Seize the (Unusual) Day!

Recently, I posted about customizing your own Atheopagan Wheel of the Year— creating a cycle of observances of the equinoxes, solstices and points between as an 8-holiday cycle of rituals and traditions.

However, I believe there are more holidays (“holy days”) than just these. Those on the Wheel are the ones we can predict will come every year, but there are also unusual and amazing phenomena that come along once in a very great while which we should also take time out to celebrate.

Here where I live in Northern California, for example, thunder and lightning are almost unheard of. They require a combination of precipitation and heat that we just don’t see here very often*: typically, heat is during the dry season, and precipitation during the cold season.

So when we get a forecast with a strong likelihood of lightning, if at all possible I free up some time and drive for high ground where I can watch it come down. Likewise with snowfall (very rare): up early to see it come down (it is almost always at night or in the early hours of the morning).

These kinds of phenomena are rare and wonderful. We should definitely declare a “holy day” when we can, and take the time to celebrate them.

In some desert areas, there are spectacular wildflower blooms after particularly wet winters. In the mountains, temporary waterfalls are created by spring snowmelt. Lunar and (especially) solar eclipses; meteor showers; comets, auroras, bird migrations, autumn foliage…there are marvels that come around us, and not too infrequently. We must not be “too busy” with quotidian affairs to experience them.

Oh, and Fridays the 13th. Just because.

We are people who celebrate the Earth and Cosmos: let’s go see those things!

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*Although with climate change, this is changing. In recent years, we have had one or two instances of lightning storms every summer. Nothing like what is seen in the Southwestern or eastern US, but remarkable for here.