Last year, I heard Peia live.

An Irish poet, between songs, she'd tell stories about Ireland.

As she'd explain how she found a song or what the meaning was behind a certain word, she couldn't avoid consistently mentioning how hard her research had been because almost no records exist.

Because the romans burned the books.

Because the romans killed the elders.

Because the romans outlawed their religion.

It slowly dawned on me that the indigenous people we now refer to as Celtic/Irish were slaughtered by the Romans. A genocide so effective, it took me 32 years to realize I was a bastard child and that the United States is my step father.

I'm getting goosebumps now as I write this. A flood of emotion hit me that night as I stood on red dirt looking up at the stage. Tears where streaming down my cheeks. A door had been opened.

I felt what it feels like to be an innocent happy child, but to one day learn your parents had been violently murdered and that you have spent the last 3 decades calling their killer Dad.

I'm 90% Irish.
And my ancestors were annihilated.
And I didn't registrar this in my body until I was 32.

A Beautiful Synchronicity

My interests flit around like lightening.

I was struck by lightening that night, talked with Peia for hours after, and began to imagining my journey to reconnect with my Irish linage.

That was 10 months ago and I had gotten interested in other things.

But some synchronicities have finally brought me back.

After 7 years of teaching Fit For Service, a cool thing we've noticed is whatever the theme of the class we're teaching, it seems to ignite personal initiations that matches the theme of the teachings.

If you teach about physical fitness, you tweak your knee and have to use all of your knowledge to come back stronger than before.

If you're teaching a class on relationships, you might have some long nights of rehashing old sins with your partner, and thanks to the work you put into creating your class, you find yourself responding to an old pattern in a new way.

Well I just finished teaching the first major part of my Mentally Fit course, and the project for the class is to create their 'ideal dharma day' and then commit to living that day for the next 45 days.

Leading up to starting this challenge, I had mentioned it a couple times to Caitlyn.

In return, she had started mentioning a Celtic holiday that started August 1st that felt special to her.

She had to mention it a few times for me to notice that I was actually very interested in learning more about this holiday given the experience I had had the year before listening to Peia, so I started doing some research.

One of my 'dharma day' habits is to have a moment in the evening where I say goodnight to the shimmer. This means I put my phone away for the evening. That means I don't look at my phone from 6 to 10pm. I leave my phone in my office.

It's the fucking best.

I did this on the evening of July 31st.

I sat at our dining room table with a notebook and some micron pens. My journaling brought me back to this holiday Caitlyn had mentioned, so, with full intention to not get lost in the shimmer, I pulled out my laptop and went to ChatGPT to start doing some research.

What's this holiday called?
Lughnasadh

What is it?
The festival is named after the Celtic god Lugh, a deity associated with skills, crafts, and the arts. "Lughnasadh" translates to "the assembly of Lugh."

Who is Lugh?

Lugh's name is thought to be derived from the Proto-Indo-European word leuk, meaning "light" or "brightness," highlighting his association with light and the sun. He is also known by several epithets, such as Lugh Lámhfhada ("Lugh of the Long Arm") and Samildánach ("Skilled in Many Arts"), which reflect his wide-ranging abilities and talents.

This was the lightening striking moment for me.

I'm a big fan of mythology.

And with a little shame I admit I know very little about Celtic and Irish mythology. That's how much of a bastard child I am, and it's another testament to just how thoroughly the spirit that organized Rome annihilated my ancestors.

The essence is, it landed in my heart that Lugh is one of the patron saint deities of the Dharma Artist Collective.

That his name means brightness, for me means, he stands for The Daimon (that little whisper in you that is calling you to your destiny).

That his main 'superpower' is that he is a master of many crafts and skills perfectly fits the energy of DAC.

And that this all comes into my life as my class is starting this 45 day challenge...a challenge that comes at the end of a module called 'The Sun Wheel,' feels pretty cool to me.

New Timelines

A few years ago I heard John Churchill riff on how weird our modern timekeeping system is.

His casual mention of our calendar system clearly being out of tune has created a drive in me to create a second calendar.

I'm still going to play inside Kronos time (our current timekeeping), but I want to cultivate a relationship with the rhythms of the planet and learn her calendar.

For some reason, I have a very strong intuition that developing a relationship to this different kind of time will be important to my kids.

So this is why this year, I launched the Dharma Artist Collective on the summer solstice. It's why my next big project will be coming out on the winter solstice.

And it's now why every year, on August 1st, I will be committing to learn a new skill or craft.

This is the first official 'holiday' for the Dharma Artist Collective.

Lughnasadh means "an assembly Lugh."

Lugh is the god of the arts and master of many skills.

He was the Irish's collective psyche's best attempt to articulate the most adaptive way to play the game of life.

There answer: learn how to master skills.

So that's what we're out here trying to do.

If you want to go deeper into the challenge I'm doing (and how you can create your own version of it), click here for more.

Big love.

Song I'm Listening on Repeat

​rvnti - golden

Quote I'm Enjoying

"When a system is far from equilibrium,
small islands of coherence have the
capacity to shift the entire system"
​-Iliva Prigogine

“The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.”
― Robert Greene

Weekly Journal Prompt