This is the first chant I ever wrote. It was only supposed to be an exercise at an experiential camp. We wrote for several minutes, and then were told to distill what turned out for me to be several pages into three sentences. Not surprisingly, few of us could do it. It’s hard to throw … Continue reading Taliesin
A decade ago I had come to the end of a road. After a door that shouldn’t have been was firmly closed, I was standing high above San Francisco Bay, looking at the Golden Gate beneath a soft blue sky and the heights of Mt. Tamalpais to the north. I decided to rise. I … Continue reading Phoenixes Rise
The pandemic has changed us, and whether we know it or not, there is no going back to the way things were. Our divisions have been laid bare. Perhaps we need to realize our interdependence rather than insist on a fantasy of independence that ignores all the things we depend on … Continue reading Peace Begins With Me
There was a bit in the latest Cosmos where Neil Degrasse Tyson compared our planet to a cauldron. I think of cities the same way. Some like to speak disparagingly of “city people” and our myriad faults, but I see it differently. Cities are perfectly natural expressions of humanity. They are our beehives, our anthills. … Continue reading Cities Are Cauldrons
Three things are the foundation of wealth: A body, healthy and strong, able to do what we ask of it. Our time our own, to spend as we please. Money enough to do what is needful, to pay what we owe when the bill comes due. Work, for its own sake, is not a fit … Continue reading The Triad Of Worth
I claim this day in the cycle of the year for my own. I do not go to work at my job on this day. I go to the woods. I do ritual with my community of co-religionists, I celebrate our anniversary with my partner. We were married this day in the cycle, twenty nine … Continue reading What Do You Claim This Day?
Every morning, I work with the hourglass. To me, it is fitting that Extinction Rebellion uses this powerful symbol, particularly in this moment of now when we are facing a future that is suddenly in crisis. Nothing is different. Everything is different. What are we to do? I think that the … Continue reading The Hourglass
This blog post resonates with me. But it also makes me wonder a bit. Since when does the world owe us artists and clergy a living? Haven’t we learned anything from observing our professional priests and celebrities? Elizabeth Gilbert said this best in Big Magic, when she was talking about day jobs and the importance … Continue reading Don’t Expect Your Art To Support You
I got it! Why Pantheacon left such a bad taste in my mouth—why, of all the years I’ve gone, I got sick this time. Con crud has always passed me by before. I thought my “secret” was purely physical, a protection conferred by my homeopathic remedies and the fact that my job exposes me to … Continue reading The Sickness
Some ignorant, fearful idiot scrawled swastikas on the walls of an institute of higher learning today. This is yet another bit of proof that our time has come. Those of us who decided, as I did as a child in the 1970s, that the bad old days of the Holocaust were behind us and that if … Continue reading Who Are We?
