-
Feeling the Heat
It’s 104 degrees F. (40 C.) outside my house right now. It’ll go higher tomorrow; a gigantic heat dome has formed over the American West and temperatures are spiking to insane levels. With this year already poised to break last year’s all-time heat record worldwide, climate change is here, bringing fire, destruction and death. Meanwhile, in human affairs, this week the right-wing plants “Justices” of the US Supreme Court declared the President largely above the law, creating an imperial Presidency that is dangerous not only to its citizens, but to the world. They also radically curtailed the power of our federal government to enforce environmental regulations. Elsewhere, the racist right…
-
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…
-
A Straight, Cis Dude’s Reflection on Pride
They make it all about sex. The sneerers and spitters, the blithe dismissers, the judging castigators who allege that being queer is just about who you rub your body parts against. Who you create orgasms with. The hatred is bound up with the sex. They simply hate and fear sex. The power of it, the vulnerability of it, the lack of control. And as they conflate queerness with sex, they hate, and fear queerness. Once upon a time, I dated a stripper. She was brilliant, graduate of a prestigious Eastern university, after which she had ridden a bicycle to California. She was an activist, a thinker. And a stripper, very…
-
Come and Meet Us!
Suntree Retreat 2024 is coming up, and you’re invited! This biannual in-person gathering of Atheopagans will take place Aug. 30-Sept. 2, at the La Foret Retreat Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It’s a long weekend of workshops, rituals, celebration, socializing, parties and fun! The last Suntree Retreat, in 2022, was really a high point in my life: a time when, surrounded by like-minded folks, I could really be and express my deepest self. So many meaningful moments! For more details on what Suntree Retreat feels like, listen to the latest episode of our podcast, The Wonder: Science-Based Paganism, where we interview folks who came last time. Click here for the…
-
Chasing the Unicorn
EDIT: Saw ’em! A beautiful ruby-red glow across the sky around midnight! If you’re like me, you have a list of things you hope to see or do in your life. I don’t like the term “bucket list”, but that’s what it is. I am fortunate in that many of those things I most wanted to experience or places I wanted to go I have, in fact, been able to achieve. I don’t travel much any more because I can’t afford it, but I got a good two years of it into my late 20s, and over the years I have ticked boxes like skydiving and rafting the Grand Canyon…
-
May Eve, the Darkness Before the Splendor
So it’s Walpurgisnacht, the night before May Day. Traditionally, a sort of transposed Hallows, with ghosts and spirits loose in the world before the brilliant dawn of the May. I sometimes think of May Day as the dawning of the World. There is something so grand and magnificent about dawn at this time of year, with the bird chorus and dew-spangled grasses, the cool-but-not-cold that will fade to kissed-skin temperate breezes. It’s luscious, and filled with wonderful memories for me. This year, May morning will fall squarely in the midst of the work week and there is exciting stuff happening at work that I must attend to, so I won’t…
