Mark Wallace's new book, When God Was A Bird, represents a well-intentioned first step along the path towards Christian animism. Unfortunately, it is the same first step that Christians have been taking for hundreds of years. Can they do better? ...maybe.
Last week, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord. This poem is not about that.
This bush is on fire, and we have misplaced god.
Even just a few days in Santa Fe can leave me speechless... Partly because I'm parched -- my rain-soaked soul, so used to wandering the misty shores of Puget Sound, rebels against the high elevation and incredibly dry climate... But mostly because, in the midst of the desert, the astounding color and diversity of human culture overwhelms me with amazement and gratitude.
Magic is not something you do. Magic is participatory consciousness: a consciousness of enchantment. By placing participation at the heart of our magical work, we no longer relegate magic to the realm of anti-religious power-mongering and manipulation. Instead, magic opens us up to relationship. To reverence. To an engagement with an enchanted world that plays a vital role in an earth-centered spirituality that seeks the sacred in the natural forces and landscapes in which we live our everyday lives.
Earth Day has long been a holy day for me, and I've marked it through personal and family rituals for years. But this year, I was especially blessed: I had the chance to help out with the Earth Day service offered by my UU church this past weekend. And it was nothing short of marvelous.
One of the most insidious ideas that environmentalists and animists alike continue to struggle against is the belief that to be pro-environment is to be automatically anti-human. But social and environmental justice are not (and never have been) separate issues. The success of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, and the resiliency of its community in the face of adversity, can provide us with a real-life example of how principles of cooperation, commitment and trust can help us nurture meaningful, healthy relationships in the more-than-human community.
An animist is never alone, not really. But if the world is so full of people, then where does that leave me, your friendly neighborhood introvert? There are days when the more I hang out with people, the lonelier I feel. What is it that the natural world offers that I cannot get from my fellow human beings?
"It's funny how family can bring you back to yourself because they know you so well and for so long, they treat you as if you were always just the same. Which is exactly what can drive you out of yourself, too, after a while. Because of course, you're not."
When a friend visited our new home for the first time recently, he observed, "Looks like you've got a mole problem." "We've got a mole," I said, "I don't know if that's a problem!" That's how this post began, rather innocently, although it quickly veered into controversial territory. Or perhaps it started there already. I guess it all depends on how you feel about moles.
Alison Leigh Lilly 