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After the Fire
It isn’t really over, of course. Two dozen have lost their lives. Thousands are without homes, their possessions rendered to gray ashes. The most vulnerable among them–renters, the uninsured–will almost certainly flee our expensive region, despite admirable community efforts to raise funds to support them. The acrid smell of burned lives lingers in the air, and driving past the devastation is still like a bad dream. On and on it goes: the gray, burned wreckage, the burned-out cars. That said, people are getting on with it, as they must. The ground floor of our local daily newspaper has been let out as a disaster center with representatives of dozens of…
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Dark Hallows
Hallows is unique among Atheopagan Sabbaths. For one thing, it’s a week long: it extends from Halloween through the actual midpoint between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice, which falls around the 7th of November. A whole week of observances, of rituals, of spooky-eerie awareness of Death, of Ancestry, of the Dark. As it happens, where I live, the transition from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time happens on the first weekend in November, so there is a sudden plunge into night as the clocks roll back an hour and sunset is suddenly an hour earlier. It doesn’t take imagination to realize that the Darkness has arrived. And let’s…
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On the Edge of Darkness: Hallows Reflections 2016
It’s a gray, dim day here in Sonoma County, under a foreboding blanket of low and heavy clouds. Forecasts are for showers throughout the day; it’s one of those Halloweens where parents crane their necks and scowl at the sky throughout the day, wondering whether they’ll get away with a dry window during trick or treating. Which seems like a pretty good metaphor for this entire year. I’ve been scowling at the sky and wondering just what kind of fresh hell may be coming along a lot, this year. Now with a week left until possibly the most important U.S. election since 1860, there are still no clear answers, but one…
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We Die.
We’re going to die. All of us. Grappling with this fact may be the single most powerful factor in what it means to be human. It is so profound and unarguable a fact that every religion has to confront it in one way or another, and Atheopaganism must, as well. And while most religions—including most flavors of Paganism—promise that death is only temporary; that some future in an afterlife will be provided to the Faithful, I’m sorry, folks, but I’m not going to do that. We die. We really die. We simply have no credible evidence to the contrary. But is that, frightening as it may be, really all that terrible? I was…
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An Atheopagan Life: Observances for November and December
Originally published at Humanistic Paganism. November and December certainly don’t lack for observances and holiday celebrations. In the temperate zone of the planet, pretty much every culture has had some way of celebrating the winter solstice, and the accumulation of many of those traditions lives with us today in the form of Christmas, Chanukah, the Pagan Yule, newer traditions such as Kwanzaa and even Festivus. For Atheopagans, navigating this season in a manner free of theistic and supernatural overtones can be a bit of a challenge. We’re besieged with well-intentioned messages from relatives and friends rooted in their credulous religious beliefs. Exasperating as it can sometimes be, the main thing is…
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An Atheopagan Life: Observances Around the Year (Sept/Oct)
Autumn on the North Coast of California is an odd time. Our climate is a Mediterranean-style cycle of winter rains and a completely dry summer, and the transitional seasons are subtle in character. In fall, we experience the hottest period of the year, as while summer mornings are characterized by ocean fog that cools most days to temperate comfort, the weaker sun of September and October cannot drive the fog system so effectively. As a result, these months bring lengthy stretches of days in the nineties, parching lands which haven’t seen rain in months to what feels an aching dryness, as empty creek beds and golden-brown hills attest. We do…
