Tag: nature

Holy Wild, Muse in Brief

Nature as Living Story: Lectio Divina in the Natural World » Aontacht Magazine

Alison Leigh Lilly

I'm a few days late with this announcement, but... exciting news everyone! The equinox issue of Aontacht Magazine is out, and it's available free on the Druidic Dawn website. This issue focuses on sacred spaces and sacred places, exploring this theme from a variety of perspectives. In the spirit of connecting to those lesser known and often overlooked spaces, my Wild Earth feature article revisits the practice of Lectio Divina as an opportunity to connect to the story of place in the natural world around us, engaging more deeply with its beings and spirits through observation, meditation, prayer and silent contemplation.

Holy Wild, Muse in Brief

Episode 10 – Celestial Seesaw » Dining with Druids

Alison Leigh Lilly

In this week's episode, "Celestial Seesaw", Ali and Jeff take a deep breath and plunge back into podcasting after a crazy-busy seven month hiatus, reflecting on the sacred pause of the equinox and sharing a few stories about their wedding (woot!), their cross-country move (woosh!) and their volunteer work as naturalists-in-training with the Seattle (woohoo!). Ali ponders the future of Paganism in a post-church world while using inappropriately awkward sports metaphors, and Jeff makes a few exquisitely bad jokes that you won't want to miss. We also announce our new podcast project and how you can get involved and help support your favorite rude Drudes! Click to listen.

Conservation, Holy Wild

Earth, Ecology and Environmentalism: Walking the Walk

Alison Leigh Lilly

There are more of us out there than you think. We may not always be flashing our Pagan flair — sometimes we're wearing worn old hiking books and mud-spattered rain coats instead of shimmering ceremonial robes, sometimes we put aside our pentacles and wands for a good pair of binoculars and a sturdy walking stick — but we're out there. Walking the walk. Doing the work.

Current Events, Holy Wild

Education or Death: Why the SOPA/PIPA Blackout Protest Matters

Alison Leigh Lilly

As a writer and creative type who thrives in the online world, issues of copyright protection and piracy can be very real problems for me. Of course I want legal protections for my work. As an avid reader and web-surfer who loves lolcats and Dinosaur Comics as much as the next person, I want the artists, writers and creative types out there who produce content for my favorite sites to have those same protections — even, no, especially if those creative types are just some college students messing around on YouTube and not Hollywood stars making millions off the latest blockbuster. But that's not what SOPA/PIPA is really about. The SOPA and PIPA bills are like the ring of power forged in the fires of Mount Doom: one law to rule them all, one law to find them, one law to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. Sponsored by a bloated entertainment industry that overcharges for pretty much everything, these bills would put in place the kind of invasive oversight infrastructure that would not only allow large corporations to sue technology start-ups and independent artists out of existence based on little to no evidence of piracy or copyright infringement, but would require on-going surveillance of user-produced content that makes Facebook's privacy problems look like child's play. Any website perceived as a potential threat to the Powers That Be would be vulnerable to lawsuits, while individuals would be subject to censorship and data-mining as a matter of course, creating a hostile and uncertain online environment in which conformity becomes the order of the day.

Contemplation & Meditation, Holy Wild

Ancestors

Alison Leigh Lilly

Imagine how we are woven bodily into this world, pulsing veins and sinew wrapped tightly around bone. Blood and marrow so intimate in the secret recesses of our structure. This is what connects you to them. Your whole life presses forward. Like a single thread pulled taut until it aches, the spun-spiraled blood and body of your life pulls away from the past, yet anchored there by the fact of your birth, the stubborn persistence of your being. They had that too, and now here you are. What strange and unwieldy imperfections make up the beauty of your body, the lumpy joints and stringy tissue. And the tension in you, it is theirs as well.

Deep Ecology, Holy Wild

To Walk with Resolution: The Energy and Guidance of a Star

Alison Leigh Lilly

Going into the future is like going into the dark. That was the theme of our family's solstice ritual this year, as the nine of us (grandparents, parents, four kids and one cool step-uncle) settled down into a circle in the darkness of the living room. It was several hours after sunset on the longest night of the year, and the kids were antsy with excitement over unopened presents. I struck a single match, and began to weave our sacred space.

Holy Wild, News & Announcements

Introducing the New Wild Earth Feature Editor for Aontacht Magazine!

Alison Leigh Lilly

I'm really pleased and honored to be able to announce that I am now officially the Wild Earth feature editor for Aontacht Magazine! It's going to be a lot of fun joining the editorial and production team of such an awesome magazine, and I'm thrilled to have yet another excuse to work with writers in the Druid community who are "walking their talk" and connecting with the Earth and the natural world in authentic, creative ways — and of course, to do a bit of writing of my own! My first contribution appears in the most recent issue of Aontacht, which you can download for free on the Druidic Dawn website. The piece is called "Seven Wonders of the Natural World - In Your Own Backyard," and in it I share a little bit about the winners of the New7Wonders campaign and the themes of diversity, depth, balance and mystery that these exotic sites exemplify — plus, how we can discover those wonders of nature everywhere.

Holy Wild, Nature Photography

Solace of Perfection, Beauty of Decay

Alison Leigh Lilly

Let's just say that life has been a bit stressful lately with everything going on. Back in high school and college when life was understandably a bit like being high strung on a high wire, I would throw myself into poetry. I spent long hours playing with words and sounds, line breaks and juxtaposition. Now, since writing is kind of a career for me these days, I find that I need some other creative outlet that I can throw myself into head first without worrying about being good at it.

Holy Wild, Muse in Brief

Muse in Media: Disturbing Gentleness

Alison Leigh Lilly

Timothy Morton, author of Ecology Without Nature and The Ecological Thought, is attending the conference on Eastern and Indigenous Perspectives on Sustainability and Conflict Resolution at the University of South Florida this week and has done those of us philosophy-grad-student wanna-bees an amazing service by making the audio recording and slide show of his talk, Disturbing Gentleness, available on his blog. Morton's understanding of nonviolence resonates deeply with my own. It is not a passivity or denial of violence and death, but something that arises from and gives rise to existence itself. We are inconsistent beings, and the rift within our very selves is what allows for movement, spaciousness, beauty and death. Nonviolence is simply allowing this inconsistency in ourselves, and others, without trying to reduce it or extrapolate away from it. In this sense, perhaps the deepest expression of nonviolence is acceptance of things as they are — it is in fact the very opposite of denial.

Holy Wild, Science & Civilization

Mission Accomplished.

Alison Leigh Lilly

I love when life gives me what I like to call "xkcd Moments." See, I've been meaning to migrate the archives of my former Meadowsweet & Myrrh site on Blogger over to this domain, but website design is really only something I do with any gusto when the obsession mood strikes me. So there the old girl languishes, attracting the occasional lost traveler and a whole lot of spambots. Which brings me to this morning, when I opened my email inbox to discover that someone had left this comment...