I have a hard time writing about Herne. I think it’s because I often try to explain him, or at least the history of my relationship with him. And that’s just too big a job, and maybe not one even suited for the kind of stories I know how to tell. So I’ll just say this, with no explanation. And maybe, incomplete as it is, it will stand better than something more reasoned would do… When the time comes for... Read more

Photo by Akuppa JohnWigham Have I mentioned lately that I love my monthly meeting? I do. Often, when I speak of my sense of God/the gods (whether using Pagan or Quaker vocabulary) I speak of my connections to people, to community. I do find that my lived experience of God most often comes through to me in encounters with community. Frail as we are, foolish as we are, it is in the refractions of human beings that I most often... Read more

As an old Pagan and a newer Quaker, I spend a lot of my time–maybe too much–playing compare and contrast between my two communities. Paganism’s relative newness in the family of religions shows, and the longer I’ve been Pagan, the more clearly and obviously it shows, in fact. Consequently, there are myriad differences I’ve come to know and appreciate about the ways the Quaker world fits me that the Pagan world often didn’t. For example: among Pagans, anyone with gray... Read more

It’s been several years now since I left the faculty of Cherry Hill Seminary. Many things have changed since I was last affiliated with the school–the first Pagan clergy training school in the modern world to offer graduate-level courses. But as someone who passionately supports equality for same-gender couples, I’m very pleased with the speed of their response to this week’s disappointing California decision on Proposition 8. They’re making me proud… Cherry Hill Seminary Responds to Same-Sex Marriage Debate COLUMBIA,... Read more

I knew somebody was going to call me on it, eventually. Though the blog is called Quaker Pagan Reflections, I do a lot more writing, day to day, about how the Quaker part fits into my life than the Pagan part. David Miley noticed: I think it’s fair to say that you have produced less and less on pagan themes over the past year. I mean about your own personal paganism… …What I haven’t heard in a long time Cat... Read more

I need a rest. It feels like every day there is some new reminder of just how low my reserves have gotten; between the loss of our April vacation and the post-viral fatigue that weighed me down all year, I feel tired in a way that goes well beyond joints and muscles and even mental alertness. Teaching has worn me out this year. Living has worn me out. I feel spiritually tired. I’m realizing this morning that I need not... Read more

There was quite a response to my recent post on the subject of Fame. It must be a subject that others beside myself have wrestled with. Certainly, a number of comments that were left on the original post made me look again at the whole subject of fame. I think the trouble within the Pagan community is not so much that we have no one among us who can distinguish between fame and wisdom, as it is that we have... Read more

There’s a picture, somewhere in the piles of albums and photos in my parents’ house, of my mother at about the age of 24 or 25, crouching down on her heels next to me, her short, early 1960’s skirt tucked demurely beneath her. I am, in the fashion of two year olds everywhere, looking deep into the cold, wet heart of a storm drain, fascinated by the gurgle of the water beneath us. My mom is doing something wonderful, and... Read more

(Note: there were so many thought provoking comments in response to this post that it generated a second-round of ideas. You can read the follow-up post here.) I have a confession to make. I want to be famous. Well, sort of. I don’t want to be famous, famous, and ride around in a limousine and have to hire security and that sort of thing. I just want to write a book, have it published by somebody other than my mother,... Read more

After a post I made not too long ago, I found myself reflecting on the kinds of comments I was hoping it might provoke. For those of you who might not, yourself, blog, let me simply say that this is one of the main differences between blogging and other forms of writing I have done; while all writing has an audience (if only the voices within an author’s head) in blogging, the audience writes back, usually within a few days... Read more