I am busy working up a talk on “nature religion” to give to a Unitarian Universalist congregation on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Hey, it’s a change: bring in the Pagan speaker at Ostara instead of Samhain. On the other hand, they did<\/em> originally try to get me at Samhain, but someone messed up the scheduling. This is better, actually.<\/p>\n It’s a good thing that Unitarians tend to be a bookish crowd, so I do not have to sing, dance, lead breathing exercises, etc. There are others<\/a> who are so much better at all that.<\/p>\n I can talk, however. But I will have to repress the tendency to want to turn and write on the blackboard.<\/p>\n I will lean heavily on the “three kinds of nature religion” described in Her Hidden Children<\/a><\/em> and of course on Catherine Albanese’s <\/a>work on nature as a source of sacred value in American religion.<\/p>\n Looking at books makes me painfully aware how much I need to start on a new writing project before my brain atrophies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am busy working up a talk on “nature religion” to give to a Unitarian Universalist congregation on Sunday. Hey, it’s a change: bring in the Pagan speaker at Ostara instead of Samhain. On the other hand, they did originally try to get me at Samhain, but someone messed up the scheduling. This is better, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,48],"class_list":["post-1428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-nature-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-n2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":511,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=511","url_meta":{"origin":1428,"position":0},"title":"The Dodman's CraftBefore there was\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 11, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The Dodman's CraftBefore there was an Internet--back around 1980--Mike Nichols of Kansas City published a lively Pagan 'zine. He has been writing and teaching classes on the Craft for decades.Nowadays, as Wren Walker of The Witches' Voice says in her foreword, if you do a Web search on \"Samhain\" or\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1954,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1954","url_meta":{"origin":1428,"position":1},"title":"The Pagan Studies Samhain","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 31, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Our little celebration here at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting, during which we Pagan scholars and friends discard our tweed jackets and switch to Samhain black, made it to The Huffington Post.\u00a0 (Scroll to the bottom.) Thanks, Grove, I think. It's another example of how Wicca, in particular,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":949,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=949","url_meta":{"origin":1428,"position":2},"title":"Today is Samhain, Really, Unless It’s Not","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 7, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"We celebrate the holy day commonly called Samhain not on one day, but on several. In other words, there is no one contemporary Pagan liturgical calendar.As I write this, the actual moment in the solar cycle is about an hour away, according to Scott Monahan's useful archaeastronomy site. (Scott is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1436,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1436","url_meta":{"origin":1428,"position":3},"title":"Thinking about ‘Nature Religion’ in the Snow","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I spent about an hour today on the snow shovel after fifteen inches fell yesterday, laughing a bitter and sardonic laugh at people who associate flowers and bunny wabbits with the spring equinox. (At least the Sun is stronger now than in midwinter.) Today's preoccupation is the talk that I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1231,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1231","url_meta":{"origin":1428,"position":4},"title":"It’s That Time of Year!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Are you ready for the cameras and notepads? It's the time of year when journalists notice the Pagans! ReligionLink is on the job with story ideas. At least they admit that they are recycling their resource list from 2004. (No, that's not my telephone number anymore, sorry.)\"Oh, my\" indeed.","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3369,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3369","url_meta":{"origin":1428,"position":5},"title":"Did You Contribute to the Halloween Economy?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"It is worth more than $2 billion annually. Not really that big in the overall holiday picture, though. Halloween's haul was the smallest, accounting for a mere 2.6% of holiday spending. But for a few industries, October 31 is the night to shine. According to the National Confectioners Association, sweets-makers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1428"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1431,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions\/1431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}