-
Shadow and Light
The equinox, which I name High Spring, is upon us. To me, this is a happy time of innocence and play. A time for bright colors and candy and finally—finally—having light in the evenings and a sun warm enough to feel on my skin. But today, I am so sad. So disturbed. The white supremacist murder sprees at two mosques in New Zealand are simply sickening. That we have people so damaged, so filled with hatred in this world just breaks my heart. Half light, half darkness. That’s the equinox. And the world itself, it seems. The extraordinary poet W.S. Merwyn died yesterday as well, after a long and productive life.…
-
The Sabbath of Innocence
On March 20, we will come around again to the vernal equinox, which in my Wheel of the Year I name High Spring. In the metaphorical arc of the year, High Spring is the time of youth–of childhood. As it happens, I don’t have children in my life very much. I have none of my own, and of the local friends I have with kids, they are older: teens and young adults. And my experience of childhood was anything but innocent. So the concept of childhood isn’t exactly happy and light in my own experience. Yet I can imagine. I imagine the sheer wonder of a rattle shaking, of soap…
-
Take a Moment: A Meditation
As I begin this blog post, I am sitting in bed, sipping coffee. It is early morning. A series of waves of Canada geese are going overhead. I can’t see them, but I can hear them crying into the sky as they make their way onward. I think of Mary Oliver, of course, and remember that I do not have to be good. That here on Earth, there is a place for me in the family of things. As that youthful sage (and paragon of white privilege, to be honest), Ferris Bueller, would tell us: life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you…
-
Welcome Home
I’ve written on this subject before, but I want to say to the hundreds who have joined our Atheopagan online community since: welcome home! Welcome to a place where deep spirituality of Nature meets reason and critical thinking. To wild, naked dancing around a bonfire (real or imagined), and the wonders of science’s understanding of our Sacred Earth and Cosmos. To ritual, and meditation, and cognition and analysis and art and music, and the fullness of what we can be, we humans. It happens every week, online. It happens every year, in person at Pantheacon. People—strangers, yet family—come to me and say, I had no idea. I thought I was alone. I…
-
Burgeoning
It’s definite now: the light is stronger, the days are longer. Here in the northern hemisphere, winter is passing, and spring is coming on. Where I live, in coastal Northern California, the very first wildflowers are the milk maids, and they are already gone now, faded to buttercups and hounds’ tongues and shooting stars: the survivals of what once was a landscape carpeted with flowers in the spring. European grasses have forcibly taken over our hills, but the native flowers yet persist. And the introduced species, the narcissus and daffodils and acacia; they, too, are daubing the green carpet of the winter hills with gold and white. They speak of…
-
Reflections on Pantheacon 2019
I have just returned from Pantheacon, where I work as a volunteer staffer and have made presentations on Atheopaganism every year since 2015. I had a lovely time connecting with friends, making new ones, and meeting folks I’d only known before through the Atheopaganism Facebook group. Pantheacon 2019 was significantly smaller than in previous years, but it still had 1,800 attendees. That’s still the largest indoor gathering of Pagans in North America. It ran very smoothly, from my perspective working in the reception room for the presenters. Very few crises or miscommunications. And I received exceedingly generous words of praise and thanks, for which I am humbly grateful. A priestess…
