Tag: Sacred Harvest Festival

Andras Corban Arthen – Sacred Harvest Festival Guest – Interview

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I can listen to Andras Corban Arthen all day. He has a rich, low voice with the gentle cadence of caring. He has a lifetime of experience in the Pagan community, and the depth of perception and the wisdom of his words keeps you riveted.  He is presenting and performing all next week at Sacred Harvest Festival, near Geneva, Minnesota.  Advance registration closes today, gate registration is available during the event Aug. 6-12th.

Andras Corban Arthen

You are just back from Europe, what were you doing there?

Andras: I go to Europe fairly often, since I have family and friends across the pond (I’m from Spain, originally), and a big part of my work is focused there. This trip served several purposes, the main one being related to a book I am writing, based on one of the presentations I will be doing at Sacred Harvest Festival (SHF) entitled The “Indians” of Old Europe. It looks at the cultures and spiritual practices that were originally called “Pagan” in the context of indigenous traditions from around the world. For over 35 years I’ve been searching for people in Europe who may be keeping alive the remnants of the old ethnic spiritual traditions of their countries, and have found some, both in Eastern and Western Europe, mostly in small, rural, out-of-the-way places where the old languages are still spoken. Most of them do not use the label “Pagan,” though their practices are not Christian and appear to be authentically very old. In some significant ways, they are quite different from what one typically finds in the modern pagan movement, and there are some important things that I think we could learn from them. When I first met these people I hadn’t been planning to publish a book, so before going further with this I needed to go back to touch base with them in person and ask for permission to write about them, their beliefs, and practices. I was able to do that with four of them, and in two of those cases wound up getting more information than I had before, so I’m pretty satisfied on that account.

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Crystal Blanton Returns For Sacred Harvest Festival “RJ” Circle – Interview

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Crystal Blanton

Crystal Blanton is returning to Sacred Harvest Festival,  Aug 6-12th.  She is bringing her whole family to experience the festival, and is offering a second  Restorative Justice Circle as a service.  Harmony Tribe is facilitating community participation by non-registrants of the festival  for this event, Thursday, Aug. 9th, 10am at the festival site in Geneva, Mn. I talked to her by phone:

You are back at Sacred Harvest Festival (SHF) ?

Crystal: Yes, I had such a good time last year and I made such incredible connections with people that I really, really wanted to go back, and I wanted to share that experience with my family. I knew that if I could make it happen, I would.

Are you familiar with SHF Guest, Yeshe Rabbit?

We are both in the Bay area, and have had a great connection with each other as we both have continued to grow along our paths. I am really excited that she is one of the national guests this year. I think she will give the festival a great service. I visit her store often. I don’t work within her coven, but because we both are in the Bay area and do leadership type programs we come across each other frequently. We have been able to develop a great working relationship and friendship together even though we don’t work in the same coven.

Crystal at SHF 2011
with Bear Eared Hat

You are offering another Restorative Justice Circle  (RJ) at SHF, why a second one?

Usually when we do an RJ circle around a particular topic there is a follow-up. We do that as a means to make sure that after the first interaction that people have had the opportunity to be a part of the solution and deal with whatever has come up since the initial engagement. In this kind of scenario, my thought was to come back and offer that same kind of opportunity for people to engage in a follow-up but to also focus on some community building type exercises supporting the community with moving forward and gaining more tools as a community in that rebuilding process. This is the benefit for participating if you participated last year, to support going from one phase to the next phase of healing and restoring community values.

What if this is your first RJ experience, what would be the benefit?

As I am designing this my initial plan will likely change once I connect with the community. There is always what we think we want to do, and then once there, what is needed. My guess is that it would have a portion set aside to talk about the past year, and the feelings and emotions associated with the rebuilding of community. I want to focus more on that direction, but that is just based on impressions of what I left a year ago. Since this will be open to community, it also depends on who decides to participate and attends. Part of the RJ process, that can be both challenging and important, is to be able to move within the needs of the community which we are serving at that moment. Because I don’t know what portion of the HT community will be participating, I have to leave that somewhat open at this time. There will be time to get some basic feelings out, but my main push will be to get to the next phase of restoring.

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Yeshe Rabbit – Sacred Harvest Festival Guest – Interview

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Lady Yeshe Rabbit
Sacred Harvest Festival Guest

I talked to Lady Yeshe Rabbit of the Come As You Are (CAYA) coven. We talked about her work in the San Francisco Bay area, her appearance at Sacred Harvest Festival, and her thoughts on gender issues in the Pagan community.

How do you like to be addressed?
For the most part you can call me Rabbit. My title in my coven is Yeshe, it is a word that has a few different meanings. In Tibetan it means “primordial wisdom”, and that is why I took the title, because I wanted to be guided by that primordial wisdom that resides within. It was also a childhood nickname, because I am Polish and my birth name is Jessica.

Tell me about CAYA?
CAYA coven is my coven.   There is within CAYA several different layers of membership. Some people have a casual relationship and may just attend our rituals. There is also an inner circle of trained clergy. These are people who have been with the group for a number of years. They would be my ‘closer’ coven you might say.

What is the role of CAYA in the Bay area?
CAYA stands for “Come As You Are”, and it is a coven that is built around the principles of eclecticism, inter-faith, and support for a wide variety of different paths. An individual who maybe has a very strong personal path, or, one who might be  just starting out and wants to learn about many different paths to see which one is the right fit, would find themselves very comfortable in CAYA. Each of us in CAYA feels that it is the utmost importance the we determine our own personal relationship with the divine. We then share our own individual practices and spiritual beliefs in the spirit of generosity without presuming that we know the one way that is right for everyone. What that means is that we are a coven “filled with solitaries” (jokingly), because everyone has their own individual practice. When we come together we join around a central core of protocols of how we do rituals in an outlined format, a baseline of ethics that we have all agreed to, and principles of community that we think are essential:  Cooperation, conflict resolution, clergy conduct and comportment. When people come into CAYA they feel very welcome, even if a beginner, or if they are extremely experienced and just don’t want to be told what to do because they are confident in their own path.

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Harmony Tribe Restorative Justice Circle Update – Editorial

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A Restorative Justice circle took place facilitated by Crystal Blanton,  guest at last summers  Sacred Harvest Festival (SHF) in August.  This Restorative Justice (RJ)  Circle was specifically to aid Harmony Tribe(HT) and its festivant community to move beyond the real ‘hurt and harm’ the individuals, organization, and festival had felt over the past year. When I wrote about it, I also committed to  updates  as the Harmony Tribe (RJ)  process evolved. I wrote then as a Harmony Tribe member, and as of this editorial, am now a member of the 2012 Harmony Tribe Council, as one of 15 Council Members at Large.

Please read that August editorial for a more complete back ground of RJ and this particular RJ Circle.

The purpose of this RJ Circle was:

“… to restore; to restore a sense of safety in a loving and empathetic community. We are not here to blame, or to cast judgment on who was right or wrong. It is a about how we can support our community together and heal the hurt and harm that has been caused by a series of events. “

And Crystal summarized the RJ Circle with:

“ What happens, Where do we go from here? We can not fix everything that has happened. We can not restore relationships without everyone present. We can restore what is here. We have not lost our community… what I have seen is that with time ,work, and a commitment to values, and the mirroring of those to each other, a community can be healed. “

The RJ Circle came forth with several Collective Agreements, promises each person present made to the Harmony Tribe community. These were jointly arrived at by consensus, and individually affirmed by those present as their own commitments. These were to facilitate this community to “move forward in the healing process with safety and trust”.

The agreements are:

  1. We will aid the process of developing commonly defined principles and values, and the primary purpose for our community (HT) so that the HT council can work for the whole of our community.
  2. Define how Harmony Tribe (and its community) can participate in the processes of community, beyond HT the organization.
  3. The HT Community commits to participate as they can – to show up.
  4. Find ways to solicit community support and input.
  5. Commit to developing a means for mentoring or transferring knowledge or roles within the organization.

How has Harmony Tribe and its community progressed toward meeting these commitments?

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Update: Harmony Park permit approved

Last night  the Freeborn County Commissioners held a public hearing to determine if Harmony Park, the privately owned location for Sacred Harvest Festival, would be allowed to renew its  Conditional Use permit.   The board voted unanimously to recommendation for a permanent permit of operation.

The final hearing for the permanent permit is scheduled for next week and is expected to be a formality.   Members of Harmony Tribe spoke at the meeting and HT board member Bress Nicnevin sent out an update to Tribe members last night, “…myself, Nels [Linde] and Aurora [Albright] all spoke on behalf of Harmony Tribe, Jay and Harmony Park…we were heard…along with many others who came in support of this permanent permit.

With this hurdle out of the way, Jay will be speaking to the Zoning Administrator today about revisiting and setting a time and date to revise our noise ordinance restrictions for Sacred Harvest Festival. We have a plan, and we are confident in its timely resolve. Thank you everyone for your support! The Zoning Administrator’s office was inundated with phone calls and emails from Our Tribe! I would also like to thank Rachel Goodman for being there, though she didn’t get a chance to speak…she helped us be heard by adding to our strength in numbers. Thank you Rachel!

Again, thank you everyone! We will keep you posted of new information as we receive it.”