I
offer you all the
Brightest Blessings
of Imbolc
and wish for you & yours
an abundance of Joy
as Spring arrives
There
are some projects that I'm involved with
right now that are quite exciting (to
me, at least) which I want to post about
in the near future. One is developing
a visiting
hospital clergy program with the Children's
Astral Sanctuary of Healing Earth Wisdom
(CASHEW)
(which is the legal church that supports
SWEFA),
so that members of our community can access
spiritual support if they are hospitalized.
This leads to the second project, which
is teaching the Pastoral Care departments
at the hospitals about Pagan Spirituality.
To that end, I developed a
short teaching handout for a hospice
program I did an inservice for, and it
will be the basis for an article for a
transcultural nursing journal that I am
co-authoring with two colleagues.As for
CASHEW, I'd tell you more if I had the
spare time - suffice it to say that they
need to develop their own webpage!
New Pages Added:
I
was invited to be the speaker for the 2006 UNM
Children's Hospital Memorial service, which
was organized by the Mariposa
Pediatric Hospice Program. You can find
a copy of my homily on loss and grief here.
It includes several Pagan elements, including
the concepts of transformation, choice, continuance,
and the five sacred elements.
I've
posted a
teaching handout on the basics of modern Paganism.
It is focused on the needs of the dying and
their families, as it was originally presented
to a hospice program, but I may modify it to
reflect Pagan beliefs about other life transitions.
I've
added something new to my rituals
section: a simple
passing over ceremony. I've been working
with a lot of death and dying readings to create
handouts that are useful for the hospice program
I work with, so that they can provide culturally
appropriate care for Pagan families.
I
am working on getting some pages up dealing
with issues of community, particularly magickal
and intentional community, and communication,
particularly within magickal groups and communities.
It will take me a while to translate everything
I have into .html, not to mention having it
make sense as separate web pages, rather than
packets of handouts for classes, but bear with
me and I will get it all up. The first things
I have up are the
Elemental Model of Communication, a way
of describing communication styles in Pagan-friendly
terms, and some general thoughts
on community, described in the context of
the community which I live in here in central
New Mexico.
I
have posted some pagan themed poetry on my writing
pages - click
here for the index page. More will follow.
I
have also put up the first three ritual items
in my ritual section. The first is, appropriately
enough, an Imbolc
ritual. It is intended for coven or small
group work. I first performed this in 1999,
and have used it since.
The
second is a quarter
call I wrote as a learning exercise in my
training, but it worked so well that we used
it to call quarters at the main ritual for Mabon
one year. In New Mexico, the big community festival
for the middle harvest is the Magickal
Mountain Mabon, sponsored by Chamisa
Local Council of the Covenant
of the Goddess. The main ritual in question
was a Ritual of the Fates, with my HP &
HPS Albert & Sylvia Webb managing the circle,
and Oz, Amber
K, and M.
Macha Nightmare aspecting the Fates. It
was a fabulous ritual, one of the best I've
ever been to (it is mentioned in Azrael
Arynn K & Amber K's book 'Ritualcraft').
They held amazing energy for well over an hour
as people went to the Fates they chose to consult
(and there were a lot of people). It finished
with the largest and longest Spiral Dance I'd
ever been witness to up to that point. Since
then, I've been to Reclaiming's
Samhain ritual in San Francisco, so I've seen
even bigger, but at the time it just blew me
away.
The
third item is also a quarter
call, and was also written as part of my
training. It is a commanding form of call. You
can get away with that when evoking elementals
- I suggest not using a commanding format when
invoking anything, or calling entities which
deserve our profound humility, like gods and
goddesses.
I
am planning on getting more rituals and pagan
themed poetry up soon, keep checking back!
From my Witches' Voice Clergy
Profile:
This is the spiritual
homepage of Scott Chisholm Lamont, also known as MacLamont
The Fireheart, a registered nurse and priest of Wicca. This
page and its related pages mainly focuses on issues of Wiccan
and pagan clergy training and the use and acquisition of
knowledge. Theology, ontology, teleology, and ethics are
primary topics, although principles of magickal practice
will also be posted along with ritual and liturgy samples.
This site is in its early development, and I am working
from a list of topics to write the first essays to post
here. This page also offers links to the other areas of
my life that are touched by my faith: health care and the
healing arts & sciences, family and daily life, the
environment, politics, and art.
About
Myself: I have been on the pagan path for over
20 years. I am an elder in the West Coast Eclectic
Tradition of Wicca, and have experience with
other traditions and with Shamanism. I am ordained
through the Covenant
of the Goddess (CoG), as is my wife, Shara,
who is also my priestess. Together, we are the
High Priest and High Priestess of Circle
of the Winter Moon, a teaching coven that
is a member of CoG in the Chamisa
Local Council. We are both trained consensus
facilitators and I am certified in conflict
mediation. I also have training in family systems
counseling through my work as a pediatric nurse.
I am a founder and current member of the Board
of Directors of Silver
Moon Health Services, a non-profit health
care organization in New Mexico sponsored by
the local Pagan spiritual community. I am also
a past Board member and a current Advisory Board
member and faculty
(both along with my wife) for Ardantane,
a pagan learning center located in the beautiful
Jemez Canyon in New Mexico. I am a current member
and past Board Member of the Children's Astral
Sanctuary of Healing Earth Wisdom (CASHEW),
a registered non-denominational pagan church
in New Mexico, and a volunteer with its affiliated
organization, the South
West Earth Festival Association (SWEFA),
which sponsors several religious festivals each
year in that state.
I am a published
poet and author, including works in anthologies, nursing
text books, and spoken word on radio.
Services Offered:
Handfasting, Wiccaning, and other rites of passage; Consensus
Facilitation and conflict mediation for spiritual groups;
assistance with or creation of Rituals for individuals or
groups.
Rates: Open to
negotiation. An exchange of energy is always required, but
I do not believe that the legal tender system is the only
way to achieve that.
My dear friend and Priest Albert Webb
died suddenly in January of 2005. Click
on the image above to view the memorial
page I've been assembling for him. The
photo was taken in Albert's garden in
December, 2001. He has journeyed towards
the centre, a path we must all take, but
he will never leave my heart.
May
the Dark One see you safely on your way, my friend,
may our Mother welcome you home. Until we meet merrily
again, adieux.
Dealing
with the press:
In
our community, there has been some
recent discussion about how to deal
with the press - specifically how
not to get misquoted, or have articles
appear which do not reflect the
nature of our religion or celebrations
accurately. The Pagan
Pride Project, which sponsors
the annual Pagan
Pride Day events around the
world, had
posted some guidelines on getting
interviewed by the press (this
link was passed on to me recently).
While I don't agree with every detail,
I think that the set of tools they
provide is very worthwhile. Check
it out if you think you are going
to have to deal with the MSM.
There
is also some discussion of this
challenge on the
Witches' Voice posting on an
article
in the University of Calgary Gauntlet
(the student paper) regarding the
Pagan Pride Day event just held
on campus (mentioned
in my blog). I think the wisest
point raised is that you have to
let go of the small stuff, and be
glad that the gist of the story
is accurate and positive. Jason
Pitzl-Waters over at The
Wild Hunt also comments
on how MSM reporting treats Paganism
when critiquing (gently) an article
from the Flint, MI paper on
a Pagan parenting support group.
He notes that the author seemed
compelled to interview a couple
of Christian pastors for 'balance'
or to create the impression of 'controversy',
and concludes: "Sometimes it
is just nice to read about Pagan
mothers without having to read what
Christians think of it".
If
you are interested in practical work being
done by the Pagan spiritual community, check
out the website of Silver
Moon Health Services, a non-profit health
care organization in New Mexico. I am a
founder and current member of the Board
of Directors.
If
you are in nursing or a related field, check
out the Pagan
Alliance of Nurses, which "strives
to unite Pagan nurses for the purposes of
education, support, exchange of information,
political action and healing."
If
you are involved in public safety services,
check out the Officers
of Avalon, who's purposes include "providing
a support network for Pagans who work in
the Public Safety and Emergency Services
fields"
Both
Ardantane
and Silver
Moon Health Services
are always happy to accept donations,
which support their work with the
Pagan community. You can support
Ardantane using the PayPal link
on their website, or by mailing
them a check. Information
on both can be found by clicking
here. Silver Moon does not currently
have a PayPal account, but it can
still be used to send a payment
via their e-mail address, or of
course a check can be sent via snail
mail. The
information for both can be found
by clicking here.
More
stuff to come soon!
Another Proud Member
of the
Reality-Based Community
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