Pagan Bloggers with Naturalistic Worldviews
The backyard compost pile is easily the most magical place of my family’s suburban home. We alternate layers of kitchen scraps with dry brown leaves, and in about a year the pile transforms our coffee grounds, onion skins, apple cores, and carrot tops into rich, dark brown compost, which I use to fertilize our herb… Continue reading Composting the Old Year →
It’s been a rough year for many in my personal circles, and it’s been a rough year for our larger communities. Some of my friends have struggled with illness, some with loss, some with financial strain. White nationalists have marched openly in our nation’s streets, and an ill, ignorant, unrepentant bully sits supreme in the… Continue reading Season of the Dark Mothers →
For every gem of genuine ecological wisdom I have found in the Pagan community, there is a deluge of crystals and correspondences, divinities and divination apps, wizards and wishful thinking. Maybe it’s time to face up to the fact that, while I am spiritually and religiously “pagan” with a small-p, culturally I am not a capital-P “Pagan”.
What is needed is not belief, not fantasies and wishful thinking, but but practices which get us out of our heads and away from fantasies and wishful thinking. What is needed is not belief in an otherworld populated by fairies and dragons, but practices reveal to us where we actually are and the holiness of this place we call earth.
So how will you be celebrating? There are less than three weeks left before Yule (the Winter Solstice)! This is going out a week early because for many of us, this is a Sabbat that takes a little more preparation…
We can’t authentically engage with others, unless we’re self-aware, and we can’t truly care for others, if we’re not also caring for ourselves. I occasionally relearn this lesson at work, when I attempt to care for patients for the duration of a twelve-hour shift without drinking enough water, taking a lunch break, or pausing to… Continue reading Why I’m Pagan →
I am atheist. But I think, if we are truly to fight racism–both within and without–we just might need God after all.
It’s time for Paganism as a whole to grow up. If we don’t, as a community, mature beyond the first stage of spiritual development, then we will continue to only attract people who are in the first stage of spiritual development, and we will only keep them for as long as they are in that first stage. When they make the transition to the second stage, they will leave Paganism.
Listed below in alphabetical order by title are ten of my favorite Naturalistic Pagan-friendly picture books. In addition to all of the well-known benefits of reading aloud with the children in your life, the stories and artwork in these books foster wonder, creativity, deep reverence for nature, appreciation of ecological and cultural diversity, and commitment… Continue reading 10 Picture Books for Naturalistic Pagan Families →
Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in. There are no unsacred places; There are only sacred places And desecrated places. ―Wendell Berry, “How to Be a Poet” The re-enchantment of the world is a core theme of practice for many Pagans. But the term re-enchantment presupposes that the world has become… Continue reading Sacred place-making, Part 2 →