October is here with her cooling breezes and breaths of pause, her yellowing leaves and orange moon, her whispers and her wandering, her migrating dreams and her changing stories. She invites us to stop and listen. She invites us to open our hands and our hearts and to release our burdens, our sorrows and our shames. She invites us to step into a season of enchantment, a time when magic is close to the skin, when ancestors speak and hearts listen. She invites us to steep in our own wondering. She invites us to deepen and renew, to remember and to soften. She invites us to settle into mystery, into not knowing, undone, unfinished, and home.
Happy October! Welcome to this month of Mystery and Enchantment. How are you walking with mystery this month? What is enchanting you?
I have a free #30DaysofGoddess practice update for October available for you here: #30DaysofGoddess.
The things I need to flourish are simple: sunshine and the moon, raindrops and wind, long walks through woods and along shorelines, time alone every day with a prayer book, my pen and the sacred, laughter in the company of others, time to do my work without apology, time outside every day with my eyes open and my phone inside, heart-listening and soul-tending in the center of my own life.
Take a walk. Find a pretty rock. Don’t take it. Go home. Keep your promise.
This is an excerpt from my essay forthcoming this week at Feminism and Religion, reflections on colonization, war, and who invented jelly.
I will be taking a break from posting here for a couple of weeks to focus on finishing things up in the shop as we prepare for our winter holiday break. December's free practice update for #30DaysofGoddess will be ready for you this weekend--a new video + printable sampler pack of prayercards and resources.
May you know the warmth of connection and the hearth of community. May you breathe in great breaths of gratitude and breathe out great breaths of peace.
This morning I sat with the black cat on my lap and breathed the first breaths of October. The sky is gray-white and sunless, filled with crowcall and the sharp cries of hawk. If I squint, I can almost see steam lifting from a cauldron in the forest and smell change drifting through the air. I am looking at the shards of the year, some new-broken, some re-collected, some shining with possibility, and I feel the call, the urge, the promise, to tip them all into that bubbling vat and see what She will steep me into next. We are invited each day into newness, into breathing the very breath of the World Spirit herself. We are invited into presence, into the commonplace magic that keeps the world turning and our hearts beating. Here we are in the temple of the ordinary, watching the sky. May we settle into our bones and feel our pulse in our wrists. May we accept the invitation to sit with joy and create our lives.
May we breathe deep and allow a blush of gratitude to suffuse us, soft and persimmon orange as it permeates our bodies. May we breathe deep and allow compassion to illuminate us, lighting our hearts with a golden glow, softening our shoulders and gentling our minds. May we breathe deep and allow a fire of creativity to kindle in our bellies, flaring bright and powerful filling our bones with purpose and lighting our way May we pause, allowing the warmth of the moment to nourish and inspire us, and then set forth hands open and hearts ablaze.
The turning of the seasonal wheel is a feast for the senses, sometimes it seems all I've done is sit on the same swing in the same place while the wheel turns around me, the tapestry of birds and leaves, flowers and berries, budding, blooming, peaking, and dropping as I sit and see, bare branches spinning into tips of green catching the sun, spreading into great green umbrellas and then fading to yellow. White flowers blushed with pink becoming tight knots of green berry deepening to black and then gone again rusty red canes crowned with thorns and patience. Gray juncos to orange orioles, to swift hummingbirds to black capped chickadees and back to gray juncos again, a swirl of feathers, and color and song. Watch carefully. Remember to laugh. Sit in the center as often as possible. Feel how it all spins.
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
Erin Lale
Here's another link to a pagan response to the Atlantic article. I would have included this one in my story too if I had seen it before I published it...
Janet Boyer
I love the idea of green burials! I first heard of Recompose right before it launched. I wish there were more here on the East Coast; that's how I'd l...