Letter To Peggy

Dear Peggy,
Since Delazny has whispered your name, I've been longing to get in touch. I hope this letter finds you full of love and life. I'm Beatrice - I imagine my Lady has mentioned me favourably - and I am a priestess of Freya. My love has told me something of your situation, and... Well, it is fascinating. Let me be clear, I consider myself a scholar of both history and religion, yet I know little of Vallyr; just rumours, that they are associated with pears, and perhaps an associate of Freya. Doubtless, you are significantly better informed about Vallyr, having studied the temple yourself (I wish I was in your place, and hope soon to join you, if I may). However, I flatter myself to know something more of Freya, particularly as her faith is widely misunderstood and maligned as an unsavoury cult. I figured that by sharing something of my faith, I may help you discover something new about your own.
As you probably know, Freya is our Goddess of love, of fertility, and of the hunt. A curiously bifurcated portfolio, it seems? In fertility, she represents the wilds of nature. In the hunt, she supports our need to use nature, to sustain ourselves on its bounty. However, in love she unites these two conflicting domains, asking us to respect, cherish, and nourish the land as we inhabit it, and encouraging us to remain connected to our primal, untamed nature, while also living as social, secure, nurtured creatures. These two natures are honoured in the two major Freyan rituals, which have come to be known as the Day Festival and the Night Festival (I believe the actual timing of these rituals is purely conventional, though I have bickered with a number of my teachers over this point). The Day Festival honours our cultured nature - that which leads us to build lives together for safety, security and posterity - through a sanctified enactment of communal life, often a hunt, but perhaps also a concert, a symposium, a workshop, a debate, or simply a party. This will also involve a feast, as we partake of the bounty of nature. This kind of festival is roughly what you performed with Delazny and her crew. The Night Festival connects us to our primal nature, and... Is harder to explain. It essentially involves giving ourselves over to our basic, bestial selves, and, within the loving embrace of our dear Freya, finding release from the cultured obligations and expectations that fill our days. I hope something of this resonates with what you know of Vallyr, though I imagine much has changed... Over the years.
Delazny tells me that, though you study Vallyr's temple and its celestial texts, you are pained by an inability to connect with your deity's power. Peggy, your situation is remarkable, but your frustration is understandable. I tell you with love, coming to divine enlightenment is rare and difficult in the best of circumstances, and Peggy, you are not operating under the best of circumstances. I found my way to Freya with not just determination, but also an established tradition, and the love and guidance of mentors, peers and lovers. You are attempting to revive a forgotten faith, in the absence of fellow travellers. If I may repeat some basic theology: it is common to the Goddesses and Gods of the valley that gaining the power of miracle involves reaching some special understanding or insight into the nature of the deity. Many speak of revelation, but while that may be an aspect - Freyans have techniques of inducing divine visions as part of the Night Festival - revelation is usually a path to, or result of a divine connection, rather than constitutive of the connection itself. There are many other paths; research, prayer, thought, ritual, experience, discussion, mere luck... Typically a religion's priesthood is structured around facilitating the best path to its deity, but you shall have to find your own. If I may offer a suggestion, borrow liberally, and experiment. (Though I lack access to the libraries of my youth, I will attempt to find for you a text on comparative religion.) 
While your determination is your greatest asset, I implore you to welcome any assistance you are offered. In that spirit, I want to tell you something of my own path to Freya's priesthood. So, typically, Freyan priests travel in processions, with a number of worshipers, bringing the festival through the towns and villages of the valley. As I grew up under strict, stifling control, I found the freedom of the Freyan form both fascinating and unfamiliar (pardon the alliteration, I have been reviewing Delazny's letters). I could not turn my mind from the peculiarity of the processional practice. Obviously it has been a useful way to spread the love of Freyan, to attract new lovers to the faith, to ensure the land remains fertile, and to avoid the focused attention of those who do not welcome our rituals... But these practicalities aside, I could see no theological rationale for the tendency. Why is the faith spread this way? Why are there are no major sites of Freyan worship, no holy monuments, no sacred texts? There is nothing in the inherent nature of Freya, or the known history of the faith, which explains these features. I obsessed on this point, pestering my poor mentor Belathor. Eventually through discussion and prayer, I came to the conclusion that the Freyan religion is a displaced church, an ancient faith with a natural home, one we were forced to leave through dire circumstances, and one to which Freya longs for us to return and regrow. This conclusion... It did not feel like a bolt from the sky, like an obvious truth or a dark secret. Freya did not appear bodily before me, and I was not struck with divine fever. But rather, as I performed the evening' ritual, I felt the loving embrace of a comforting assurance, like an affirming surety that you can reach for at your lowest point. In the morning, without thought or surprise, I found myself casting a miracle. Liberating Command, I believe it was. Delazny had run into a thorn bush.
Young Peggy, I hope you can receive this story as a gift, from one who has been in a place not quite like your own, but who understands something of your longing and frustration. I believe that with your determination, wisdom and fortune, you will find your path, and I pray that you will find it to be Vallyr's path as well.
All the best,
Hoping to see you in Lycia soon,
Excessively Devoted Beatrice.