Column: Ritual as Action, Action as Ritual

[Today we welcome Liz Cruse, a poet , passionate environmentalist and Druid in the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids. Cruse has worked as a nurse, health educator and trainer and has a profound interest in plants for healing, magic and food. She has Degrees in History and English and a Masters in Art History. Cruse facilitates workshops in the areas of Druidry and protection of the land. Recently she participated in the Generation Hex: Paganism and Politics at Cambridge University Department of Anthropology.]

I am standing in a field holding the northern gateway in a ceremony.

James L. Bianchi 1949 – 2015

It was announced on Tuesday that James L. Bianchi,co- founder of the House of Danu and Bay Area Pagan Alliance, passed away. He had been in the ICU of John Muir Medical Center for several weeks suffering from a staph infection that had attacked his heart. Throughout this time, he was cared for by family, friends and medical professionals, but the infection was too severe. James was born in 1949 in Oakland California. He attended Skyline High School, graduating in 1967.