“We must ensure that the language we use, the rituals we celebrate and the symbols we employ keep pointing to the great living cathedral of Earth, sea, and sky.”
— John Philip Newell
As If it Were the Last
Yom Kippur was this week, and I found it trickier to integrate into my Pagan practice. While Rosh Hashanah has several lovely rituals that felt easy to respectfully adapt, Yom Kippur is literally 25 hours of fasting and asking God to put away the smitey stick for another year, which jars with my beliefs about sin and the sacred. So I took a while to find my bearings with this holiest of Jewish holy days.
Read moreA Naturalistic Pagan Casts Their Harms on the Waters
Now that I’m no longer Christian or a daughter, I feel pulled to reconnect with that erased part of my ancestry. I have -0% interest in converting, but I’m slowly and cautiously integrating small bits of practice and culture when I feel I can do so in ways that respect both Judaism and my own beliefs and values.
Read moreThe Wheel of the Year: a review
With Lammas 2021 behind us, I’ve completed my yearlong experiment in minimalist rituals. How did it go? How do I want to proceed? tl;dr version: I loved it. I want to keep doing it.
Read moreLammas 2021: Autonomy
Bread is one of the the most fascinating human creations. It’s part science and part alchemy. It connects us to Earth, which gives us the wonders of grain, water, and yeast, and to millennia of ancestors who have fed themselves, their families, and their communities through this incredible process. Also, it’s delicious. So Lammas – literally a holiday for bread – is a big deal around here.
Read moreSummer Solstice 2021: Reverence
We desire to know, to sort into boxes labeled “house sparrow,” “creeping bellflower,” “altocumulus.” This desire is ancient within us, hearkening back to when we owed our wellbeing to knowing whether an animal was friend or foe, whether a plant was food or poison, whether a cloud signaled drought or flood. Even without that necessity, sometimes it’s just cool to know what other lives I share my space with: what bird makes that mournful cry in the evenings? what’s that plant suddenly thriving in the shaded corner where nothing else would grow?
Read moreSpring Equinox 2021: Accountability
Accountability also fits well with my personal view of Spring Equinox. I’ve always experienced the equinoxes as times of pause, moments where everything balances and we hang, almost suspended, in the fulcrum. At Fall Equinox, we make sure we have the resources to get through the cold, dark stillness of Autumn and Winter ahead. At Spring Equinox, we make sure we have the resources to get through the hot, bright frenzy of Spring and Summer ahead.
Read moreImbolc 2021: Creativity
Imbolc is, for me, also a Sabbat about keeping promises. After Winter Solstice, we know, both scientifically and from past experience, that the days are getting longer. But around here, it takes a while for that to be apparent to our senses. Based on my schedule, around Imbolc is when I really start to see that increase in light. Imbolc keeps the promise that Winter Solstice made. So I want my Imbolc celebrations to be about keeping promises that past me made and my executively dysfunctional ass then promptly forgot.
Read moreWinter Solstice 2020: Interdependence
The Solstice happens, of course, whether we have an incredible ritual experience or a crummy one. Whether we take part in any ritual experience at all. That is a humbling reminder of the immensity of the forces we honor, and the glorious insignificance of our individual lives.
Read moreSamhain 2020: Wholeness
As a Pagan in Minnesota, one of the first lessons I learned—and continue to relearn—is how to adapt rituals on the fly, especially those planned for outside. Spending an hour toasting the Ancestors in the cemetery where Leora’s grandmother is buried seemed like a great idea as I planned these rituals in August when it was humid and in the upper 80s (F). It seemed like a crummy idea when the actual day arrived with a predicted high of 31 (0 C) and a windchill of 24 (-4 C).
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