Dandelion Sustainable Farm is A Gift to Nature, Humankind and the Divine. Sustainability is essential for world peace. Dandelion Farm is in it’s 40th year of service.
Great Swan Peace Cathedral is the crowning gift of our love and service to the Light on Dandelion Sustainable Farm.
Background Story: Encounter with Living Light leads to dedication to serving It.
Great Swan Peace Cathedral is the culmination of a life process that began when I was 21 in 1967, with a brief spiritual awakening. I was laying on my bed meditating on love, aware that I was in love with Love rather than any person. There came a sudden profound encounter with Living, Conscious Light that was overwhelming Love Itself. It was clear to me instantly that This was my True Self and the True Self of all. My limited identity and self awareness vanished in that instant of recognition. I was lost in Oneness with the brilliant Living Light of Being.
When self awareness returned after unknown time, the Light had morphed into a vision, the first of many premonitions heralding my life in future years as a devotee of Adi Da Samraj, That time finally began with the greatest moment of my life when I first saw Adi Da on “The Day of the Heart” 1979….another story. read more:
But from the first encounter with Living Light, I was in love with the It, and with the Power of Love that It is. There was an instant spontaneous response in me without question, to give my life to serve It. And this primal motivating urge in my life since that moment has been intensely tested and matured. Service to the infinite Light of Love has been the crucial imperative of my adult life and one I would serve in all others. This has allowed for a life, not without real challenges, but Guided and Blessed beyond measure.
Art Jewelry became my first expression of love and service to the Light, continuing 47yrs.
My first efforts to serve the Light were with my primitive, just beginning artist jeweler skills. When I was finally able to create a little silver earring that was a very simple expression of the Light, I cried for in utter ecstasy.
How inconceivable then, my artistic development and later years of art jewelry service to Adi Da and his great service in guiding and growing me as an artist. See The Artist Story
Great Swan Peace Cathedral Comes in Vision
In the context of my previous life up to this moment, the emerging of Great Swan is not so surprising.
My health had been challenged for several years, growing more and more difficult, particularly leading up to this event that ushered in Great Swan Peace Cathedral.
There were signs in my psyche I was nearing death for some nights. I was in a free fall, letting go of everything, of life itself while holding on to the Light. I felt deeply connected to all of humanity, and It seemed there was much darkness in that vast shared space. There was a form of communication taking place, that no matter what happened I had to always stand with and for the Light, to always serve Its benign Force wherever I might be, in the face of whatever darkness might be encroaching there.
On one particular evening, when at the end of my capacity to continue and feeling death very near, I prayed, that should I survive the night, if there was yet something more I had to accomplish for the Light, that this be made clear to me.
I slept for the first time in days on an unknown drug a friend had given Loren to help me. It gave me 3 desperately needed hours of sleep. Instantly upon awakening a profound reassertion of my obligation to serve the higher good of all pressed upon my psyche. And then a beatific vision coalesced before my inner eye of a most exquisite dome structure adorned with much metal art and high elaborate spires.
I heard the words “Peace…Cathedral” spoken very slowly, while the vision lingered resplendent before my mind’s eye for long moments, piercing my being with overwhelming ecstasy. It was the Beautiful Itself, Love and Light made tangible as divine Beauty. It was beckoning me to give myself completely in service far beyond what I could have ever dreamed or chosen.
Implicit in the vision and words was that World Peace would be served by bringing this sublime vision into manifestation on Dandelion Sustainable Farm. I had no idea how this was to happen. But I had prayed in the depth of my heart and THIS was the clear answer! I knew I simply MUST do as Guided without real knowledge about it all. I was going to have to trust the deeper sources of the process unfolding as my life, practicing heart surrender and trust as I had learned over all the many years of prior testing.
It would be a huge undertaking. This indicated I had some years yet to live and a great deal of work to do! This is a huge Leap of Faith beyond anything I had imagined. This is the Holy Jumping off Place!
I named It Great Swan Peace Cathedral and began the metal work as soon as I was able and accomplished perhaps 1/5th of the metal design by 2003. We had an architect friend on the farm who worked with us many long hours, trying to find the right technique to accomplish the dome structure. But no clear direction was found on that. AND so much that had already been Given that needed finishing. So Great Swan Peace Cathedral had to wait.
But by 2012 the state of the world and fears of some catastrophic ending were sowing a palpable darkness over all. It was clear we simply had to begin to serve the Light to give it more strength by starting Great Swan, even without clear direction on the structure. So we did a little commencement ceremony and then poured a 20 ft. cement slab/foundation. It was a small beginning. The structure would have to be kept small, knowing our ages and limited resources.
With the beginning of Great Swan Peace Cathedral in earnest, the process gained force and began to unfold. Within a few months our neighbor friends called to share about a dome that they saw being built in the mountains of our general area, little knowing they were guiding us to the long awaited structural technique for Great Swan.
Quickly we made plan
Read the story of the birth of Dandelion Sustainable Farm in 1979 and then the an personal Admonition to do larger metal art in 1999.
It was made clear then that Loren and I were to use our self sufficiency experience and to give our all as service. We were to create a community size sustainable living circumstance.
We did not have the financial means to even begin to buy the land required. So I promised in my heart, that should the financial means be Given, we would do the work.
We were able to sell our artist dream home for 5 times its market value to someone for whom price was no issue. The ridiculously high price we asked had popped out of my mouth with no thought. The miraculous providence of the means to purchase land was a clear evidence to us that we had ahead of us a very big project! Our commitment was then tested intensely for15 years to the point of nearly giving up over and over.
I learned to go beyond the limits of my small reasoning mind in Trust and surrender to the Mysterious source of this calling. In so doing, I would see the intense testing change and help being Given. It happened over and over. I learned so much about heart Trust and surrender. The years of difficult testing were a Gift that grew me. I also learned to work physically far beyond what I would have dreamed possible.
Then in 1999 my art work, Bindu Jewelry, that supported us and our service on Dandelion Farm, was spontaneously Blessed by Adi Da Samraj,
He also suggested I might make larger, even sculptural metal art. In our efforts to fulfill this admonition, Loren helped me weld a garden gate. It was not something I really wanted to do. But we did our best. I topped it with a spire. Who knows why?
Looking at that spire upon installation, my heart shot upwards to infinity and into the
Light. I was lost for a timeless moment in limitless, Blissful Light. Upon return, a new intense passion had already gripped my being. I wanted to make spires forever more, pointing to the Light all over Dandelion Sustainable Farm!
I realized I had not really given my art capacity in service on Dandelion, even though I had done many hundreds of hours of art jewelry as service. I also saw that this larger art on Dandelion, would transform it and help inspire many others to make sustainable living choices.
There was much of this larger art to be done for Dandelion before I could concentrate on Great Swan Peace Cathedral. In 2012, the
seen through Blanket of Flowers arbor
world felt so agitated, we decided we had better move ahead on Great Swan as a way to focus on the Light and on World Peace. So we did a little ground breaking ceremony and poured a foundation. We still were unsure how to do the structure in spite of the years we had pondered over how to build it with architect friends.
By 2013 It was clear we had really fulfilled the calling for the sustainable community circumstance. There is still more that will be completed, but it is essentially full. We had researched sustainable living with our very lives on the farm for 34 years. I had spent countless hours, every season that 34yrs, testing endless plants that could serve sustainable food production, saving strong farm adapted seeds, researching sustainable means for soil fertility into the future, We had done natural building and alternative power and developed a wholesome vegan diet we could grow with relative ease. 
We had great gifts to share of sustainability with the world.
The art for the farm had also reached a point of fullness that delighted visitors. Much more can be done in these areas, but these first callings were essentially complete. it was really time to move ahead with Great Swan Peace Cathedral!
I again was having months of unrelenting health struggle. I felt I had no time to waste getting on with Great Swan Peace Cathedral. Surprisingly, the perfect technology to construct the dome suddenly came to us when really needed. We met friends of good neighbors that were building domes of ferro cement in the manner perfected by Monolithic.com. The dome becomes a monolith (single rock-like unit of great strength) upon completion. This kind of structure can last thousands of years. How PERFECT for a Peace Cathedral that may be destined for service far into the future!
Even more came as Guidance. After serving in a very Holy Place, I saw instantly in meditation hands raised to acknowledge the Light. With this brief tableau, came an unspoken communication that the Light was to be acknowledged at Great Swan Peace Cathedral with the sign of raised open hands on and around it. I understood that many who love and serve the Light will place their hand prints and names there. They will help to create Great Swan and will be remembered and honored for participation with the Light there. Then It became clear that the Cathedral would become a place of world pilgrimage into future centuries.
All this may seem a bit unbelievable. I confess, were someone else telling me these things I would really wonder about it. But I have learned that I simply must do what is Given by Grace directly to do. Our lives have proved this to us. Who knows where we would be had we simply followed our natural inclinations for pleasurable distraction and self fulfillment? Mysterious purposes have driven me and Loren has helped every step of the way. We have worked without vacations, using all our resources and creativity, supporting it barely, without knowing the why or how or if we will be able or successful or if it will actually help the great many it could help. But my being has been impassioned by these callings to serve the Light. I have simply learned to practice Trust in a mysterious process that goes far beyond my mind, and to give my all to fulfill what is Given.
Loren, completely blows my mind. He has served along side me through thick and thin. He has lived a life that has demanded unusually hard work and the use of his many technical talents, when really travel was his passion. Loren is so humble and so utterly heroic to me in our odd, difficult, wonderful life of working/serving together. We both give our all, to make a difference with our talents and skills, our special gifts to a world on the brink of a most questionable future. Our creation of Dandelion Sustainable Farm and now Great Swan Peace Cathedral is a prayer in action for a most positive future, a transformation of humanity and for a world aligned with the Light, the source of all.
