Principles
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A Grateful Harvest
So it’s Harvestide, the season of the autumnal equinox. The time of gathering in, looking back over the year, celebrating what has come. It’s been a remarkable year for me, after a couple of very, very lean ones. This year, I took over as Interim Executive Director at my job at the new year; my third book, Round We Dance: Creating Meaning through Seasonal Rituals was released in April. In June I was tapped for the permanent ED position, so now I lead a dynamic, effective conservation organization working to protect natural areas and advance through partnerships the traditional land stewardship practices of indigenous Tribes. It’s an absolute dream job…
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Now Comes the Tainted Holiday
It’s American Thanksgiving again. Time for turkey, stuffing, cranberries and cognitive dissonance. Like so much of the history of the United States of America, Thanksgiving is a happy smiley story layered over appalling crimes against humanity. Ask the Wampanoag what they feel about the meal they shared with white colonizers 400 years ago. It is not a happy, smiley story. They are not grateful for encountering those people, or for that day. And yet, part of me is so pulled to the concept of a holiday for gratitude. Which is, after all, one of the Atheopagan Principles. Shouldn’t we have one of those? Yes, I think we should. The Harvest…
- Principles, Practice, Techniques, Holidays, Liturgy, Rites of Passage, Ritual, Descriptions, Atheology
The Atheopaganism Book is Now Available As an Audiobook!
In the two weeks before I started my new job, I realized that I wasn’t going to have an extended run of days in which I could record an audiobook of ATHEOPAGANISM: An Earth-Honoring Path Rooted in Science–a long-planned project–for a long time, and it was the moment! So here it is! You can buy it from all the various outlets except Audible, because Amazon. Click here to purchase from Libro.fm, which donates to local independent bookstores!
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Shame, Guilt, Pride and Humility
Recently, I’ve had a number of opportunities to feel shame. They come to all of us. We do things or say things we wish we hadn’t, especially in anger but sometimes out of simple ignorance or carelessness. Like all of us, I have done and said my share of shameful things. Shame is not always harmful. It’s an emotion we feel that reminds us to learn from an experience, to make different choices going forward. But it is not useful if it becomes chronic, if it becomes a weight around your neck that you carry, day by day, throughout your life. Then, it has mutated into its toxic cousin, guilt.…
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The Post I Never Wanted to Write
The US Supreme Court overturned the 50-year-old precedent Roe v. Wade this morning, erasing the Constitutional right to an abortion. And they’re not done. “Justice” Thomas, in his concurrence, encouraged the Court to overturn the precedents establishing the right to access to birth control, to private consenting behavior among adults (in other words, preventing government from regulating your sex life), and to same-sex marriage. Just to be clear about where we stand as a community, here are planks 8-11 of our 13-point Statement of Political Values, approved by the Council of The Atheopagan Society: VIII. Body sovereignty is paramount, particularly with respect to reproductive choices. Only the individual can make…
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Wisdom
It’s a word that makes some of us cringe a little: wisdom. Because pretty much anyone who claims to have it is automatically suspicious, right? It’s those who don’t claim to have it who very often do. My contention is this: if you are living in a manner open to growth and change, the trade-off for the physical infirmities that come with age is the accumulation of wisdom: of internal tools so that you are able to contend calmly with adversity, of a big-picture perspective that helps you not to sweat the small stuff. And the recognition that nearly all of it is, in the end, small stuff. Wisdom comes…
