A Windy Day in Spring

Today I am writing outdoors in a shady patch of grass beneath a ponderosa pine.  The sky is covered with high thin cirrus clouds and it is warm enough to not wear a jacket.  It is hot in the sun, but pleasantly cool in the shade with the breeze blowing.

We are finally getting the first proper spring weather of the season, even if it was snowing just last Thursday.  I try to think of the last time I was able to relax like this and not worry about getting everything done. I can't think of it. It was probably sometime in early January, before the semester began.

It is getting windier.  The two young women sunbathing on the grass across from me leave, and I am alone.  I love windy spring days.

As I announced in my last post, I have recently become an author at the new blog, No Unsacred Place.  This blog is about paganism as a nature spirituality, science and religion, and ways that we can improve and make more meaningful our relationships with the Earth, all topics that have long been of interest to me.  I hope to contribute at least one post every week or so to No Unsacred Place, especially after this semester is finally over (my last exam is this Wednesday, thank goodness!).  I also want to continue writing regularly for my two personal blogs - or perhaps I should really say that I want to re-start writing regularly, since my blogging really has fallen by the wayside over the last few months.

The wind has died down again for a while.  Everything seems very still and quiet, or at least as quiet as things can get in a city, where the constant hum of traffic is always audible.  I hear a bird singing somewhere in the pines.  It may be a warbler.  I still have to work on learning bird songs.

I don't know what I'll be doing this summer.  I'd like to get a job if possible, but it may not happen.  And even more importantly, I have no idea what I'll be doing next year, after I finish my last semester in December and finally graduate.  I'm having a harder and harder time seeing myself as a research scientist, which was once my goal.  What I really want to do is write - both fiction and non-fiction.  Often I wonder why I've spent all this time and money on my education.  But I try not to worry too much.  I try to remain hopeful that it will all work out in the end.

I am trying to learn to live with uncertainty, and it is not easy.  I am not a patient person.

I am still alone here, in the shade of the pine, although the sun has moved and I will soon be in the shade no longer. Silently, I breathe and feel the breeze on my face. I lay back in the grass and close my eyes against the brightness of the sky. For now, for today, there is nothing more I want.

New Blog: No Unsacred Place

I would like to encourage my readers to visit No Unsacred Place: Earth and Nature in Pagan Traditions, a new blog which is part of the ever-growing Pagan Newswire Collective.  I am one of the authors, along with Ali from Meadowsweet & Myrrh, Cat Chapin-Bishop from Quaker Pagan Reflections, and other excellent writers.  My last few weeks of classes have been very hectic, so I haven't been able to write any posts for it, but there are some excellent posts up now, so please go and check them out.

No Unsacred Place explores the relationships between religion and science, nature and civilization from a diversity of modern Pagan perspectives. With climate change ever-present in today’s cultural and political discourse, and the realities of ecological destruction increasingly impacting our local communities and daily lives, questions about how we live as members of this jeweled, blue-green planet are no longer merely abstract philosophical musings or theological exercises. While cultures throughout history offer us examples of human beings in relationships of worship, stewardship, domination and exploitation of the Earth, modern Paganism is unique in drawing together the wisdom and ecocentric focus of ancient religions with the insights into the physical world afforded by modern science and technology.

No Unsacred Place draws inspiration for its title from the contemporary American poet and environmentalist, Wendell Berry, who wrote: “There are no unsacred places. There are only sacred places and desecrated places.” Berry confronts the assumption that “the sacred” can be cordoned off and separated from the mundane, and challenges us to examine our relationship to those places we consider to be “unsacred” — whether they are untamed forests and barren deserts, or human-made landscapes of metal and concrete — to discover how our attitudes and actions lead to desecration and destruction. Pagans today face the challenge of reconciling the lessons and influence of “dark green religion” environmentalist and conservation movements in contemporary society, with an ambivalence towards the wildness and wilderness of the Earth that is as old as Western civilization itself.

This blog features coverage and analysis of environmentalism and ecology in the news from a Pagan perspective, as well as essays and personal reflections about the role of science, environmental ethics, eco-friendly lifestyles, and an awareness of the land and its seasons, both in religious community and in the personal spiritual lives of modern Pagans.