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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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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…
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Off to SUNTREE RETREAT!
It’s early morning, with the Sun just beginning to rise. My bags are packed, and I’m off to the airport soon to go to SUNTREE RETREAT 2024! I try to minimize my flying, but I don’t have the available time at work to drive this year, so here we are. I bought carbon credits to offset my travel, but that’s not much mitigation in my opinion. In any event, I’m off to Colorado to spend four days with fellow Atheopagans, sharing rituals and comradery, celebration and meaningful times. The last one was just amazing and I have high expectations for this one. I was just knocked out last time by…
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The Wonder
The Perseids are strong tonight. I mean, it’s early: 9 pm. The Sun is only just down, but it’s a clear night with a quarter Moon and after midnight, there should be a vivid meteor shower, perhaps as many as one every minute or even less. The night air is warm and still. There are crickets, but they are dwindling as the season progresses. By October, there will be only a faint, lonely, slow chirp. I gathered with friends yesterday: the Northern California Atheopagan affinity group, AKA the Live Oak Circle. We had a Dimming celebration, drank cider and ate apple pie, poured a libation at the roots of a…
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Happy Dimming!
It’s time again for the beginning of August Sabbath: the midpoint between Midsummer and Harvest. It’s always been a challenge for me to name this holiday. I tried things like “Summer’s End”–but it’s often the hottest time of the year where I live. Summer’s Waning, perhaps? But again, it doesn’t feel like that…yet. Still, the wheel of the year has definitely turned: the days are shorter, the quality of the light a bit paler, the sky a deeper, harder blue. As the first harvests come in and we begin to realize the fruits of the year’s labors, we are definitely headed into the dark and cold, however preliminary these steps…
