Discipline 1

Discipline 1

Passed 1/24/16

Reviewed by Rev. Barbara Wright

Laura (Snow) Fuller

Describe your discipline practice as an ADF Clergy Student. Explain what you have learned from this practice, describe how your connections with the Earth Mother and the Gate Keeper have grown and changed over the time you have worked with them, and reflect on your journals and omens over the period. (min. 600 words)

When, as a shiny new ADF Clergy Student, I first read the guidebook, I remember conflicting thoughts of there being a lot of work to do and at the same time, that it was heavily book based.  Now, as I am finishing up the courses for the First Circle work, I laugh at my earlier self.  Yes, there is a lot to learn from books, but it is the way those books impact practice that gives true growth to a Clergy Student.

The bulk of this work, for me, has been done at my home shrine.  This is partly because for the first half of my working on the courses, I was a solitary.  When I could manage the trip during the Northern Wisconsin winter, I made a point of visiting the closest protogrove, some three and a half hours away.   Because my time with a group was limited, it forced me to rely on myself to build my practice and discipline, but it also allowed me to deepen my personal relationships with the Kindreds.  While these studies have opened my eyes to the relationships between the various Hearth Cultures and the murky depths to which their common roots go, the solitary nature of the first part of my journey cemented my relationships to those Gods, Ancestors, and Spirits I worshipped as a Heathen before coming to ADF.

As a Heathen Druid, a large part of my practice has been finding (or borrowing) ways to combine a more traditional Germanic path with the various practices of ADF.  In some cases, that has been easy, but in others it has been very difficult.  I recognize that this is something that every Hearth Culture has to do, and for some it is more of a stretch than others, but when I first began on this path the ‘six-week-ish countdown’ was occasionally frustrating.  I found this to be more the case when I was practicing as a solitary.  Since moving this summer, I have managed to find a community to practice with which is a very different experience both in terms of having community worship and in the benefits and irritations of sharing rituals.  While I think having the time in Wisconsin was good for me because it forced me to grow as a liturgist in writing my rituals, now that we are forming a protogrove and I am working with others it is making me learn a new and different set of skills.  Public ritual is a very different beast than worshipping at your home shrine and I am grateful to my new friends and grove-mates for supporting me in the learning process of making this transition.

Because I had been working with the Norse Gods for about five years before stepping foot on the ADF Clergy Student Path, and because my relationships with the Norse Gods started with Skadi and Odin, when I began working with a Gatekeeper, I chose to honor Odin with this role.  This was partly because I already considered him one of my patrons, but mostly for his skills as a magician to aid me in the magical work and because of his knowledge of the paths between the worlds given his penchant for wandering in the Eddas.  Over the course of this last year, I found my relationship with him deepening in many areas, and I attribute this to my growing partnership with him in this role.  I have no doubts that he has been the instigator in many of the trials I have faced personally, religiously, and professionally, but then, he never promised me that the path would be easy.  Only that it would be worth it.

Choosing an Earth Mother was a bit more difficult as I did not have a particularly strong relationship with any of the more agrarian goddesses and it isn’t a concept that resonated with me.  Unlike working with Odin, finding the right Earth Mother for me took time and I eventually came to accept that because the Earth is in a constant state of change, it was all right to honor different Goddesses and their connections to the earth in this role.  Because the Earth wears many faces during the year, it was all right to call upon Her by different names.  While I am a true polytheist and I don’t think that the different Goddesses are merely faces of her, I do think that the Earth takes on different Aspects, and so we can be connected to Her in different ways at different times. 

It is only when I accepted this that began to really feel a connection to the Earth Mother.  I think, looking back, that a part of my disconnection was that I never felt at home in Wisconsin.  I never felt any desire to put down roots there, and I think this kept me from any real or strong connection to the Earth Mother while I lived there.  During those early rituals, I tended to name Nerthus as the Earth Mother, which felt like a generic use of a typical convention, not any particularly strong relationship.

When I moved to Ohio in August is when my connection to Her began to blossom.  I have a long commute for work of about 45 minutes each way on the curving mountain roads of the Appalachian region.  I make this morning drive around dawn, and get to see the earth still cloaked in mist as she wakes up.  It was when this started that I began to really feel a connection to the Earth Mother, and because I live and work in the mountains, and because the region is in a state of environmental emergency, this connection has deepened significantly in the last few months when I connected Skadi to this role.  I have always felt a deep kinship to Skadi.  She is a goddess of the wild places and she expects an effort of her followers.  She is a huntress, and so she is concerned with the health of the herd and their environment.  When she married Njord, she placed herself firmly in the role of mother to his children, and we see her offering advice to Freyr in the lore about how to win his wife.  She later marries Odin and they have many children together according to Heimskringla, Snorri’s other work which tells the tales of the Norse Kings.  As a step-mother, a mother to dynasties, and as a goddess of the wild places, I finally felt confident in calling on her as Earth Mother, particularly when I was working with the nature spirits. 

When I am crafting a ritual for the protogrove, I usually appeal to Frigg as the weaver of Frith to take this role instead, unless the ritual is more agrarian in nature, in which case I call upon Jord, whose name is cognate to Earth and is named as the mother of Thor.  These different faces then of warrior, frith weaver, and fertile land have come to represent the roles the Earth plays to me and while my initial intention of working solely with one goddess in this role has gone out the window, my relationship with the idea of the sentient Earth who supports and nourishes us has grown.

This entire process has been one of growth, but it hasn’t all come in the areas I first thought it would.  While I made significant process in some of my magical studies, especially in trance work which I never thought I would be good at, the bigger changes have been in other more personal areas.  One of those areas has been in journaling.  While I am a creature of habit, I am not a creature of routine.  Very few parts of my day have a pattern to them.  That makes things like eating at the same time or journaling tricky.  Knowing this about myself, when I was working on the coursework that required long term journaling, I had to consciously restructure my environment to allow me to complete it.  While it was frustrating to try and force my chaotic life (especially when I was moving interstate or worse, driving back and forth to interviews) into some form of routine that would allow me to get my practice in, the feeling of accomplishment when I completed those journals was amazing.

Perhaps it is fitting that this course, this final work (at least for this circle), is titled Discipline instead of Reflection because Discipline has been what has gotten me through the hurdles, the bumps, and the times when I just didn’t want to keep working on this.  I never considered myself a disciplined person before, but over the last year that is exactly what I have become.  Over and over again I have drawn Sowilo from my rune bag when asking for guidance.  Sowilo, the rune of the sun and the stamina she needs to complete her journey through the sky.  It has come to be my symbol for completing these first circle courses.  Working through these courses and rising to meet the various challenges that I have faced in the last year have shown me that I can complete the things I set out to do, no matter what obstacles I face.  I am a woman of my word, and my word is the most important thing I have.  And that, at its core, is what the discipline of being a priest is to me.