Since March 26, our family has generated another 14 oz. of plastic waste (as always, including the recyclables, given the limitations of that process with plastic). Two nights ago, I reached a sad landmark: the last of our edible carrots have been used. Over the winter, the winter keeping systems we fashioned worked very well.  Of the thirty pounds of carrots we laid down in sawdust, we might have lost five in recent weeks to rot–all the rest held up... Read more

This is just a quick note; I’ve joined a new project of the Pagan Newswire Collective, their new nature and Paganism blog, No Unsacred Place.  I’ll be blogging there on an irregular basis, probably about twice monthly, in a column of my own, Earth Matters.  But there’s a host of amazing bloggers who will also be writing regular columns and opinion pieces there, including Ali Lilly (whose project it is, and whose own blog, Meadowsweet and Myrrh, has long been... Read more

The woods are so much more naked now than at any other time of year. Yesterday, we had an April Fool snowstorm that left enough on the ground to close the schools.  Today, it is nearly all gone–only a few rags remain in shady corners of the woods to show where it had been the day before.  Today was warm, and sunny, and though I really should have been doing a hundred other things, I stole away for two hours... Read more

Things I am in need of, to restore my spirit: Solitude.  Lots of it. Mornings (plural!) of sunlight, coffee and home. Meeting for worship, and an encounter there with God. The smell of an old book. Baking bread and hanging laundry in the sun. The sound of birdsong. Rushing water. The smell of clean earth, and the living light of the forest. The sight of a deer through trees, a hawk in the sky, and an indignant red squirrel, tail... Read more

Over the past three weeks, since March 5, we have generated 7 oz. of plastic waste (trash and recycling combined) between the two of us. Now we’re talking.  That’s getting somewhere! Things I have yet to find a way to work around or do without in the world of plastic: Cooking oil bottles.  I can’t convince myself that using more imported olive oil is actually better for the planet than the plastic ubiquitous to vegetable oil bottles.  And gallon bottles... Read more

I worked as a therapist specializing in the treatment of survivors of trauma–mainly poor women–for about twenty years.  And I am seven years into a career of similar length, working as a high school English teacher in a small and chronically underfunded high school in the foothills of the Berkshires. Both of these careers, and my life in religion, evince a certain level of idealism.  I won’t bother to recite the ways that each career has involved hard work and,... Read more

A few weeks ago, a Friend in my meeting approached me, and in the gentlest and tenderest way possible, suggested that some of what I had spoken in meeting for worship was less Spirit-led ministry and more a need to seek and receive support for personal burdens.* I am still holding this Friend’s concern close to me.  For those who don’t already know: messages in a Quaker meeting are, at least in theory, prompted not by our personal lives, however... Read more

Lots of plastic waste since our last report–though the majority of it was old and will be recyclable.  Still, in only two weeks, we added 2 lbs 5 oz of plastic to the waste stream. Some of that is a result of deepening into impurity.  And that, I think, is actually a good thing. Most religions have a set of teachings on ritual purity.  The notion that something is impure automatically sets it apart from what is considered to be... Read more

A Pagan is one who, when you ask him what he holds most sacred, pauses a moment for thought.   And then he answers, and when he answers, it is with a list. It will be a long list. Photo by Lin Kristensen Read more