Dear Lucidians, I hope that at this year’s event you could feel the great love we have for you. You are we. We do this planning, emailing, everything, all year long, so that we can call in our family, our kindred. I hope this year, that as you danced, as you saw stunning art, as you sang around the fire, that at some point you looked into someone’s eyes and saw a brother, a sister, a friend, a lover, someone from a past life or from another star system who you recognized and know that now they are a part of your life forever. Whenever you see them, wherever you are in all of your barefooted travels that you will embrace them as fellow, as kindred, as family.

On behalf of all the people who come together to plan, write, coordinate, produce, build, feed and serve, I hope that above all else you felt loved, you felt the care, you feel that all of us together are weaving this dream of living in a world that makes sense to us. I hope that you feel more confident in this dream, that you feel encouraged in this dream to bring even more of your beautiful shining faces into the world, to call even more love forward from everyone you meet.

As we enter back into the waking world from the land of Lucidity it can feel strange. It can feel like it was all just a dream. It can feel like this outside world is thicker, harder, more immovable than the one we just built together.

But the barista, the banker, the boss; they are all waiting to be embraced in the same way we embrace each other. So many people are just waiting for the invitation, and Lucidity is a great invitation. I hope you take the burning embers of the fire with you out into the world knowing that even in the dark, even through the cold nights, you are never alone. You are always home. There is always someone to talk to. Always someone to hold your hand. Always someone to see you in your eyes. Always family waiting for you, at live oak campground, and the next place we chance to meet.

It was my deep honor to get to sit at the sacred fire and hear your songs and stories, and share stories and the stories of the elders with you. To dance in circles around each other in ceremony and to call forth our ancestors and release our deepest fears.

I hope you felt us. I hope you felt the beating heart of this festival, beating to say we are so excited to see you, to celebrate you, to see what you are offering and how you are becoming and to see that we leave this festival tired, exhausted, spent. Every cell in our bodies having given every bit of energy we have, but in that emptiness, in this exhaustion is a great joy, the greatest satisfaction that I believe we as human beings can have:

When we sit around exhausted, not hollowed, but hallowed; full of our emptiness, satisfied in having given everything we have for each other.

I hope that you feel us. I hope you feel this exhausted satisfaction of having given everything. I hope you take away everything you may have learned, how to make sauerkraut, rebuild our cities, how to look into a strangers eyes and find a friend, and all the spontaneous acts of joy and creativity and love.

I hope that you feel a great thriving heart-pulsing-confidence in this world that we are not only dreaming together, but actively, with chapped lips, scarred hands, dusty faces and tired hearts, are building together. Everything we do is just practice for the next adventure.

Every time we do this we come together again like a muscle working, tearing itself open so that the next time it is even stronger. Our hearts stretch open to their capacity and then just beyond, until they break open just enough that as they rebuild themselves they are bigger than before, stronger, able to hold more love, sorrow, grief and possibility than before.

Feeling the cool California coastal wind, in the time of this great drought when the plants and the ground are thirsty for water, we say together around the fire in a prayer, we say, “Let it rain.” Let it rain on this land. Let all the dreams that we stamped down in the dry dust of Live Oak campground, let all those prayers for love and belonging and growth and community, let all those prayers call the rain down so that this family grows from this dust, grows from this dance.

Round and round we go, holding each others hands, living our lives in a circle.

Today this day is done, but our dance goes on, out in spirals great and small to come together again to dance on other lands under the same stars.

We thank you, we love you, for being you, exactly who you’ve been, who you are and who you are on the path of becoming.

Thank you, may all your dreams be true.

-Noah Crowe
Sacred Fire Tender