Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Dirt Heart Witch

Home
About
Archive Index
- Agora: The Dance of Pagan Recovery

Home
Pagan
Faerieworlds 2015 and One Big Lake

Faerieworlds 2015 and One Big Lake

Last updated on: September 16, 2015 at 7:44 pm by Jenya T. Beachy

Faerieworlds 2015 and One Big Lake 2015-09-16T19:44:19-07:00 Jenya T. Beachy

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Rain. Water. Music. Kin. Laughter. Fae. Juju. Mud. Coffee. Joy. Water. Rain.

That’s my report from FW 2015 🙂

Faerieworlds, if ya hadn’t heard, is a 3 day festival of all sorts of crazy beauty, including music, costumery, food and of course, the lovely attendees.

In 2013, the fest was held at Emerald Meadows at Mt. Pisgah near Eugene. We loved it so and planned to attend in 2014, but the fortunes were not with us and we missed it. That made us even more determined to get there this year.

We started getting the ducks in a row as soon as the dates were announced, made sure the PTO was approved. I offered to do a presentation in their Free Workshop space, which was graciously accepted.

As the time approached, we packed and packed and borrowed a car-top carrier and packed some more and bought a new air mattress and packed and unpacked and packed. We brought our tent, a 10×10 canopy, a rug for the floor of our outdoor living room and some excellent chairs. Also, lots of fabric for draping and making things look beautiful. And several tarps. Actually, exactly the right number of tarps.

We drove up to Medford in a leisurely fashion and stayed there overnight. Another 6 hours and we were onsite! I felt blessed to be able to arrive early enough that there was no crowd. However, it was raining. Like really raining. Like the way we long for it to rain here in California. And because we are from California, we were slightly befuddled by this rather inconvenient deluge.

It turned out to be a relatively small deluge, but still.

rain on a spider web at FW 2015 There was this watery stuff falling out of the sky all during the setup of our camp, which was good because we got everything buttoned down well, which avoided a big annoyance later when it rained a lot for a long time. Sadly, Matthew slipped on the wet mud and, breaking his fall, nearly broke his wrist. It swelled up and was very painful, but the Medical Faeries bandaged him up and gave him ice and acetaminophen.

Later that evening, we were joined by the lovely and talented Lasara Firefox Allen (who had a back injury of her own) with her kids and our camp was complete!

Lasara and me modeling the latest style in the Realm: blankets

Honestly, I spent most of this year’s Faerieworlds sitting under the canopy in my comfy chair with many blankets, staying warm and dry. We missed all the paid workshops and most of the free workshops, except my own and one of Lasara’s. We didn’t go to hear many bands, except Sharon Knight, et al., who were amazing as always! As for the rest, we were blessed to be camped close enough that we could eavesdrop on the tunes, which gave us little incentive to journey out into the rain.

The only music we specifically ventured out to dance to was Delhi 2 Dublin. We LOVE those guys and they are so good at lifting up a crowd and bringing the family-peace-love-compassion-beauty vibe. Our party danced right through all the various injuries and pains and had a great time.

A stand-out experience of this little vacay was falling asleep listening to the rain hitting the tarp over the tent (We stayed dry! Yay good tent!) It’s hard to describe how potent and delicious it feels to expand into a larger awareness of the cycle of water. The cells of my flesh call out to their kin and relax deeply. Something ancient is soothed by the presence of rain. Something that is un-soothed by drought.

On our drive home, we called out “RIVER!” whenever we crossed one and would look longingly at that free-running source of life and beauty. Every time we go that far north, we seriously think about moving there. But what about our community, our family here? We need to find a piece of property with about 10 houses, or room for them.

The beautiful lake in question, glimpsed through the beautiful trees

One other feature of this new/old Faerieworlds location is that there is a big lake. Y’all know about the Deep Well ~ Great Heart Society; it has me very tuned into bodies of water, from a cupped leaf on up. Putting my attention toward this lovely, human- and nature-made lake, I felt that it heard the wild beautiful music; it heard the words during the workshops held at its bank; it received the rain that washed down through the rarified air of the place; it felt the vibrations of the feet that danced on the earth surrounding it. So many kinds of prayer went into that water. Now it is a Deep Well and They who tend it will keep what they need. Maybe there is some yummy juju left over, flowing into and through the One Well that serves all things, the vast cosmic storehouse of creativity and kindness.

Blessed be our listening ears, our dancing feet, our opening hearts.

All photos courtesy of Aurora O’Greenfield 2015

Big Gods

Deep Well ~ Great Heart Society

Previous Post

August 27, 2015

Dirt-Heart Farm Update, Late Summer Edition 2015

Next Post

September 21, 2015 When Animals are Brutal Jerks

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Air Animal Products Arts and Crafts Author Big Gods Books Buddhism Celebs Chickens Comestibles Deep Well ~ Great Heart Society Dirt-Heart Farmette Drink Earth Elemental Practices Fauna Festivals Fiction? Fire Flora Food Goats Holidays-Holy Days Homework! Invocations Jenya T. Beachy Justice Kitchen Witchery Meat Birds Meditations Moon Magick News Off-Topic Ole Time Good Spell Feri Pagan Tent Revival Poetry Practices Prayers Predators Queer Rant Recovery RIP Rituals Saints and Prophets of Shapeshifter Seasonal Shapeshifter Tradition Small Gods Songs and Chants Spellcraft Stories The Secret Country of Yourself The Village The Witches' Toolkit Travel Turkeys Uncategorized Updates Urban Pagan Homestead Videos Water

Select a Month February 2020 January 2020 November 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 October 2018 August 2018 May 2018 April 2018 February 2018 October 2017 September 2017 July 2017 January 2017 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does the Bible say about "bearing each other's burdens"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Ignore troubles Complain Help each other Only help yourself