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Solemn, Meaningful, Fun, Creepy
Happy Hallows, everyone, and may your celebrations be all the things listed in the title! I’m off to go walk in the old rural cemetery…
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What We Turn Back into the Soil, Redux: A Guided Visualization
I improvised this guided meditation for the Atheopagan Saturday Zoom Mixer’s Hallows ritual on the theme I wrote about here, and people liked it so I thought I would write it down before I forgot it. First, get comfortable. Take a deep breath and feel that life-giving oxygen like a wave running from your chest out to the tips of your fingers and toes, the top of your head. If you’re comfortable with it, close your eyes–if not, just lower them so light becomes dim. You find yourself in the woods at night, at the foot of a hill. A warm wind whirls and gusts around you, unseasonably warm and…
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What We Turn Back into the Soil
It’s Hallows season–Samhain, Halloween, what have you–and my mind turns to mortality, decomposition, recomposition and the great wide Circle of Life. I’ve written a bit about death. Here, about the fact of mortality. Here, about how we can prepare for our deaths in a manner that is kind to our survivors (downloadable workbook included!) And here, finally, as I have grappled with the dark marvel, the creative force that death actually is. Today, I have just returned from a weekend of camping with members of the Northern California Atheopagan Affinity Group, which calls itself the Live Oak Circle. We had a lovely time. One of the things we like to…
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Revisiting the Sin-Eater for Hallows
I am fascinated by the tradition of the sin-eater. Found in several European cultures but primarily known from southern Wales and parts of England adjacent, the tradition is that after someone dies, their body is laid out with food atop its chest or on a sideboard next to it, with a small coin in a dish. A designated person, the sin-eater (who is poor and generally shunned by the local community) is called to enter, and comes to eat the food and take the money, “eating the sins” of the deceased person and leaving them purified to go to heaven. There is something so Gothic, so folk-horror, so primal and…
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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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Love Letter from the Foot of the Mountain
It had been two years, three months and and sixteen days. In that time, I had seen not a one of the amazing people I met at Suntree Retreat 2022 in person. Zoom calls with a few, social media exchanges. And now I am come back from the 2024 Retreat. I am brimming over, having seen some of them again and met newcomers to my world. We laughed a lot. We sang. We shared rituals of grief and joy, celebrated transitions, and spoke unguardedly of the important things in our lives. We told stories and shared lore. The love was palpable. Strange and wonderful, the unique and beautiful people of…
