I am many things in life. Knowledge Manager. Technical Writer. Information Architect. Wife. Mother of two teenage boys. Chairman of the Social Justice Committee at my UU fellowship. I love science and reason. My favorite hobbies involve crocheting, playing Dungeons and Dragons, and going to alternative rock music festivals. I am also a Scientific Pantheist and a Pagan. Sometimes I feel like my life is compartmentalized into many differing and incongruous segments and it’s difficult to find a common thread that brings everything I love and am under one cosmic umbrella.
It was with some surprise that I gradually began to realize several years ago that despite all of the metamorphoses that have punctuated my life, the one theme that has carried on through all of my phases is that I have always taken comfort in the bosom of nature. From an early age I enjoyed a constant sense of the cardinal directions. I have celebrated the coming and going of the seasons in their turn for as long as I can remember. And nature has comforted me in times of sorrow and embraced and encouraged me in times of joy and success.
Yet I continued to think of this portion of my life as frivolous and playful, not equal in importance or worth to my work in social justice. Surely, I told myself, walks in the forest and personal ceremonies on the sabbats should be set aside to make more time for helping others.
It was not without some struggle that I slowly began to realize how vital my pagan observances had become to my day to day life. As I sacrificed more and more of my time with nature and seasonal celebrations, I felt drained and increasingly uninterested in the problems of others. My capacity for caring dwindled and I didn’t understand why. Eventually I slowly began to realize what was missing in my life.
Perhaps standing beneath the slowly revolving stars and calling the four quarters during a full harvest moon doesn’t directly feed a hungry person or aid someone who is being abused. Maybe lighting candles at Imbolc doesn’t provide shelter for the homeless. But over the past couple of years I have learned that these activities give me the strength and energy to continue my work to help others. Social justice work is vital and important, but it requires the hands and hearts of volunteers who have mental and spiritual strength and fortitude. And those volunteers must find and draw upon their own sources of wellbeing and rejuvenation in order to continue giving of themselves to others.
My spring of rejuvenation is in my love of life and the universe. No scheduled or organized service has invoked my soul to worship like the slanting rays of sunshine in a redwood forest. No poem or speech has moved me like the rush of green waters over moss covered stones. No prayer or meditation has stripped away my public personas and left me face to face with my true self like a solitary walk down a suddenly foreign pathway during a howling winter snow storm. These are the sources of my strength and the pivot points of my personal spiritual journey.
I have since resolved to jealously guard these moments so that I may better perform the volunteer work that I feel called to perform. Nobody expects anyone to spend Christmas day or Hanukah conducting committee meetings or advertising fundraisers. Likewise, as a Unitarian Universalist, I now understand that it is my prerogative and responsibility to set aside the days that I mark as sacred in order to nourish and attend to my soul. I have marked Imbolc, Beltane, summer solstice, and the other five sabbats on my calendar so I can be careful not to schedule any other events on those evenings. Whether I decide to celebrate them with my UU pagan women’s circle, or in front of a raging fire talking and laughing with my family, or in introspective solitude in nature, I will mark the passage of those holidays in a way that supports me so that I may continue my work to support others.
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