Happy Summer Solstice

Hi Everyone

I'm Piper Perry, the new Outreach Director for The Fellowship of Fire & Ice. Many of you may know me from other associations, namely the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans, gythia of a local eclectic group in Colorado, and the Troth. Like many of you, I am an idealist. I want us all to be able to sit together, tell our stories, and embody 'man is the joy of man'. (Havamal 47, because, of course, I'm going to use the Havamal). I believe power should be shared, resources should be shared, and skills should be shared. Our highest calling as animists, a core tenet of Heathenry with our reverence for the land wights/spirits of place, is to help repair those broken relationships. We work best when we work with the people who have been here longer than we have. We are here to build right relationship with the seen and unseen worlds. And that is difficult and eye-opening work. Systematic injustice is so big, and we are all so small. Our efforts seem like a drop in the ocean. That work needs community to sustain it. Paganism generally and Heathenry specifically have traditions that build and sustain community. Those stories teach us how to repair those severed relationships. We use those stories to expand our awareness, to add guardrails to our religious practice, and to give us a foundation.

It is story that changes people's hearts. We can see it while telling our own stories, and people who were hostile before the story open their hearts to us, their hand across their upper chest, the look of empathy as trauma is explained, the softening of the cheeks and around the eyes, all of the tiny indications that our stories touch their hearts. Story is facts married to imagination. Story builds empathy. Story builds relationships. We teach those stories here. We teach how to integrate those stories into our lives, our practice, and our hearts. No practice created by humans will be perfect, and negotiation, a skill our ancestors practiced, will always be necessary. So what the Fellowship is offering, beyond the foundational Norse and Germanic Pagan stories, is a place where collective community based in those stories is being practiced, in all its messy, imperfect, human ways.

Growth is painful. Growth is rewarding. Growth is never-ending. Welcome to the Fellowship. Sit with us by the fire and tell us your story. Remember with us how much you've grown.