The Living is Easy
It’s summer, with Midsummer just a few days away. Long days full of Sun, sometimes hot but where I am, often buffered by the cooling ocean air to create perfect days with warm evenings.
I just moved inside from sitting naked on my patio, which is a seasonal pleasure. I also cut back the wisteria covering our back fence, which occasionally threatens to tear our house apart with its clinging, constricting vines, and watered all the plants in pots and half-barrels that make the place a lush oasis.
Being-Outside-Naked Season is something I look forward to every year. I love the Sun and air on my skin, and the feeling of freedom and comfort. Just sitting outside and writing or watching the breeze move the giant oak behind our back fence brings me a sense of calm and contentment.
Every year, I contend with the challenge of how to celebrate the Midsummer Sabbath. Unlike most of the holidays I celebrate around the wheel of the year, this one seems much more naturally inclined towards a social gathering with food and drink and games and socializing than a formal ritual.
That said, I am doing a few rituals this year–all on the 22nd, unfortunately, which means a bunch of driving and scrambling to accommodate my dance card: we’ll do an online ritual at the weekly Atheopagan Saturday Zoom Mixer, and then our Northern California Atheopagan Affinity Group, the Live Oak Circle, will convene a public Midsummer gathering in a park in Berkeley that afternoon.
From there I drive 60 miles back up to Sonoma County, drop in on the local UU Pagan group’s Midsummer gathering, and then put on more professional clothes and go to the annual fundraiser for the local environmental organization I founded back in the 90s.
So…it’s going to be quite a day!
Meanwhile, today is a day of true relaxation. A morning sojourn on the patio, a bit of patio gardening, and a chance to write a post. I’ll see friends later.
And then back to work tomorrow, my first full week in the permanent Executive Director job (I got it, yay!) and, as it happens, my one-year work anniversary on Thursday.
Mark Green
Author of ATHEOPAGANISM: An Earth-Honoring Path Rooted in Science and ROUND WE DANCE: Creating Meaning Through Seasonal Rituals, Mark Green is the initiator of the Atheopagan path and editor at the Atheopaganism blog. He volunteers as a staffer to the Atheopagan Society Council to support the growth of Atheopaganism throughout the world. In his home of Sonoma County, California, in the occupied ancestral lands of the Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok peoples, he is best known as an environmental activist and founder of Sonoma County Conservation Action, the largest environmental activism group in his region. He continues to work in the conservation sphere, focusing particularly on protection of natural landscapes on California's federal public lands.
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