth – wise speech, cunning words, Woden’s gifts

I found the omen very fitting. Gyfu especially has been a rune that I see often in conjunction with my clergy training, and finding it here made me smile. A befitting end to my four months of journaling, and hopefully a good start onto a practice that will last me a long time.

And if it doesn’t, well, I can always go back to the flame and begin again.