How do you explain the nuance of an ethos? And what happens when overlapping paradigms do not account for gaps, the intersectionality of the waves made, and the quieting of softer voices manifests?

Restarting this blog after a few weeks away guiding and then reintegrating. There is some hat switching happening for my psyche, not just the moving within phase of autumn-ing, but also the change from the felt sense of being with others to being with these computer machines.

The poetics of the people engaging with their (i.e., what it means to them) ceremonial immersion still lingers in my consciousness, drops of evanescent beauty enlightening my memoryscape. Here, now, a full week and a day past, the integration of the (not truly different) worlds invites me into reflection.

Ethos as a concept is said to have emerged and been developed by Aristotle, who defined it as one of the three modes of persuasion (the other two being logos and pathos). Ethos came to represent the core values or defining morals of a person or community. Complex scholarly language might connect ethos to epistemology (i.e., ways of knowing) and ontology (i.e., view of reality). Simpler language might understand this concept as an orientation. I see it also related to Daoism, which is literally translated as the way.

From a wilderness rite of passage perspective, especially that which emerged from the work of Meredith and Steven at the School of Lost Borders, one might consider an ethos as the barebones of ceremony.

As I have sat with this question these past two weeks, amidst a profoundly off-trend busyness which has been somewhat unsettling, I have become aware of the psychological impacts of the autumn light, the once-yellow-now-gone leaves, and the frigid nights of low-twenties.

Yet, the calm I have been stoking deep inside is illuminating for me a path beyond my culturally and socially inherited power-over-ing and into some fertile depth. Sketching my ethos is partial and incomplete, like all knowledge, but these feel alive…

student of the ceremony, of life

all belongs, really, all of it

the land/lifeworld initiates

be with the stillness, let the words emerge

non-hierarchy, post-anthropocentric, a circle way

open inquiry / open questions

post-materialist, ecofeminine

contemplative development and practice

peace / kindness / empathy

And opening the doorway to the East Shield, the not-knowing-ness, the expansive mystery which has both brought us here and will dissolve everything as we return, on some unknown day, into the morning fire...

the east shield glow roughsketch, autumn 2025, tbird

I feel this way

and all the time i waited

and all the days sat

listening to the fire inside

"when you won't the first step... it burns"

you just know

that you're meant for

some walk into the morning fire

o the east shield glow

far under the face of your mountain

i am home

turn it down and let's get dethroned

let's feel the leaves when the wind blows

can you

can i

let it all go?

can you

can i

let it all go?

How do I/we not let the songs/creativity/wild-aliveness die inside? How do I/we open these parts of ourselves that we shield and tend, and let that in-dwelling light emerge.

We must make time, take that first step, and open. Here is a prayer for those first steps for each of us in this edge of new year (celtic).

Deep bow,

tbird