The Greek Pantheon: Online!

March 4th, 2010

Greek Primeval God of Time

No, Zeus does not have a blog. And Hera does not Tweet about Zeus’ latest trysts with mortal women.

But as I wanted to check the differences between Kairos and Chronos, this site came up: Theoi Greek Mythology Anthology.

It’s a wonderfully prepared and written source. I particularly like the entries on the primevals, the old gods who made the cosmos.

The image above is Chronos / Aion, holding the wheel of the Zodiac in his hand.

Late-winter blessings, all! Soon I’ll write about the first signs of spring I’m seeing in our gardens.

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The Small Voice of Spring

February 15th, 2010

Harry Lauder in the snow

The stove is whispering to me. The cold rain alternates between a patter and a slanting hiss on the remaining snow, but I do not listen to it. Once, before the world began to warm steadily, that landscape of melting snow–even in Richmond–marked the turning from deep to late winter.

Today, I listen to the rain no more than I listen to those who say “you see, the scientists invented global warming.” No, I don’t listen, because one season is not a climate and we forget that not long ago, every Virginia winter could be this biting.  In a few years, even those doubters will listen, but for now, I’ll enjoy a winter that is as familiar as a childhood memory of snow. I like how it slowed us, how it told us “the world is not about you.”

So I listen to the stove.  The porch is cold, and I can see my breath as I carefully clean out the fire box, sending ashes into the tray and retaining the good embers. Then I crumple a few sheets of newspaper on top. With care, and thanks for my ability to make fire, I take up the hatchet and split a few bits of kindling until they are as thin as pencils. These go on top of the paper, and to get the chimney to draw I put in a flaming wand of paper with one hand, then light the fuel.

The result is dramatic, as always, but my fire-hand is armored with a thick stove-glove. As the fuel catches I close the door, and the crackling is like laughter. “Let me be a moment,” the stove says, as I wait, watching the rain wax stronger and steadier into a full shower.  Soon all the kindling is blazing well, and I begin to build up the fire gently, choosing mindfully each piece. In half an hour, the chill from the porch subsides, and I pull up a rocker and a copy of Frank Herbert’s Dune near the stove.  Over the adventures of Paul Muad’Dib the stove reminds me of its purpose: fire as preserver and, if one is foolish, destroyer.

South is not my element, but I respect the sun’s power. In the long run, cold will be the fate of all things, but long before that, and long after humanity has passed form this world, Mother Earth, even Mars, will vanish into the surface of a bloating red star that once made our gardens grow.  Such thinking about Deep Time, however, is personally no more troubling that Herbert’s evil Baron and how Paul and the other characters become pawns in a galactic game.

The stove settles down to a rhythmic chugging, a lovely old freight-train noise. The pipes on the chimney ping a little, as they expand from the heat. All too soon, I’m pulling back the rocker from my closeness to the fire. Like the wheel of the year in miniature, the stove waxes strong, and I’m drawn from both my book and the rainfall.

Spring will come and after it, summer in her fulness. Then, the fire will ebb and only embers remain.  But between now and then, there’s work to do.  The other day, I noted the calls of the birds had changed.

They know what is coming. Do we stop long enough from our scurrying and worrying to notice?

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My Favorite Books About Earth-Centered Spirituality

January 27th, 2010

This list will not please everyone, because we all have favored titles. It reflects my beliefs that intellectual rigor, ecological integrity, and intuitive wonder must merge in the best work about spirituality.  These are the books that transformed me.  I hope they help those in my ongoing course at First UU.

I tend to be suspicious of “pagan” writers who churn out the same book again and again with a variation on a theme (“it must be 2010, so here’s the book on Native American Ritual!  Last year it was Nordic Ritual!”). Instead, I like authors who specialize, like Carr Gomm, the Matthews, and other writers about pre-Christian Celtic religion and its revival.

Even Starhawk, whose work and activism I respect, makes my cut only for her most famous work; her other books I know, while well written, are more about radical politics than learning to walk an earth-centered path. I’ll republish this list soon, with my picks for “secular” books about environmental practice that helped me craft my philosophy of life and my work in garden, wood, and bee-yard.

My picks: Books About Earth Wisdom

Carrr-Gomm, Philip, Ed.  The Druid Renaissance. London: Thorsons, 1996. An anthology of pieces forming readable overview of modern Druidry on both sides of the Atlantic.

Curott, Phyllis.  Witchcrafting.  New York: Broadway Books, 2001. One not to miss for its philosophical, even scientific, explanation of the bonds grounding men and women to Mother Earth.  One of the best recent works about the pagan revival.

Hutton, Ronald.  Triumph of the Moon.  Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Perhaps the clearest work of real scholarship to date by a neutral observer of what he calls “Modern Pagan Witchcraft.”  Outstanding, if sometimes dry, reading.

Matthews, John. The Celtic Shaman: A Handbook. Boston: Element, 1991. Probably out of print in the US, and that is a pity. This book has some of the best exercises for inner work that I’ve encountered. An inspiring read and well worth ordering a copy from ABE Books, Alibris, or a U.K. site. I saw, at both sites (and Amazon will have this one too) a more recent work by Matthews called The Encyclopaedia of Celtic Wisdom : A Celtic Shaman’s Sourcebook. If you try that one, let me know what you think.

Matthews, John and Caitlin.  The Western Way.  London: Penguin, 1994.  Source of “The Two Trees” meditation.  Nicely divided into two parts, one about “native” (Shamanic and earth-centered) philosophy, the other about “hermetic” (ceremonial, ritual magic) philosophy. Tough sledding as a “read” but worth it. These two authors are among the finest pagan authors in the U.K. and have published several books about Celtic neo-paganism.

Paterson, Jacqueline Memory. Tree Wisdom: The Definitive Guidebook to the Myth, Folklore, and Healing Power of Trees. Harper: London, 1996. Tree by tree (with a focus on UK trees) the best book on the spiritual and folkloric connection between tree and human.  Try the used-book sites online for a copy; it’s a book that passes my $100 test (how much I’d pay to replace my copy, if lost).

Starhawk.  The Sprial Dance. San Francisco: Harper-Collins, 1979. Enthusiastic, trend-setting work that has done a lot to encourage the growth of paganism in America.  Starhawk is politically progressive and eco-feminist, Now in its 20th anniversary edition (1999) with a new introduction and notes. Perhaps the most influential modern pagan book, period.

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A Pagan Who Likes Christmas?

December 25th, 2009

DSCN1129

There’s a manger under our tree. In it you’ll find a little baby, anxious mother and father, one forlorn looking wise man (the other two having vanished en route to my inheriting his family heirloom).  You’ll also find the most important accessories of all: the shepherds and animals that connect the birth of the Christians’ savior to the world of nature.

There are no angels or halos in my manger.  If any of the figures had come with halos, I’d have removed them as surely as a Presbyterian-minister friend removed the halo from the Saint Francis I gave him long ago, when I was still quasi-Catholic.  “I love the man, not some saint,” he told me and I agreed, adding something like “and I love how he loved nature.”

It’s that closeness to the season, and how Jesus’ birth coincides with the birth of another source of light–the life-giving sun–that still draws me to Christmas.  I’ve always liked the restrained display of small lights–not the baffling and ugly lightgasms that mock the season and waste energy.  The quiet and reflective carols, from “Silent Night” to “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen” and “Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel,” were the compelling ones to me, when I was a little child in church.

Jesus kept his Christmas rather simple, as a message against excess. We all can, too. If many non-spiritual people–and not a few of faith–have become caught up in the commercial orgy of American Christmas, we don’t need a Recession to remind us to practice the simplicity of a less stressful, saner season of returning light. I’ll shout into the whirlwind here, with some ideas that can reconnect us with the real spirit of Christmas.

Try these next year, if it’s already too late. And let others know that you’ve changed your habits. I don’t know how many people say “I love that idea” when I tell them.

  • No cards: I don’t spend money or waste paper on these, though I might e-mail a message with a photo to a few good friends. Unless you enjoy spending hours addressing cards, why do this?
  • Gifts of time and labor: My father never accepted gifts from others. I used to wash my dad’s car and give it a full detailing on a warm day not long after Christmas.  Do something similar for those  you love, instead of buying them something they don’t need.  As we become organic farmers, I can imagine that the small trickle of gifts of honey from our beehives, preserves from our  garden, and more will become our primary gifts to others. I just took one friend a load of seasoned firewood. I’ll cook meals for others I care for. Those are great gifts this time of year.
  • Take Walks: They are free and attune you to the subtleties of the cold season. We are not very social, so this is a season when we don’t go to a bunch of parties. Instead, we go to the James Center to see the lights and have a drink nearby, especially if there is some snow on the ground. We also walk our neighborhood and others just to look at the lights and decorations.
  • Help the Animals: Even my nemesis, the gray squirrel, gets a few treats from me. We put out plenty for the birds, too. Do the same and watch them gather to delight your days.
  • Noting the Changes: My Garden Book, where I keep track of planting, harvests, weather, and other events, marks the first day I note the light growing longer. I also note clear mornings or evenings when I see the Antitwilight: the long shadow climbing the sky opposite the sunrise or sunset.  It’s the very shadow of Mother Earth. Look for it and more in the still skies of January.

So enjoy the silence and repose of the time right after the crazy gifting and returning end. With our seasonally normal–and not freakishly ruined–winter weather so far, you’ll have cold to focus you, crisp air to thrill and awaken your senses on a walk, and snow to delight your child inside.

And may you indeed have a blessed Christmas.

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Brown Gold: Making Leaf-Mold in Late Autumn

November 29th, 2009

Can raking leaves become a spiritual practice? In a season where pagans watch their gardens fade, we can retain a sense of the renewal of life by laying in supplies for spring.  One such supply is leaf mold, the rich brown decay one finds in forests, under many years’ falls of leaves.

fallen-leaves

Making it shows us the resilience of life, and it adds a garden-practice to our work in the shortest days of the year.

Though the following column will recommend a number of polluting machines, begin by ridding thyself of that shrieking abomination, the leaf-blower. Small engines on these machines, especially two-stroke versions, produce far more pollutants per hour than a light-duty vehicle engine (Steinberg 168-69).

Raking leaves provides great cardiovascular exercise, and it makes us slow down and take note of the season we are in. This is a key precept to my philosophy of sacred gardening.  If an engine is to be used, try my method: using a side-discharge lawn mower (with a much cleaner engine that most blowers) to chop and pile the leaves for making leaf-mold. I’ve tried a bagging mower, but mower-bags are tiny. It’s easier to direct the discharge of chopped leaves to a central pile where they can be raked onto a tarp and dragged to the composting site.

Unlike a blower, a mower will begin the key process of breaking leaves down. In fact, thick leaves like those on my magnolia must be chopped or they stay around for years. Of course, even chopped they don’t hold a candle to oak leaves for making the best soil amendment there is, after organic compost.

As the leaves get piled up in a sunny spot in the corner of the garden, I wet each layer down with the hose (a good way to drain my rain barrels, incidentally) before piling on more chopped leaves. Our country garden can hold a huge pile, and this year I’m experimenting with driving some fallen branches deep into the pile to channel in rain water. That may help keep the interior from drying out, which would stop the processes essential to making compost or leaf-mold.

Last year, I found that oak leaves put through a tractor-pulled vacuum–I wore ear protection!–came out of the trailer in tiny bits, and they made rich leaf-mold for the vegetable garden after only one winter. Three Ts: time, temperature, and turning will help.  I’ve gotten a bit of advice to add fireplace ash or fertilizer to the pile to kick-start activity in late winter and balance the pile’s PH.

I hope this all works out..I’ll be turning the pile in late February or early March with a small tiller but I’ll peer in earlier, to see if I’m getting any brown gold.

Further Reading:

“Making Leaf Mold” at the Fine Gardening Web Site.

Steinberg, Ted. American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn. New York: Norton, 2006.

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Thankfulness

November 25th, 2009

sunrise

In a time of fading light, we gather.  As the air grows cooler, though not as cool as the Thanksgivings of my childhood, before the wrecking of the world began to catch us and shake us, we gather.

With the garden faded, and the last of the harvest in jars or in the fragile keeping of a refrigerator, we gather.

Can we embrace this quiet, this scarcity? Can we find stillness in a season marked by the ferocity of others buying what they do not need?

And yet we gather. Friends and family, waiting for the sun to return.

For me, that is enough on one of the rare nights (ever more rare, each year!) that grows truly cold, cold enough to remind us that we are not truly the Lords of Creation.

Yet to gather is enough and, as we discover the simple blessings of warmth, food, company, and laughter, we give thanks.

May you all find light amid the fading, until the light returns.

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First Fires: Time for Stillness

October 14th, 2009

Poet William Everson, a Catholic monk for nearly two decades, told an interviewer that he’d stopped giving public readings for a time “in order to go through a period of silence and withdrawal in order to prepare for a new phase” (Meltzer 51).

And so it is now with the garden, a moment in the turn of the Wheel of the Year I call First Fires.

Everson, who left his order but maintained an abiding faith in the sacred mysteries of Catholicism, knew well the values of quietude and daily practice.  These bring energy and renewal, and Everson’s precept applies not only to the facts in the garden but  also in how we regard realities such as the changing of the seasons.

It is tempting for non-pagans to see the great spectacle of a Mid-Atlantic Fall as merely a last swan song before death and sadness, but modern pagans, like our spiritual ancestors, have a different view. For us this is the time of the wise Crone and, in some traditions, a dying god who lies in his tomb until his rebirth at Winter Solstice.For those like me who follow a solar calendar instead of the Wiccan Samhain, Yule is the start of the year.

But until then, it’s time to chop wood, bank up the fire, and withdraw even further into solitude for introspection or merriment with carefully chosen company.  In my home we celebrate with a few simple rituals I’ll describe here.

  • First Fires Rite: I save the last cuttings of herbs from our garden to kindle a fire. Usually stems from sage, oregano, and mint will start a roaring blaze. If at all possible, I find a bit of wood left in the wood stove or fireplace from the prior year’s fires, an aspect of ritual reminiscent of ancient Yule-Log traditions.  We build the fire with well seasoned wood from the woodpile, read a blessing or poetry, drink toasts to the departed summer and its harvest, and we share a meal of seasonal and, if possible, home-grown or at least locally grown food. The rite has its springtime counterpart in what others call “Vital,” a ritual of tapping the trees with a staff or wand, then bidding them to awaken.
  • Putting the Garden to Sleep: I am blessed to have “brown gold,” in the form of fallen oak leaves, on our property. So near the time of First Fires I rake them (leaf blowers / vacs  generate more pollution per gallon of fuel burned that several autos).  Raking is good cardiovascular exercise, though I often chop the leaves first with my lawn-mower so they will decompose faster and not blow about.  Then I put the leaves several inches thick in our garden and flowerbeds, like tucking in a sleeper.  The leaves provide a winter mulch and, as they decay, compost to enrich the soil.
  • Wassailing / Libations: One need not wait until Yule to salute the apple tree. I  carry a cup of wine to the garden when I put it to sleep, and I’ll give a bit of wine to the earth with a simple blessing.  Throughout the dark half of the year, I repeat this in the garden or woods, to let whatever spirits dwell there know that I remember them and thank them for leaves, firewood, good soil, and renewal.

And, come spring, they’ll give back to us.  Monks like Everson knew the value of quiet. Perhaps, in our very different religious perspective, we can likewise honor the wellspring of all faiths with silence and wonder.

Blessed Mabon and Samhain, friends.

Cited:

Meltzer, D. San Francisco Beat: Talking With the Poets. San Francisco: City Lights Books.

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That Scamp, English Ivy

September 26th, 2009

It’s hard to believe how a plant that is so quaint, in one setting, becomes a nightmare in another.

This little garden faerie, so demure and coy, was molested by English Ivy. Today I pushed the marauder back further, given the blessings of recent and long-overdue rain.  Strand by strand, I uncovered native Columbine and parts of my struggling Rosemary plant from the dark green creepers.

In England, ivy is a rather frowzy gentleman, lending his charm to old buildings with a result as cozy as a Harris Tweed, a briar pipe full of bright and burley, and a “hot cuppa” on a chilly and damp afternoon.

Yet bring the English gent to the New World, and he becomes a lager-lout, sprawling, intruding, wrecking.

One principle of my garden-practice involves what I call “necessary cruelty,” where one simply has to intervene when Nature gets out of balance. I planted those first sprigs of ivy in an attempt to control erosion at the edge of our property. Now, it’s a carpet, joining another from my deceased neighbor’s garden (where poison ivy joins the party in the vegetable mosh-pit).

Now that two young fellows have bought that house, I’m actually pleased that they’ll do some judicious spraying of Roundup (the only toxin I own, with a quart of concentrate lasting me many years). The new neighbors promise to be very careful of my garden. I’ll go over to assist with my heavy-duty weed-whacker and sprayer on The Day of Doom.

My own organic methods of pulling and trimming work for me. Readers seeking to reduce another pest, Bermuda or “Wire” Grass, might want to look back at an old piece I did for Whole News (follow this link to all of my old columns). By there’s a lesson in the ivy beyond necessary cruelty: knowing the land and not planting foolishly.

Blessed Mabon and may your gardens go to sleep peacefully during the Dark Half of the year.

As a belated PS, I want to thank anyone who recalls my old monthly column of this name in the long-defunct free publication, Whole News.  It appeared in an era before blogs got popular, and I hope this blog will interest my fellow UUs, neo-pagans, and open-minded souls walking any spiritual path who seek ways to bring a bit of mindfulness and sustainable practice into their gardens.

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