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Keeping Cool Stuff in Ornate Containers
Maybe this is where it all started. I remember, when I was very young, perhaps seven or eight, I read one of those stories about an Olde Curiosity Shoppe that appears, sells something Unusual to the protagonist, and then was gone when he went back to find it again. The shoppe was full of stuff. Cool stuff, in strange dusty bottles and jars and boxes (some of which had eerie sounds coming from within). I loved the sound of that place. I wanted to go to there and root through all the weird, magical things. It started with a brass oil lamp, like an Alladin-style lamp I bought in Spain.…
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New Title, Better Boundaries
If you’re familiar with this site, you may have noticed that the title has changed. Now, it is “Mark Green’s Atheopaganism Blog”. That’s to make it clear that the thoughts, opinions, ideas, and resources presented here are mine. Not necessarily those of the nonprofit Atheopagan Society, which is administered by a Council on which I have one of thirteen seats. We are evolving and growing as a community, and it is deeply important to me that Atheopaganism not be “mine”. So this is a step to ensure that the community and its collective activities are directed by itself, not by me, and that includes speech. Nothing will change here, content-wise.…
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In Memoriam: Michael Dowd
After a life of convention-challenging thought and leadership, Michael Dowd has left us, quietly in his sleep last Saturday. There is a lot to say about Rev. Dowd. He was certainly a big thinker and he, with his wife Connie Barlow, was a pioneer in the framing of the very story of the Universe and evolution themselves as a grand spiritual narrative. He was also a “post-Doomer”, believing that climate change, ecological and civilizational collapse are inevitable and promoting a philosophical position that eschewed big-picture hope, but rather chose small acts of bettering the world immediately around us. I disagreed with him on this, and we had a couple of…
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On Community
Hey, folks. In case you just joined us: We are working to build something here: a community. A community. People of common heart and shared values. Even though we–Atheopagans–are spread far apart. Even though it usually takes the Internet for us to be together. In many ways, it’s an alien thing to me. I didn’t grow up in a community and I’m feeling my way forward now to figure out what it is about. I don’t have a feel for it, much as I wish I did. So: what is a community? I think it’s a place where you know to your bones that you belong. Where the people care…
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Planning for Eerie Season
October is nearly here! The witchiest, gothiest, most autumntacular time of year is once again approaching. If you’re like me, October requires some time commitment and advanced planning in order to get every sanguine drop out of the season. So here is a description of all the stuff I do in October to steep myself in its gothy goodness. Throughout the month, I watch movies: I like to watch creepy, campy and thematic films in October on my way to Halloween. Perennial favorites include Practical Magic, The Others, Jacob’s Ladder, The Sixth Sense, various Hammer Horror films (lots of Christopher Lee!), classics like James Whale’s Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein,…
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A Paradoxical Trip
So, I’m flying today, to help the environment. Seriously. I’m on a work trip to lobby in Washington, D.C., meeting with Congressional and Senatorial offices to promote wilderness protections and promote the designation of three new National Monuments. If ever there were a net-benefit reason to put that carbon in the atmosphere, this would be it. Wild lands are essential for biodiversity, and sequester tremendous volumes of atmospheric carbon when they are managed for thriving ecosystems. My organization, CalWild, is the preeminent voice for protection of wild areas on public lands in the state of California–an internationally-recognized biological diversity hot spot. California also plays an outsized role in climate policy…
