Approved....
Mar. 3rd, 2008 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badstarWell, last Wednesday night, I was at work looking over my old Vocational essay for the CTP, and it hit me very quickly that I was ready for it to be down. In my mind, I'd moved on, it no longer was applicable. I went and wrote up my Initiates program essay. i waited until it was approved and up on the ADF site to post it here, feeling mildly superstitious.
I'm also going to eventually post it over at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
asthefiretree for continuity. Perhaps later today, perhaps tomorrow. When I get to it.
1. What draws you to the path of Initiation within ADF?
I don't know what happened, I thought I had it all figured out. I may have gone a little backwards from the norm- I decided that I wanted to pursue the clergy training program, then I joined ADF and started on the Dedicants Program so that I could complete it and move on to clergy training.
Maybe I misinterpreted that to which I was being called, or maybe I had it right, but along the line, as I progressed in my Dedicant work, developed my devotion to Apollo and became more familiar with a couple of other gods and moved on to start the clergy training, something changed. In the end, I don't think it matters so much how it came about, only that it did.
When I look back over the last year or so, I can see things that I can point to now, and in my twenty-twenty hindsight, say that where I was meant to go, and where I thought I was meant to go were somewhat divergent- not completely in opposition, but not completely in agreement either. When it was first introduced, I looked at the Initiates Program and gave it consideration, but at the time, was still at the conclusion that clergy training was the way I needed to go. It is not lightly that I take my desire to switch tracks- the realization that clergy training was not the right direction was a difficult one that had to hit me more than once before I realized and accepted that it was true.
In less than a year's time, I've made several oaths to my gods- to serve, to follow, to trust, to not stray from the course down which they send me. It seems they've opted to take me at my word.
In my vocational essay for the clergy training, I asserted that it was not a want for me to serve as a member of the clergy, but a need:
"I do not want to be a priest. I have never expressed this aspiration as a want. From the beginning, it's been a need. Despite the fact that I tried for a very long time to brush it off, to reject it and even at the beginning when it first came to me, it was a need. I believe that if it had been merely a want, it would not have stayed with me as persistently as it did while I ran from it for six years. Wants are fleeting. Needs must be filled."
This remains not a want which comes from within me and may be fleeting, but something to which I am compelled from outside, from something far greater than me. I continue to choose to follow it.
In the last year or so, my religious practice has become very devotional in focus. As I see it, the work laid out in the Initiates Program has much stronger application for devotional practice without ignoring the possibility of serving the gods in some public capacity.
As such, I come to the path of initiation in service and devotion to my gods, and in keeping the oaths which I've made to them. The focus has shifted, the need remains to be filled.
2. What does being an Initiate mean to you?
Having not gone through the process and the initiation in this context, I can only give my answer based on my understanding of the word's meaning, and experience of initiation in another context. To initiate is to begin. When one is initiated, there also is an ending. From where I'm standing looking forward, being an initiate will mark the completion of a body of work and learning, and of a stage of my relationship with ADF- much like completing the Dedicants Program marked similar completion- and possibly with my gods as well. With that ending, there will be a new stage of the relationship, new work and learning.
My previous initiatory experience is with Alpha Phi Omega, a service fraternity in college and an organization with a longstanding tradition of what initiation means and what it is to be an initiate. I do not know what it will mean to me in specific regard to ADF, or what being an Initiate means to ADF as an organization. I see what the intentions were for developing the program and for the material selected, but that doesn't tell me what ADF intends for initiation to mean.
Because this course of study is so new, I suspect that what it means to be an Initiate of ADF is largely open to be discovered by those working and completing the program. If that is not the case, then those who have developed the program have not been very forthcoming in communicating what it is intended to mean to the organization.
3. What services do you hope to provide to your community with this training?
Foremost, I will continue to serve my gods. The most obvious service that I hope to bring is to continue to be involved with ritual and liturgy, and especially to develop rituals for the festivals to my gods. I would also continue to do whatever I can for ADF's Hellenic Kin. Aside from that, what I can do to help further the knowledge and understanding of my gods, and what they ask of me, I will.
Renee Rhodes
Cedarlight Grove
February 28th, 2008
I'm also going to eventually post it over at
asthefiretree for continuity. Perhaps later today, perhaps tomorrow. When I get to it.1. What draws you to the path of Initiation within ADF?
I don't know what happened, I thought I had it all figured out. I may have gone a little backwards from the norm- I decided that I wanted to pursue the clergy training program, then I joined ADF and started on the Dedicants Program so that I could complete it and move on to clergy training.
Maybe I misinterpreted that to which I was being called, or maybe I had it right, but along the line, as I progressed in my Dedicant work, developed my devotion to Apollo and became more familiar with a couple of other gods and moved on to start the clergy training, something changed. In the end, I don't think it matters so much how it came about, only that it did.
When I look back over the last year or so, I can see things that I can point to now, and in my twenty-twenty hindsight, say that where I was meant to go, and where I thought I was meant to go were somewhat divergent- not completely in opposition, but not completely in agreement either. When it was first introduced, I looked at the Initiates Program and gave it consideration, but at the time, was still at the conclusion that clergy training was the way I needed to go. It is not lightly that I take my desire to switch tracks- the realization that clergy training was not the right direction was a difficult one that had to hit me more than once before I realized and accepted that it was true.
In less than a year's time, I've made several oaths to my gods- to serve, to follow, to trust, to not stray from the course down which they send me. It seems they've opted to take me at my word.
In my vocational essay for the clergy training, I asserted that it was not a want for me to serve as a member of the clergy, but a need:
"I do not want to be a priest. I have never expressed this aspiration as a want. From the beginning, it's been a need. Despite the fact that I tried for a very long time to brush it off, to reject it and even at the beginning when it first came to me, it was a need. I believe that if it had been merely a want, it would not have stayed with me as persistently as it did while I ran from it for six years. Wants are fleeting. Needs must be filled."
This remains not a want which comes from within me and may be fleeting, but something to which I am compelled from outside, from something far greater than me. I continue to choose to follow it.
In the last year or so, my religious practice has become very devotional in focus. As I see it, the work laid out in the Initiates Program has much stronger application for devotional practice without ignoring the possibility of serving the gods in some public capacity.
As such, I come to the path of initiation in service and devotion to my gods, and in keeping the oaths which I've made to them. The focus has shifted, the need remains to be filled.
2. What does being an Initiate mean to you?
Having not gone through the process and the initiation in this context, I can only give my answer based on my understanding of the word's meaning, and experience of initiation in another context. To initiate is to begin. When one is initiated, there also is an ending. From where I'm standing looking forward, being an initiate will mark the completion of a body of work and learning, and of a stage of my relationship with ADF- much like completing the Dedicants Program marked similar completion- and possibly with my gods as well. With that ending, there will be a new stage of the relationship, new work and learning.
My previous initiatory experience is with Alpha Phi Omega, a service fraternity in college and an organization with a longstanding tradition of what initiation means and what it is to be an initiate. I do not know what it will mean to me in specific regard to ADF, or what being an Initiate means to ADF as an organization. I see what the intentions were for developing the program and for the material selected, but that doesn't tell me what ADF intends for initiation to mean.
Because this course of study is so new, I suspect that what it means to be an Initiate of ADF is largely open to be discovered by those working and completing the program. If that is not the case, then those who have developed the program have not been very forthcoming in communicating what it is intended to mean to the organization.
3. What services do you hope to provide to your community with this training?
Foremost, I will continue to serve my gods. The most obvious service that I hope to bring is to continue to be involved with ritual and liturgy, and especially to develop rituals for the festivals to my gods. I would also continue to do whatever I can for ADF's Hellenic Kin. Aside from that, what I can do to help further the knowledge and understanding of my gods, and what they ask of me, I will.
Renee Rhodes
Cedarlight Grove
February 28th, 2008
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-03-03 06:20 pm (UTC)(Also, it was interesting for me to read your reasons and perspective, and I don't know that I would have went looking for it on my own.)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-05 05:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-04 04:16 pm (UTC)This is my favorite line. I love how you're calling the group to account while you're "supposed to be" explaining yourself. That's truth to power, baby! *ahem* So to speak.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-05 05:03 am (UTC)