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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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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…
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May Day: What do YOU Think?
Atheopaganism is a religious path in a general sense, but it’s really a diverse set of individual paths that each of us crafts for ourselves, using pieces of my work or the work of other community members and our own creativity and spirituality. That’s the way we want it! I hope your Atheopagan practice is exactly as you want it to be so it brings you the most meaning, wonder, joy and inspiration possible. You can hear about the diverse ideas, rituals and observances of some Atheopagans on our YouTube channel and through the guest posts here and on the Wonder podcast; feel free to borrow anything that strikes your…
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COLUMN: Paint By Season/January 2023
Welcome to Paint by Season! My name is Raena Parsons, and I am an artist, poet, and educator living in Jackson, Wyoming. Paint by Season is a new monthly column where you can follow along with me to create a monthly seasonal painting to celebrate the wonders of that season. I live in a harsh mountain climate that has two solid seasons (winter and spring) and occasionally has two short but sweet transitional seasons. My art reflects where I live and likes to pull from the joy of each season. For this month, we are celebrating the longest night of year with a night sky painting. Grab your paintbrushes and…
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Guest Post: My Atheopagan Life (Pt. 1)
by Holly H. I began taking a meandering path towards Atheopaganism when I left Protestant Christianity in my early teens. As a thirteen year old who had recently become alienated from the concept of deities following the death of my grandfather, I took a walk along a canal tow-path in rural Wiltshire, UK. It was a sparkling early summer day, the kind where the world around you seems to be dancing with the joy of living and I became suddenly aware of the glory of nature around me. Being a quiet and introspective young person, this soon turned into thoughts about the wonder of the ever-stretching universe, the fragility of…
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Imagining Ancestors
Much as the Christian Overculture has made it its business to erase, co-opt or appropriate pre-existing religions in the West–as well as to eradicate and supplant other cultures and traditions throughout the world–archeology presents us with treasures now and again that remind me of a different world that existed prior to the imposition of the angry sky gods of the Levant. One prominent such example was discovered buried 13 feet deep in a peat bog in Russia in 1890. It is now known as the Shigir Idol. Made of larch wood, it is 17 feet tall, towering more than three times the height of the people who built it. Now,…
