Personal Reflection
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There is No Resurrection
This week, Christians are celebrating their belief that someone rose from the dead, and—for unclear and not entirely logical reasons—that they are therefore absolved of a moral stain they believe they were born with. I do not subscribe to any of that. I don’t believe in original sin. I don’t believe in life after death, much less heaven and hell. And I certainly don’t believe that a human sacrifice has any pertinence to the moral character of anyone other than the people doing the sacrificing…and in that case, it’s a negative. I don’t find the Christian moral argument to be persuasive, and I find many of the values that are…
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Towards a Culture of Happiness
Yes, the world presents us with tremendous challenges. Yes, there are many reasons for sadness and anger and grief. Yes, there is urgency in addressing crises that threaten our very existence. So why, then, does Atheopaganism put a premium not only on being activists, but on being happy people? On having lives that are fulfilling adventures of growth and discovery? Well, I’ll tell you why. First of all, there is inherent justification in it. As Atheopagans, we know that an afterlife is highly unlikely. This is a one-time, one-way trip for each of us. Surely we should enjoy that journey as much as is reasonably possible. Pleasure is our birthright, as…
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Take a Moment: A Meditation
As I begin this blog post, I am sitting in bed, sipping coffee. It is early morning. A series of waves of Canada geese are going overhead. I can’t see them, but I can hear them crying into the sky as they make their way onward. I think of Mary Oliver, of course, and remember that I do not have to be good. That here on Earth, there is a place for me in the family of things. As that youthful sage (and paragon of white privilege, to be honest), Ferris Bueller, would tell us: life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you…
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Burgeoning
It’s definite now: the light is stronger, the days are longer. Here in the northern hemisphere, winter is passing, and spring is coming on. Where I live, in coastal Northern California, the very first wildflowers are the milk maids, and they are already gone now, faded to buttercups and hounds’ tongues and shooting stars: the survivals of what once was a landscape carpeted with flowers in the spring. European grasses have forcibly taken over our hills, but the native flowers yet persist. And the introduced species, the narcissus and daffodils and acacia; they, too, are daubing the green carpet of the winter hills with gold and white. They speak of…
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FACING FORWARD: A talk on nontheist Paganism
This talk was originally delivered at Pantheacon 2019. Let’s start with a question: what’s happening with religion today? It’s an amazing time to be involved with religion, because in the developed world, the Abrahamic religions are collapsing. As philosopher of religion Eric Steinhart says, this may be the most exciting time to be studying religion in two thousand years. According to the Pew Research Center in 2014, fully 24% of Americans now identify as “nones”–having no religious identity. Some of these still describe themselves as “spiritual”, but they do not identify as a part of any religious movement or sect. Nones are the fastest growing religious sector in the country,…
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Contemplating a Red Moon
Last night, 2019’s only lunar eclipse took place: a spectacular “supermoon” eclipse. We watched it from our back yard, watching the Moon slowly darken into a ruddy ball, and then, dramatically, the bright edge of ordinary Sun-lit surface burst into being and steadily reclaim it. Lunar eclipses are really cool. Astronomical events as a whole are really cool: meteor showers, eclipses, transits, and particularly that extraordinary rarity, a prominent comet visible to the naked eye. Whenever possible, I take the opportunity to experience these phenomena, as they bring home in a visceral way that we are on a planet, in space, and there’s a lot of other stuff going on…
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In Memoriam: Mary Oliver
The celebrated poet Mary Oliver has left us at the age of 83. Details of her life and achievements may be found here, but I’d like to say, as an Atheopagan, how meaningful her work was to me, and, I think, to all who find grace and meaning in the movements and manifestations of the natural world. Oliver’s poetry was conversational, accessible. Mostly, she wrote in complete sentences broken by white space. Not for her the opacity that so often passes for “great poetry”; hers was a body of work addressed to people who live here, in the world, and who are struck by moments of wonder and reflection. She famously…
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Talking Paganism in the Mainstream
Ross Douthat, conservative columnist for the New York Times, has stirred some Pagan feathers with a column arguing that rather than becoming fully secular, the US may be moving away from a transcendentalist religiosity (such as that of Christianity and Judaism) and towards “paganism”, which he describes as a religion of “this world” as opposed to one focused on some other world or afterlife. He followed up with this piece, further expanding on these ideas and suggesting that the “civic religion” of the United States may be moving away from Christianity and its paradigms. Douthat is clearly unenthused at the prospect that his theory is correct, but I think he…
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Closing the Door with Gratitude
2018 was rough for me. I was unemployed the whole time, begging and borrowing to stay under a roof. It was necessary, but it filled me with shame and embarrassment. I had a series of near-misses with job seeking, finishing second repeatedly. In one case, it seemed I was the top candidate, and then the employer decided against filling the position at all. In July, I was sitting at a stop light when a reckless driver veered around the corner and totaled my car. Two weeks later, I fell, broke and dislocated my left arm. It required surgery—and pins and screws and a metal plate— to repair. Unable to type,…
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Favorite Atheopaganism Posts of 2018
2018 was a hard year. But I did get some writing done. I published more than 100 posts to the Atheopagan website this year on a wide range of topics. In celebration of the New Year, here are thirteen of my favorites, in no particular order: Killing the Sixties: Abuse, Consent, #MeToo and the Pagan Community Unquestionably the most-linked and most-visited post of the year. Crunch Time: Pagan Priorities and the Otherworld If there is a supernatural Otherworld…does it matter? Approaching the Animal Self The beast within. No Gods. No Masters. No Priesthood. Is Pagan clergy a good idea? Producing Your Own Atheopagan Event Planning resources for event production. Walking Our Talk: Modeling a Vision…
