Members of the core
Over the years, many people in our community have served on the core. We gratefully acknowledge our past leaders for donating their time and talents: Amelia, Circe, Dana, Debbie, Deborah, Eileen, Ellen, Gina, Heather, Holly, James, Jim, Kimba, Missy, Mushrafali, Nick, Rae, Rich, Sarah, Shana, Steffi, Terence, Tigris, Travis, Venee, and Zorg.
The Spark core is currently comprised of the following volunteers:
Amanda Caryn
Amanda Caryn is passionate about nature, art, and love. Her name embodies her roots -- Amanda from Latin to love, amare, and Caryn derived from Gaelic for love, caru. She is often focused on mud and works in a ceramics lab, teaches pottery to children, and has exhibited her ceramic sculpture. At other times, she works in the linguistics field, does acting and performing, and has studied and practiced as a holistic counselor and in wildlife biology. She is an ordained priestess in the Sanctuary of the Heart Temple and previously with the Temple of Isis. She strives to maintain her daily meditation practice and is currently a student at the San Francisco Zen Center.
Dave
Nothing can really be said about David, also known as Q, for a certainty. He is a lifelong committed spiritual tourist, dabbling here, there and everywhere. He seems very committed to his spiritual path, but no one can really tell what that is, not even him. He believes deeply, and yet doesn’t, at the same time. He sees the spirit of living universe in everything and doesn’t believe in anything. He works very hard at capturing this present moment but is distracted a good deal of the time. About the most that can be said about him is that, whatever he is doing, he seems like he is really into it. Quiet, Questing, Quiescent, Quixotic, Questioning, Quintessence, Querulous. Q is THIS: the magical, multi-faceted mystery that is happening right now. Just look. We are Q.
Kimba
Kimba would rather be in the ocean...Barring that, drumming for Spark rituals will do just fine. A lover of many forms of transformational work Kimba spends her days working with clients using bodywork, breathwork and other more mystical tools to help them transform. After all, change is the only constant.
Mark
Mark is a senior nonprofit officer, fundraiser and environmental advocate living in Sonoma County. The founding executive director of the largest environmental group on the North Coast, Sonoma County Conservation Action, from 1991-2000, he has been named Sonoma County Environmentalist of the Year. He is the editor of the Atheopaganism blog (atheopaganism.wordpress.com) and moderator of the Atheopaganism Facebook group. His work was recently published in the anthology "Godless Paganism", for which he wrote the foreword. He lives with his wife and partner Nemea, and Miri, the Cat of Foulness.
Solstice
Solstice is an Earth Priestess, author, and herbalist. She spent her childhood at a lighthouse in northern Sweden. She roamed the wilderness where she developed a deep connection to the divine spirit of the Earth. She later moved to California, where she raised her three children in the Earth based tradition of her childhood. She is a founding member of the Earth Spirit Path and the Green Witch Collective. Her private practice focuses on living holistically and honoring the Earth. She discovered the Spark Collective at Pantheacon and found that the deep transformative energy of fire ritual brings renewed passion, insight, and balance to her Earth based practice.
What the core does
Members of the core are custodians of the Collective's vision. Each member of the core makes a commitment to do the following:
- Be of service to the collective
- Serve a term of at least one year
- Meet ten to twelve times per year
- Attend an annual core retreat
- At Spark events:
- Arrange a venue
- Show up
- Organize setup and teardown
- Provide orientation
- Facilitate rituals
- Do long-range planning for the collective
- Oversee the financial health of the collective
- Mentor community members' participation in rituals
- Represent Spark to the wider community
- Welcome community participation
Joining core
The core invites anyone in the community to step up to leadership. There are openings on the core annually. Joining the core requires that you've shown leadership in the community and is enacted by unanimous agreement of the current core.
The core consists of between five and twelve people. Members are appointed for three years but may serve four years at the discretion of the core. After serving for three (or four) years, a core member must rotate off for at least one year. As members step down, new members of the community step onto the core. Removing a member of the core requires unanimous agreement of the core minus the person involved.