Cultivating a Deeper Relationship with Divine through Prayer
Online Via Zoom
Sun, March 16, 2 - 3:15 pm ET (US)
Register Here
There is a new offering coming to Sacred Fire local communities!
A four-part workshop on prayer, developed with the blessing and guidance of Grandfather Fire, will be offered in multiple locations beginning in 2025.
As a precursor, join us on March 16th to hear community elder Don David Wiley speak on the fundamental importance of prayer as the background of a healthy life.
In our lives we can experience a sense of disconnection from the fundamental force behind life, creation, and all of its movements, acknowledged by many names such as God, the Gods, or Spirit. Since the beginning, traditions throughout the world have worked to create a process to bridge that gap and ask for help through what is recognized as prayer.
At the heart of this process, which nowadays has largely been forgotten or misunderstood, lies an understanding of the principles of how prayer works to produce a deeper relationship and the potential for receiving support.
We are offering an opportunity to rediscover this sacred approach to engaging with Divine once more.
In this 60-minute online event, you will hear David Wiley speak on prayer, and also get to meet the workshop facilitators, Megan Montero and Christina Gravelle. Come reflect on your own relationship to prayer, and learn about the details of participating when this offering comes to your location.
Schedule
March 16, 2:00 – 3:15 pm ET (Americas)
Price
Sliding scale $10-$25
For more information
For more information, contact Sherry Boatright at sacredfirelifeways@sacredfire.org
Featuring
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Christina Gravelle has always longed for connection with Divine. Raised in a Catholic family, her youth was steeped in Faith, and the value and beauty of prayer.
This early grounding in spiritual life inspired Christina to continue to explore relationship with Divine as an adult. A long-time student of Siddha Yoga and member of the Sacred Fire Community, she is currently studying to be a Firekeeper. For years, she has been a volunteer and Guest Services coordinator for the Blue Deer Center, a home for Ancestral Wisdom in the Catskill Mountains. Chanting, community service, and devotional prayer are important practices and sources of joy for her.
Christina has a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition from Bastyr University. She lives in Plymouth, MA near her family and Grandmother Ocean.
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Don David Wiley. In 1996, the Spirit of Fire — known as Grandfather Fire — appeared before David as an apparition in the garden of a meditation retreat center near Mexico City. Grandfather Fire asked David to be his conduit, so that people everywhere could discover their innate connection to spirit and have an experiential relationship with nature and the Divine. It was an encounter that profoundly altered his understanding of what is possible and how to live.
Grandfather Fire sent David to find two indigenous elders — Don Lupe Ríos Gonzales of the Wixárika (Huichol) tradition of Mexico’s Sierra Madres, and Don Lucio Campos Elizalde of the Nahua tradition of the central highlands — who began his formal apprenticeship in these two ancestrally related shamanic paths. From the Huichol tradition, he received initiation as a mara’akame — healer, counselor, and ceremonial leader. From the Nahua path, he was initiated as a granicero — weather worker, ceremonial leader, and healer. In 2008, he received initiation as a Huichol tsaurirrakame(elder shaman). On the Nahua path, he became Caporal Mayor — teacher and tradition leader — inheriting Don Lucio’s altar and lineage. As a recognized elder in both traditions, he carries the title of respect: Don David.
Also beginning in 1996, Grandfather Fire began speaking directly through Don David during special ceremonial gatherings — work that has touched thousands of people across the globe for nearly three decades. Among the Huichol, an axihuatakame is a god-speaker: a conduit who enters a deep trance state so that a divine presence can speak directly through them. A collection of Grandfather Fire’s wisdom was published as Heard Around the Fire in 2010; a second book is in final editing.
Over the years, Grandfather Fire inspired Don David and the community growing around Grandfather’s wisdom to spread traditional lifeways through the world. This lead to the founding of nonprofits Sacred Fire, which began training Sacred Firekeepers and hosting events and programs in 2004; Blue Deer Center, a Sacred Place in the Catskill Mountains of NY, a spiritual retreat of healing and transformation in nature which opened in 2005, and Sacred Fire Foundation, a charitable organization founded to promote and protect traditional indigenous lifeways in 2009. He continues to train a dedicated community of students, healers, ceremonial leaders, and firekeepers — ensuring that this wisdom is carried forward.
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This course was created by Sacred Fire Co-Founder Don David Wiley, informed by his more than 25 years of experience as a Nahua and Huichol traditional healer, ceremonial leader, teacher and elder. His comprehensive spiritual perspective on the phenomenon, power, and importance of prayer incorporates both the practical and the spiritual, empowering people to fully engage in their day-to-day lives.
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Megan Pilar Montero. Megan has been walking with fire ever since her first experience with Grandfather Fire in 2005. Megan lives in Santa Cruz, California and serves her community as a Granicera or weather worker and a Tepahtiani or spiritual healer in the Nahua tradition of Mexico. Megan is a Sacred Fire firekeeper and holds monthly fire circles along with semi-annual rain ceremonies to help people deepen their relationship with the Weather Beings and the divine living world. She also helps people break free from the burden of clutter through her work as a clutter coach. Megan serves as the Secretary of the Temple of Sacred Fire Healing. She’s grateful to live near Grandmother Ocean and for the many ways that Sacred Fire has touched and transformed her life.