I find myself almost incredulous at how deep a vein of contentment I can find in a single afternoon at home. I love my home: my house, my garden, my woods.  I’ve understood for many years that buying stuff, things, doesn’t actually build much contentment once I’m not in need.  I’ll think, when I contemplate buying a new whatzit, that once I have that whatzit I’ll be happy; I envision all the good and satisfying things I will be able... Read more

Recent conversations with Pagans, in person and online, are bubbling up for me this morning, bringing with them troubling thoughts. Do we care more about our rituals than we do about our gods? It’s happened more than once, lately, that the response to some concern expressed among us has been a rather pat, “I wrote a really good ritual about that, once.”  As though the authorship was the main thing; as though the performance of a ritual script was enough... Read more

And amazing. This is tonight’s harvest.  After several nights of frost, and 18″ of snow in a blizzard that left us without power for about 48 hours. Bok choi, carrots, Swiss chard, and mustard greens, gathered from the snow. Read more

I love Saturdays. I have come to think of the work that I do on Saturdays as “farming.”  Now, I know it isn’t farming–not really.  We have a medium-sized vegetable garden and two dogs, and that’s not a farm, by any stretch of the imagination.  But I keep thinking of a comment Joel Salatin made in Yes Magazine once, about how Americans have become used to thinking of our homes as centers of consumption, but how once, thinking of your... Read more

So much of the pain in our spiritual lives, it seems to me, comes down to this: It is bitterly hurtful to have our spiritual gifts rejected or ignored by the communities we belong to. And yet, the price of bringing those gifts to those communities is being able to accept their guidance on where we are falling short, in error, or mistaken in how we use those gifts.  And that hurts, too–a desperate, sharp, shameful pain in the part... Read more

This past weekend, sitting out on my porch in the long twilight of a summer’s night, I noticed how, where a few weeks past, our lawn was spangled with fireflies, their lights have almost all gone dark.  I noticed, too, all around me in the night were the songs of crickets.  It was not so many weeks ago that there were no crickets to be heard, and now their songs of love and death fill the days and evenings both.... Read more

Some reflections on this summer’s experiments in organic gardening.  Hint:  it’s a jungle in there! var fctb_tool=null; function FCTB_Init_14558243d9238a4ebe014b99df050a51(t) { fctb_tool=t; start(fctb_tool); } FCTB_Init_14558243d9238a4ebe014b99df050a51(document[‘FCTB_Init_223cfbd0f57bc143ba3ba3bfb6a42766’]); delete document[‘FCTB_Init_223cfbd0f57bc143ba3ba3bfb6a42766’] var fctb_tool=null; function FCTB_Init_82ac77c79303954aa3c5cd62e5e66731(t) { fctb_tool=t; start(fctb_tool); } FCTB_Init_82ac77c79303954aa3c5cd62e5e66731(document[‘FCTB_Init_7551048c738439459031b530b64599f2’]); delete document[‘FCTB_Init_7551048c738439459031b530b64599f2’] Read more

The very fact that I am writing this entry for Pagan Values Month–June, in case you missed it–is a testimony to the importance of relationships in Paganism.  Despite the fact that we are now eleven days into the month of July, I can’t bear to let Pax down.  Not only is Pax a kind and generous-spirited Pagan writer, not only did he invite me to participate this year, but he has become a friend, although we have never (yet) met... Read more