Connecting with Global Celebrations

Saturday 18th April in Northern Arizona
there begins a celebration called

Return Of The Ancestors

It starts at dawn on Saturday 18th April
and finishes 10 days later.

There is a request for local events to join forces
through Earth acupuncture and prayer
so as to strengthen the effect of what
is being celebrated.

This Saturday 18th April,
just before first light (!)
we will be gathering at
Sunshine Farm Community in
Maplewood, Nova Scotia
for a ceremony that connects
with the Arizona event.

5.45am
Gathering and Temple Sacred Circle
6am
Silent Meditation, Birdsong concert
6.36am
Dawn Drumming and Ecstatic Dance
after which, in the yurt, there will be
Prayers and a Sharing of Blest Wine

After the ceremony ...
POTLUCK BREAKFAST (approx 7.45am?)

This ceremony is "early-riser-family-" and "child-friendly"!

On Monday 20th at 7pm,
in the Back Temple Kitchen,
Mahone Bay
we will be honouring
Nancy Burson 's EC-well-water

Our ceremony will

connect with DNA-recalibrating water,
be a time of healing and praying,
have a foot/hand-washing ceremony,
some shamanic journeying
and a celebration of Christal Temple's
Divine Communion

If you would like some water to take home
and then share, please bring a clean bottle with a stopper
to the Monday celebration.

On Monday 27th at 7pm,
in the Back Temple Kitchen,
Mahone Bay,
we will meet for another

Shamanic Divine Communion

connecting with the end of
the Arizona gathering.

Please join us prayerfully
on the inner planes
if you cannot be present in person.

Easter blessings,

John O

PS Here's more on global links
to the Arizona event

The First Dance of Easter - an ecstatic vigil

The power of this holy night
dispels all evil,
washes guilt away,
restores lost innocence,
brings mourners joy;
it casts out hatred,
brings us peace,
and humbles earthly pride.
Night truly blessed
when heaven is wedded to earth
and we are reconciled with God!

(from Exultet, the hymn of praise for the Easter Vigil)

Tonight,
for the first time ever(!) in my life,
I danced the first communion of Easter.

This holy Easter night is the climax
of everything that has been prepared
through Lent. In this holy night
we are filled, celebrating how the Light
not only shines in the darkness, but
BRINGS THE DARKNESS UP HOME
and restores it to its Divine Place by
the most radical transformation -
not by subduing it, but by inhabiting it!
Once and for all, we can understand that
Light is for ever more now in the darkness,
so that we never need to hide our darkness
ever again! It is safe to live wholly!

It always was that way in Divine Reality,
but most have not been able to see it -
that is why guru upon guru has needed
to use radical ways to explain Real Reality!
And rising from the dead and living all
multi-realities at once, is a truly radical way!
There is a thunder, a sublime voice shouting ...

"Do you get it now?
Anything and everything is possible!
Live this Truth!
Now!"

This evening I traded my church pew for
a dance space (in the shadow of a cathedral.)
Lights were lit, an altar was set up
and adorned with colour and our prayers.
We sat in sacred circle ready to dance.
And then as the music rose, we allowed
everything in us to be safely nurtured
by the spontaneity of the dance that arose,
and at the same time were joined in
with one another as a communion in our
moving together through our inner journeys.

This holy night we celebrated Resurrection.
We celebrated Divine Inner Empowerment
in deep humility and compassion for all.
It was a perfect metaphor for the new world
that is reborn through the act of bringing
Death back to Life in ecstasy!

This holy night, I have cried
tears of gratitude to Jesus.
For this joy, for this opening,
for this daring to go there beyond everything,
for showing what is possible
for all of us.

This holy night of nights as the church
next door celebrated its holy worship,
I danced Easter into being in my body,
in my emotions, in my spirit and soul.
This night not just my mind and my head,
but also my body and my feelings know
the ecstasy and the bliss of rebirth!

Hallelujah!

John O

In Halifax, Nova Scotia's main city,
there are opportunities each month
to experience both Ecstatic Dance
and Trance Dance.
The sessions are run by an awesome
facilitator, Maryse Thuot, and her gifted
team of co-facilitators. Information
can be found on this blog.