Welcome to our last Sneak Peek Pro episode of Faith, Fern & Compass, where every day is Earth Day. In Episode 003 – Happy (Belated) Earth Day!, we celebrate the Earth as our mother and our home, taking a look back at the origins of the holiday and how it’s evolved over the past 42 years from a national teach-in to a global call to community action. We review DisneyNature’s recent documentary, Chimpanzee, and explore some of the ways that individual ecological awareness finds mutual support in community action and system change. In the Pro extension, we share a few of the ways that we celebrate Earth Day as a spiritual holiday of sacred connection with our beautiful, fragile planet.

For show notes and links, visit: http://faithferncompass.com/003/

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This week, enjoy a sneak peek of Faith, Fern & Compass Pro in a special preseason episode exploring the spiritual practice of silence in an age of noise and fury. In Preseason Episode 2 – The Spaciousness of Quiet, we explore the “unwanted sounds of everything we want” and why contemplative silence plays such an important role in cultivating a spiritual relationship with the natural world in an age of technological progress and digital distraction.

But first! Some exciting news: Faith, Fern & Compass is now available on iTunes! Remember, only one more episode will appear here as part of Dining with Druids, and then you’ll only be able to get all our crunchy goodness from FF&C. So don’t forget to check out the new website and subscribe to our new iTunes feed!

To sweeten the deal, we’re sharing discount codes for fans who want to sign up for our Pro Membership (available soon!). But you need to listen close, and play to win!

Show notes and links are over at: http://faithferncompass.com/002/

Thanks, everyone, for being such wonderful, supportive fans! Your enthusiasm and love is what gave us the encouragement we needed to take this whole podcasting thing to the next level. You guys rock!

Enjoy a sneak peek of our new podcast, Faith, Fern & Compass, as we explore nature spirituality in the digital age in Preseason Episode 1 – The Stories We Live. Tonight, we talk about a new approach to the four elements, we share a glimpse into the connection between ecopsychology and global warming, we share some creative ways to celebrate National Poetry Month, and we delve into the secret lives of bees and how understanding our buzzing friends can help us unlock the mysteries of the human brain and maybe even modern politics! We also have a special treat to wrap up the show – so be sure to stick around.

For show notes and links, visit: http://faithferncompass.com/001/

Welcome to Episode 10 of Dining with Druids! We’re your hosts, Alison and Jeff Lilly.

In tonight’s episode, “Celestial Seesaw“, Ali and Jeff take a deep breath and plunge back into podcasting after a crazy-busy seven month hiatus, reflecting on the sacred pause of the equinox and sharing a few stories about their wedding (woot!), their cross-country move (woosh!) and their volunteer work as naturalists-in-training with the Seattle (woohoo!). Ali ponders the future of Paganism in a post-church world while using inappropriately awkward sports metaphors, and Jeff makes a few exquisitely bad jokes that you won’t want to miss. We also announce our new podcast project and how you can get involved and help support your favorite rude Drudes!

Mentioned in tonight’s episode:

• How awesome it is to be Seattle Volunteer Naturalists
• “Pagan Temples and the 20%” and “Before the Temples,” by John Beckett, Under the Ancient Oaks
• The Rule of 150, also known as Dunbar’s Number
• Complimentary definitions of the mainstream
• Catholics (again)

Thanks for listening, and stay tuned for exciting changes to come!

We finally tied the knot in September and enjoyed a beautiful honeymoon among the canyons and cacti of Utah and New Mexico in early October, only to return home to a slew of family birthdays and the news that we’ll be moving across the country in February due to changes in Jeff’s job situation.

Plus, the holiday season is upon us — Samhain, Thanksgiving, the winter solstice, oh my!

So we’ve decided to officially put DwD on hiatus for the time being. We began this little podcast as an experiment in having fun, and it’s been a pleasure to share our snark and laughter with you. We’re so glad you enjoy listening to DwD as much as we enjoy making it!

We plan to be back sometime after Imbolc. We hope you’ll stick around! Until then, have a glorious autumn and a gorgeous winter — and keep that rude dinner conversation alive.

Welcome to Episode 9 of Dining with Druids! We’re your hosts, Ali and Jeff Lilly.

In tonight’s episode, “Holy Personal Gnosis, Batman!“, Ali and Jeff open up about their relationships with the gods, sharing a little insight into how they grapple with questions of spiritual authenticity and internal versus external sources of authority, balancing academic research, creative explorations and unverified personal gnosis (or “UPG”). Jeff talks about the time Odin almost made him crash his car, and Ali explores the dark, stellar aspect of the Celtic goddess, Brighid — but only after apologizing for her part in causing the East Coast earthquake. Make sure to stick around for the end of the episode, when Jeff reads a truly inspired piece of writing and Ali talks a bit about an up-coming contest for listeners to win a copy of the new anthology of Pagan fiction, The Scribing Ibis.

Mentioned in tonight’s episode:

• Jane Hirshfield’s poem, “Building and Earthquake” on Poetry Daily
• “How to Become a Poet,” by Alison Leigh Lilly, Meadowsweet & Myrrh
• “Stellar aspect of Brighid?” in the Meadowsweet Commons
• “The God’s Whisper: A Guest Post from Odin,” by Jeff Lilly, Druid Journal
• The Scribing Ibis: An Anthology of Pagan Fiction in Honor of Thoth
• YHWH, YMMV and other unspeakable things
• Wendell Berry’s poem, “To Know the Dark”
• A Druid’s approach to centering, grounding and attending
• Cu-inspired baby voices

Thanks for listening, and join us next time here on DwD!

Welcome to Episode 8 of Dining with Druids! We’re your hosts, Ali and Jeff Lilly.

In tonight’s episode, “Polytheistssaywhat?” Ali and Jeff are on the road again, this time traveling with Cu Gwyn the Wonder Cat for company as they discuss the portrayal of religion in science fiction, the evolution of modern Paganism and its parallels with different kinds of language development. Ali totally loses her geek cred by admitting that she’s not all that into Battlestar Galactica, and Jeff gets down with his bad linguistic self talking about the relationship between Vodou spirituality and the Hawaiian creole language.

Mentioned in tonight’s episode:

• Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Dune
• William Labo‘s research in Martha’s Vineyard
• “They” as a singular pronoun
• Ninja Nuns
• The constructed language of Esperanto
• Restless teens
• Rumble strips

Thanks for listening, and join us next time here on DwD!

Welcome to Episode 7 of Dining Driving with Druids! We’re your hosts, Ali and Jeff Lilly.

In tonight’s episode, “On the Road Again,” Ali and Jeff continue their harrowing journey through the green, rolling countryside of Pennsylvania and New York, while they discuss the future of Pagan publishing, storytelling as a way of uniting theory with practice, tensions between authority and vulnerability in Pagan writing, and the real work of wandering in the wilderness. Jeff mostly focuses on not crashing the car while Ali returns to her favorite theological bones to worry and reflects a bit about the challenges that face Pagan bloggers today. And a special treat for listeners: a Jonathan Coulton song that’s actually performed by Jonathan Coulton (since Ali so badly mutilated some of his work in the last episode of DwD, we figured we kind of owe it to him).

Mentioned in tonight’s episode:

• “I’m Your Moon,” by Jonathan Coulton (available for free download! yay!)
• “Supporting your ‘beyond 101’ writers,” by Brendan Myers
• Chi Running by Danny Dreyer
• Excellent books by Emma Restall Orr, Phyllis Curott, Anne Lamott, Natalie Goldberg and Annie Dillard
• “Contemplations on Polytheism and Gods of the Land,” “Light a Candle to Begin” and “Ecstasy of Beltane: Reflections on Love and Transgression,” by Alison Leigh Lilly
• Walk-mans (remember those?!)
• Metaphorical cities
• The driver who cut us off

Thanks for listening, and join us next time here on DwD!

Welcome to Episode 6 of Dining Driving with Druids! We’re your hosts, Ali and Jeff Lilly.

In tonight’s episode, “Moving Right Along,” Ali and Jeff have an extra special surprise for listeners as they change things up and take their usual dinner conversation on the road in a surprise trip through some of the beautiful landscapes of central Pennsylvania and New York. Jeff revisits the question of Buddhism for Vampires and what it means for polytheists and Pagans looking for meaning and spiritual value in a culture of “undead gods,” Ali waxes philosophic about the relationship between creativity and destruction in modern Pagan ritual and the creative arts, and in general a lot of geeky nonsense gets spouted about linguistics and recursion that might not be interesting to anyone who isn’t a computational linguist or software engineer. (It’s turtles all the way down!)

Mentioned in tonight’s episode:

• “Re: Your Brains” by Jonathan Coulton
• David Chapman’s Buddhism for Vampires
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra, by Fredrick Nietzsche
• Writer’s block
• Zombies
• Recursion in nature and language
• Bad-Ass Fucking Fractals
• “Am I Bovvered?“
• Political iconoclasm
• (Shhh! Cringe-worthy blooper at the end!)

Thanks for listening, and tune in next week for the second half of our special two-parter “Driving with Druids”!

Welcome to Episode 5 of Dining with Druids! We’re your hosts, Ali and Jeff Lilly.

In tonight’s episode, “A Cup of Tea,” Ali and Jeff tread some murky waters, exploring topics of horror, disgust, Buddhism, beauty, fundamentalism, nationalism and spiritual warfare. Things get sticky, Ali confuses the Arctic with Antarctica, and Jeff continues to be sensible and soft-spoken (so turn your iPods up to eleven!). The key phrase to remember for this episode, and where the title of this post comes from, is the Buddhist proverb:

“Drinking a cup of tea, I stop the war.”

Mentioned in tonight’s episode:

• Standing Stone and Garden Gate: A Podshow for Thinking Pagans and Working Witches — check it out!
• “Disgust, horror, and Western Buddhism,” by David Chapman
• Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams and “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel T. Coleridge
• Religious diversity, Columbia and the Pagan response to the DC40 prayer campaign
• The separation of church and state
• Brighid, goddess of justice

Ali also wrote a follow-up/prequel essay, “I am a Conscientious Objector in the Spiritual War” that listeners might be interested in checking out.

As always, thanks for listening, and join us next time!