Light Morning’s roots reach back to the Virginia Beach of the early 1970s. The teachings of Edgar Cayce, the so-called “sleeping prophet,” had been preserved there. This caused Virginia Beach to become a mecca for some of the restless souls who were on the road in those days.
In the summer of 1973, eight people – having been independently drawn to Virginia Beach for this reason – coalesced around the inner guidance of a woman who had developed gifts similar to those of Edgar Cayce. Live close to the Earth, these “readings” urged, in small communities of cooperation. Practice dream-work, meditation, and prayer. Become willing participants in the unfolding drama of these tumultuous yet opportune times.
The guidance we received was woven into our first book, Season of Changes: Ways of Response. Late that fall, people who had known each other for less than a year pooled their life savings and bought an abandoned farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The following spring, prodded by a prophetic sense of urgency and lured by the sweet alchemy of a shared vision, we moved to the mountains.
Free State Creek
The Appalachians are one of the oldest mountain ranges on Turtle Island, a name the indigenous peoples gave to the North American continent. Stretching 1,500 miles from Alabama to Canada, they were thrust up toward the end of the Paleozoic Era, displacing an inland sea, and have spent the past 200 million years being slowly softened and eroded. In Virginia, the Appalachians are called the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Light Morning is nestled into several of their south-sloping ridges, surrounded on three sides by a deep gorge. At the bottom of this gorge runs a stream that the old-timers call Free State Creek. Free State Creek flows into Goose Creek and then into the South Fork of the Roanoke River, which meanders eastward to the Atlantic Ocean. Rain falling one ridge over, however, ends up in the Little River, which joins the New, the Ohio, and finally the Mississippi, on its way to the Gulf of Mexico.
Because the Blue Ridge Mountains are so old, and were spared the glaciers of the last Ice Age, we are blessed with a rich diversity of plants and animals – black bears, chipmunks and white-tail deer; tulip poplars, locust, oaks, and maples; skinks, copperheads, and snapping turtles; ravens, kingfishers, wild turkeys, and bluebirds; and trillium, raspberries, and ginseng, to mention just a few.
Common Table
One of the primary binding spells for Light Morning has been family meals. These daily gatherings not only allow us to enjoy the simple vegetarian fare that we prepare for one another, but also provide the essential luxury of shared time. We tell dreams over breakfast, exchange work stories at noon, and often use the supper hour to air grievances, solve problems, and catch up on each others thoughts, feelings, and insights.
Keeping a common table is important for less obvious reasons as well. Eating together means working together, another strong binding spell. Because we share food, we don’t need separate gardens. And since we like our food fresh and organic – in other words, home grown – the garden is large.
Then there are the orchards, grape vines, and berry bushes to tend; the produce to be preserved as the days grow short and the nights turn cool; the shelters to be built and cared for; the firewood to be gathered for cooking and warmth. These are further ways in which common table generates common labor, with its own set of challenges and rewards.
Friends and Neighbors
In the early years, there was a torrent of visitors; five hundred one summer. Most had learned of Light Morning through Season of Changes, or by word of mouth. They were often driven by hard times – this was the era of Vietnam and Watergate, of fuel lines and food shortages – and by the same restless searching which had impelled us to Virginia Beach and to the readings.
Some of these visitors stayed on. Others bought parcels of land down the road, giving shape to a neighborhood which gradually became an extended family of friends and kindred spirits. We helped each other build houses and occasionally watched them burn. We assisted at the births of each other’s children, sometimes grieving for their deaths. As we celebrated birthdays, weddings, and the slow passage of the seasons, the friendships grew deep and strong.
Meanwhile, the county as a whole was experiencing a similar influx. It used to be that we knew all the other newcomers in this agrarian, single-stoplight county. Now hundreds more have moved in; and they’re still coming.
Once, in a dream, this multitude was assembled in a large auditorium, trying to articulate what common denominator desire had brought us all here. Hours of tedious debate ensue. Finally, in despair, I walk outside. Standing in the fresh air, and with no premeditation, I ask the first person I see, “Have you talked with your god lately?”
I don’t care what his concept of god is or what they’re discussing. I simply want to know if there is some sort of dialogue going on.
“Yes,” he replies, after a moment. “The day before yesterday.”
Taking this response as a favorable omen, I return to the auditorium.
Wax Statues
If we are to participate consciously and creatively in these challenging times, there must be inner dialogue. Everything that facilitates outer dialogue – listening, discernment, assertiveness, problem-solving – can be applied inwardly. Reaching for consensus as a group thus becomes a parable for seeking it within.
Inner consensus strives to reconcile the competing needs of body, mind, heart, and soul. Yet reconciliation happens only as we are able to reclaim the shadows – bright, as well as dark – that we have displaced onto others. For we project all our subliminal hopes and fears, all our murky gender tensions and unresolved parental issues, onto those around us, as though onto the wide, bright screens of a multiplex cinema. Riveted to our seats, captivated by the entrancing images, we rarely remember their source – the small projector room at the back of the theater.
This path of reconciliation, then, becomes one of reclaiming our projections. We won’t follow such an arduous path without an evocative image of where it might lead. We need, in other words, a compelling metaphor; a visceral lure. This is the central theme of our second book, Wax Statues, Cotton Candy and the Second Coming. Growing out of our dreams, meditations, and daily life, Wax Statues explores the possibility of a new creature emerging from the matrix of who and what we now believe ourselves to be.
Cocooning
Many people have had glimpses of this new creature. Sometimes it arrives on the wings of a dream. We awaken in the morning – or maybe in the middle of the night – trembling with the intensity, feeling the dream to be far more real than “real life.”
Less often, the revelation is a waking one, striking us like an earthquake. Abrupt, apocalyptic, stress-induced – it jolts us out of our complacent sense of identity. All that we once took to be solid gives way beneath our feet. Suddenly we find ourselves flying, floating, or falling.
We give names to these fleeting moments of grace – the Christmas Experience, the Fire Experience, the Bubble Experience, Hand-Raiser. Paradoxically, these peak experiences are both archetypal and highly personal; longed for and feared. Light Morning has served as a cocoon for these lucid intervals; a silken web of expectancy, encouragement, and support. Within its protective confines, the unspeakable dance of dissolution and renewal takes place.
Light Morning 