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2024 Retreat – Initial Information

Date: 7 – 11th November 2024 (Thursday to Monday)
Place: Place: Pick up keys at All Seasons Vacation Rentals 23804 E Greenwood Ave Welches, OR 97067 Jennifer will get an address soon! We will meet at the larger cabin.

Travel contact – Jennifer – 443-257-2679 (all contacts on the travel spreadsheet linked below)

Pricing: Sliding scale $150 to $200 (including the 50 initial registration fee)
Due September 30th
Travel: house is about an hour south of the Portland airport. Check in is at 4pm Thursday Nov 7th. Check out is 11am Monday Nov 11th. Rideshare Info: 2024 Retreat Travel

Food: Laura and Cedar have volunteered to plan this.

Working Intention: “We come back together and grieve what has been broken. Feeling together who we are now, we gather power and envision the future.”
(from Tony, gathered from what was said at the meeting, can be workshopped more by anyone with suggestions, maybe as a group friday?)

Covid/Flu?RSV, etc agreements and considerations: Communication is key! If you feel sick before coming, stay home. If you feel sick during the weekend, tell everyone, take a test, mask up, and isolate as needed. There will be Covid tests and masks available. There will be air filters in the larger spaces, and a UV light.

Schedule:

Thursday evening:

  • 4 pm to 7pm Arrival and snacks (Check in at the cabins is 4pm, gather at the large cabin first)
  • 7pm to 8pm Dinner

Friday:

  • 8:30 – 9:30 am Breakfast
  • 10 am Morning practice
  • Check-in
  • 11:30 – 12:30 Guided connection to the egregore of Mstar, journaling (Facilitator? Tony?)
  • Lunch
  • Building a grief altar (Laura)
  • Break (maybe long break?)
  • Dinner
  • Ritual? (Mstar cord and connection

Saturday:

  • 8:30 – 9:30 Breakfast
  • 10 am Morning practice (by…)
  • Check in
  • Small break
  • 11:30 – 12:30 Mstar culture, divides and gaps discussion (Cedar?)
  • Break
  • Lunch
  • Empowerment & Devotional to the Star Goddess (Jennifer) (or this could be folded into evening ritual depending on what we are thinking…)
  • Break
  • Sigil making (Doneby)
  • Dinner
  • Ritual (incorporating Sigil, web of morningstar?)

Sunday:

  • 8:30 – 9:30 am Breakfast
  • 10 am Morning practice (by…)
  • Check in
  • Ancestor Identity poem workshop (Ken)
  • Lunch
  • Magical bookbinding (Ealasaid)
  • Break
  • Singing (led by Ken)
  • Dinner
  • Ritual? Or some sort of other group thing?

Monday:

  • 8:30 am Morning practice(by…), check out
  • 9:30 am Breakfast
  • Packing up
  • 11 am check out

Themes coming up for people: (taken from registration comments)
Laura: “ What feels really strong right now for me is some kind of starting ritual/space where we hold space for all that we lost during the start of the pandemic.. the individual grief and trauma we experienced, and how this pandemic changed the frequency and nature of our coming together. I had imagined a kind of collective unbinding in a big giant bowl”.

Re-connection, processing the grief/loss of time apart, and perhaps some kind of recommitting to our magic and our shared spaces.

Ken: This will be the first all-MStar gathering in like 5 years. A focus on reconnecting and group alignment sounds good to me!

Cedar: “I have been thinking about a discussion with folks about inclusion. Some people feel more a part of Morningstar culture than others, I am pretty sure. And there are divides between folks who have known each other longer and those who are more recent. And divides with folks who have experienced different versions of Morningstar.
So, I would like to acknowledge the gaps and ask folks to come together to create ritual and discussion about narrowing those gaps”

Starr: Expanding practice after integration, when things feel like life and magic are so entwined how do we maintain an intentional presence

Tony: I would be really excited by a ritual with some deity aspecting. I also have a framework of thinking about community as a compass with the needle pointing toward the community’s desire that I could use to lead an experiential exploration of our relationship with Morningstar that could anchor some community-focused meta conversations. I really don’t want the whole weekend to be meta conversations but I recognize some of that is necessary.

Ealasaid: after the annual meeting, something around the Web of Morningstar/our connections to each other would be rad

Notes from 9/26/24 zoom meeting:

Who’s here? Jenn presiding. Doneby, Tony, Ken, Laura, me.

  • Holy Mother prayer
  • Hit Record
  • Quick check-ins
  • Money! Jenn will sync up with John about who’s paid what, and then Jenn will let us know how much we still owe.
  • Food! Laura and Cedar are anchoring
    • Laura: wants Ealasaid to look into what’s local!
    • Laura’s looking into picking up a cake that will meet all restrictions
    • Ealasaid taking leftovers 😀
    • Tony will help take leftover food
  • Covid considerations
    • Have a bunch of different ways we’re handling it
    • Other things are going around too eg flu, RSV, etc.
    • Vaccinations
    • Laura has to take MS meds the first day so immune system will be shot. Is at high risk, will probably be more cautious. Suggesting open windows when possible. Masking en route. Also suggests maybe listing in forum what we are planning on (eg filters in every room)
    • Doneby: is it cool if we all share vax status? All vaxed up. Masking en route.
    • Ealasaid bringing air filters, Tony has one too.
    • Ken: will be vaxed, glad to share. Will be masking at least in the air.
    • E: there are gaskets you can install in mask, will find link and share it.
    • Jenn: just got vaxed, will be flying in mask. But feels like important thing is if you’re feeling sick don’t come
    • Laura: and if you start feeling kinda sick during, bring up, mask, etc. Communication!
    • Doneby: can bring tests so folks can test if they start feeling sick
    • Jenn: that would be great, also we can bring masks to share
    • E can bring a bunch, can also bring Far-UVC
  • Jenn: will put together a schedule, hopes we’ll all bring ideas for things to do. Email her as you come up with ideas, doesn’t have to be all thought through just come with ideas. If she doesn’t hear from you, you’ll just get put down for an hour
  • For ritual in evenings, we have travel to the temple and cords, but the other night thinking that might be something that emerges over time.
  • Since we’re Thurs-Mon, maybe Sun evening can be hanging out? Thoughts?
    • E: likes hanging out, yay
    • Ken has the crystal and will be late, so the passing of the crystal needs to be scheduled accordingly.
    • Cedar is leaving Sunday
    • E and Doneby reading Ivo’s book on psychic development, has some collective visioning
    • Laura: a ritual space for grieving feels important. This is our first time together since Covid and some have had a lot of various loss/change in that time.
    • Laura: instead of head-shoulders-knees-and-toes, maybe Chappell Roan’s HOTTOGO?
    • Ken: been thinking for a while, has a Mad Libs ancestral poem thing
    • Jenn: it’s been so long, excited to meet up and see where we’re all at now
    • Ideas from when people signed up for themes and stuff, will share a bit and then Tony can lead us through visioning. Anything to cover before that?
    • Cedar: how many people will be there? For menu planning.
    • Jenn: 9, and will be sending a spreadsheet of everybody’s dietary stuff.
  • Words:
    • Collective unbinding
    • Grief/loss of time apart
    • Recommitting to magic
    • Reconnecting and group alignment
    • Intentional presence
    • Deity aspecting
    • Relationship with morningstar
    • Web of Morningstar
  • Visioning
  • Nancy arrived late
  • Any last things?
  • Recording will be available as a link on the forum
  • Closing.
  • Action Items!
    • Everybody: send Jenn ideas for Things To Do
    • Jenn
      • Sync up with John about pay
    • Ealasaid
      • Come up with list for Laura and Cedar of local foodie things
      • Straw gasket? Post link
    • Tony will wordsmith the things that came up during visioning

After the meeting, Tony sent this:

  • Here’s the things I heard:
  • Bidirectional connection – connecting as individuals and as a collective
  • In a very large field together calling in more power than we’ve done before
  • Attending to Sticky One’s sensory needs being in space, physically present with our senses and bodies and each other
  • What is the vision of the future?
  • An item broken into pieces at the end of the retreat, each MStar given a piece

With all of this I thought to go back to my Reclaiming roots and synthesize a statement of intention, and here’s my draft:
“We come back together and grieve what has been broken. Feeling together who we are now, we gather power and envision the future.”

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