This bush is on fire, and we have misplaced god.
Tag: earth
Landscape In Ink, With Horse
"Nature is not natural and can never be naturalized." The lines we draw around the sacred earth can cut us right down the middle. Read more...
Landscape in Ink, With Horse
We draw a line around what is sacred, to set it apart as special. We imagine the planet as a precious blue marble floating in space, so small and far away we cannot see the delicate contours of our own faces turned upwards towards the night sky, doing the imagining. We worship the lands that give us life, the earth that sustains us with its salty waters and wild winds, its mud and grit. We encircle the world in the darkness of outer space, and it shimmers all the brighter. But when we're not paying attention, the lines we draw around the sacred can cut us right through the middle.
Memorial Day, Motherland and Blood Sacrifice
When it comes to questions of how to respond to the cultural demand to "honor the soldiers who died for you," I find that the problem is not so much that I do not want to comply, but that I literally do not know how. Assuming, of course, that our honor and memory should take a form other than silent complicity in the continuing violence and militarism of our government — what should my honor look like?
Celebrating Earth Day: Phenology Bingo
This year I was especially blessed to have the chance to help plan the Earth Day service offered by my UU church this past weekend. And it was nothing short of marvelous. Read more...
The Welcoming Wild: Community for Introverts & Animists
An animist is never alone, not really. But how does that help an introvert? Read more...
A Steamy Autumn Morning
Some modern Druids and Celtic polytheists celebrate Samhain on the day of the first frost. And so the first morning in autumn that I wake up to find the land crisp with crystallized mist clinging to each blade of grass, edging each fallen leaf... that is a sacred morning.
Q&A: What will Druidry look like on Mars?
Jeff asks, "With recent discussions in the news about human beings one day traveling to Mars and setting up colonies there, I was wondering: What would Druidry on Mars look like?" Can you even do Druidry in space? One of the lessons that Druidry teaches is that every apparently empty "space" is already a place even before we arrive, brimming with its own qualities and communities that will inevitably draw us into relationship and change us. If the Star Trek: Original Series declaration to boldly go "where no man has gone before" is overtly sexist, the Next Generation's revision to go "where no one has gone before" is equally problematic...
Frost and Stone: Grounding Energy in Winter’s Dark
There is ice in old Earth Mother's blood these days, and everywhere the ground is as hard as unyielding stone. The winds are biting cold. The sunlight, though still low on the horizon, is bright and sharp. It glints off the edges of every surface, refracted, scattered in a thousand directions. I sit in the shadow of a great evergreen tree outside, struggling to root, straining to bring the manic energies back into balance. The whole world seems to be cold fire and frenzied air. This won't do. I have to find another way...
The Goddess, the Broom and the Barred Owl, Part 5
What were you expecting? A tame goddess who can be bribed with easy offerings? A pleasant springtime girl who asks for nothing but your adoration in return? An owl-feathered maiden of the forest to indulge your taste for the exotic and the dark? Were you hoping for a bedtime story with a moral at the end? Blodeuwedd's story isn't over. It is on-going. It is forever unfolding in every moment, in every place where nature and culture conflict and comingle, in every breath that weaves us as human animals into the more-than-human world. It would be too easy to approach Blodeuwedd through mythology and ritual alone, to disconnect her from the messy, erotic, death-riddled real world of broom blossoms and barred owls.
