Jeff Russell

Hey, hope you don't mind a late reply on this, but I figured I'd give you a quick update and let you know I appreciate the ongoing effort. Anyway, after some postal mishaps I've finally received and put together the physical components of the Tally, and I'm happy with the result. Again, I know this is a serious religious project and not a LARP, but I really enjoyed matching the different parts and putting it all together.

When it comes to the Bedes themselves, though, I have to admit I'm still struggling with the translations. It's just so hard to keep the alliteration and intent intact in another language without some really torturous contortions. Especially since my ambitions are more in prose writing than poetry, which I have very little experience with.

So I think two things are becoming increasingly clear to me: first, if I'm going to practice this as presented here, I'll probably have to recite them in English as written. And second, maybe my best bet would be to take a little more time and start from scratch with the Catholic Rosary prayers as a loose template. Your Bedes are beautiful, but they also feel very personal and idiosyncratic, so maybe I'd be better served finding my own interpretations anyway (ie. more of a focus on Frigg than Idun, among other things).

Either way, I'm thankful you gave me the idea to do this, and I'm determined to find an approach that works for me eventually.