by Bill Sutton
Executive Director of the Sacred Fire Community
Several months ago, fresh in my position as Executive Director, I made my first post to the Hot News. In it, I promised to produce a column where I would keep you informed about what was going on with the Sacred Fire Community Organization.
A lot more time has elapsed than I intended, and a lot has been going on. Here’s a snippet:
- We published a beautiful brochure that presents the heart of what we are in pictures and words.
- We formed a board of directors, passed bylaws, and are now poised to rebirth ourselves as a real 501c3 organization. I’ll dedicate a future Hot News article to introduce our Trustees.
- In our August business meetings we began the hard work of creating a real plan for the Sacred Fire Community, with immediate goals of being able to better support the needs and development of the local Fire hamlets, making Lifeways programs and basic teaching we’ve received from Grandfather more accessible, and getting the basic systems in place we need to function with elegant effectiveness.
- We’re working much more closely with the Sacred Fire Foundation and Blue Deer Center develop unified messaging that presents a vision of what we all are together.
When you look at what the three organizations have accomplished over the past decade, you see a glimpse into Grandfather’s grand design — vast, comprehensive, exciting:
Through the Foundation, we’ve cultivated respectful, mutually supportive relationships with wise and authentic elders from a variety of ancestral traditions. We give grants to fund needed projects among ancestral peoples and their youth. Sacred Fire Magazine was acknowledged by Utne Reader as being unique in its focus on ancestral wisdom traditions and how the perspective of those traditions applies to modern life. Through Ancient Wisdom Rising, we bring together elders to share the wisdom and guidance of these traditional ways of living.
Through the Blue Deer Center, we offer access to a sacred site that has been used for millennia as a place of healing and conflict resolution. As we inhabit and use it, we are deepening our relationship with this place and it is providing a home, an anchor for the work we do in the world.
And through the Community, we provide programs and initiations that help bring our people into relationship with the living world. We have trained and initiated Firekeepers who can provide a ritual space for our people to connect locally and regularly. Through Lifeways, we offer access to workshops and initiations based on the guidance and wisdom we have received from Fire. And we have a genuine axihuatakame — a “spirit speaker person” — through whom Grandfather Fire can speak to our people directly.
The combination of all these things is a powerful offering for our modern world, and is unique in its scope and perspective. When we saw this all come together during a branding/communication session we had at our business meetings, I found it truly inspiring, and wanted to share this inspiration with you.
With love to you all,
Bill
