Politics
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Nature and Nurture, and Now
I am the first to cop to it: I am a rather disputatious person. I was a debater in high school and college. Fanatical about it, actually: the theory, the logic (and fallacies), the strategy and tactics, endless hours researching evidence and writing briefs in the days long before the Internet. I am generally pretty skeptical. Many of the ways I have come to understand who I am–as an atheist, as a Pagan, as a nontheist Pagan, as an activist for political change–arise from deep contention with how the world has been arranged by the history of humanity leading up to my life, by how so much of it now…
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I Know.
I know you’re struggling. I know that even if your basic needs are met, the state of the world is crying inside you. And if they’re not, I know you’re afraid and exhausted, numbed, perhaps unable even to contemplate the future because the now is taking up every last bit of energy and attention you can muster. I know you’re tired, and there is so far to go before it seems there can be hope for improvement. If you’re in the US, or paying attention to it, or to world affairs generally, I know the impacts of that man’s irrationality and arrogance and incompetence to all that is Sacred and…
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Sacred Turbulence
I have a predilection for watching trees sway in wind. Understanding that under the hypnotic dance, swaying resiliently against the buffets of air, there is extraordinary chaos mathematics: that the raised arms of the trees as if to pray to the Sun–for, after all, isn’t that what they are doing?– are both enduring and celebrating. Knowing that this chaos is everywhere in our world, and yet these creatures, like all of us, are built for surviving and know how to bend rather than break. I can watch for a long time. Poetry of the world in long upraised fingers, in light and shadow, dancing. It’s good for me. Helps, in…
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It’s Even More Important Now
It’s a natural impulse: what, right now, is the damned point?* What’s the point of spirituality, of religion? What’s the point of personal rituals and seasonal celebrations, of rites of passage? With things as they are, why bother with things like mythopoetic expression? And I am here to tell you that at such times, it’s more important than ever to conduct our rites and to build community around our shared values. Here’s why. First of all, it is the #1 assignment for those of us who embrace values like the Atheopagan Principles that we persist. Even the most evil regimes have not lasted forever. We have to carry the torch…
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Keeping the Flame Alive
The cruelty will be the point. The incompetence, we get for free. Today is the last day of the Joe Biden Presidency in the US. By all factual accounts, Biden has done a sterling job: orchestrating a “soft landing” for the US economy after the plunge of the pandemic, shrinking unemployment and promoting unions, providing unprecedented leadership on climate change and conservation, reestablishing credibility with allies, and pushing through the largest investment in clean energy and US infrastructure since the creation of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s. But right-wing media and propaganda are an increasing presence in our lives, and first Biden, and then Vice President Harris were…
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The Resistance Becomes Serious Now
The return of Donald Trump and his appalling gang of fascistic cronies to power will have worldwide impacts. There no other way to put this: those of us with decent, kind and life-affirming values are decidedly out of power in the United States as of January 20, 2025, and the likely environmental, human and economic harm that will result both domestically and internationally cannot be understated. Atheopaganism has always been transgressive. Our relationship with the Overculture has always been one of pushing back on core values like the idea of the “inherent sinfulness” of humanity, our exploitative relationship with our fellow creatures and the fabric of life on Earth, and…
