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…
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Anxiety Eve
It’s the night before the most important US Presidential election of my lifetime. The entire world has a stake in the outcome: a decent and adequate leader with sound values and qualifications versus a mad, incoherent, hateful man obsessed with prosecuting his grievances and who has surrounded himself with truly terrifying, fascist ideologues. Tomorrow, we vote, the polls close and then we count. To me, this is still Hallows season. We’re watching a creepy movie to escape. And we’ve already filled out our ballots to drop off tomorrow (California is all vote-by-mail). So now, we wait. Gotta work through tomorrow, thinking about people voting, wondering about the outcomes. I’m hosting…
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Feeling the Heat
It’s 104 degrees F. (40 C.) outside my house right now. It’ll go higher tomorrow; a gigantic heat dome has formed over the American West and temperatures are spiking to insane levels. With this year already poised to break last year’s all-time heat record worldwide, climate change is here, bringing fire, destruction and death. Meanwhile, in human affairs, this week the right-wing plants “Justices” of the US Supreme Court declared the President largely above the law, creating an imperial Presidency that is dangerous not only to its citizens, but to the world. They also radically curtailed the power of our federal government to enforce environmental regulations. Elsewhere, the racist right…
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Now Comes the Tainted Holiday
It’s American Thanksgiving again. Time for turkey, stuffing, cranberries and cognitive dissonance. Like so much of the history of the United States of America, Thanksgiving is a happy smiley story layered over appalling crimes against humanity. Ask the Wampanoag what they feel about the meal they shared with white colonizers 400 years ago. It is not a happy, smiley story. They are not grateful for encountering those people, or for that day. And yet, part of me is so pulled to the concept of a holiday for gratitude. Which is, after all, one of the Atheopagan Principles. Shouldn’t we have one of those? Yes, I think we should. The Harvest…
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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…
