Pagan Holly

I told myself I wasn't going to make myself finish the 2020 sabbat posts before I started posting again but I'm too much of a perfectionist to let it go. So here's Yule!

I took and edited photos for Samhain 2020 but didn't write up a blog post at the time, so this is back-dated. I apparently did a decent job taking photos but I definitely wasn't feeling very celebratory.

I did something new for Mabon this year: went apple picking. It was fun and I’d definitely like to make it a tradition. I couldn’t help but feel anxious the whole time, though, because there were a lot of people around, many of them not wearing masks. I managed to avoid the people, but worrying about staying away from them diminished my enjoyment of apple picking. I hope I’ll be able to try this activity again in a not-too-distant, pandemic-free future.

At Lughnasadh, the Rudbeckia fulgida in my garden reaches peak bloom, putting on an impressive display of bright yellow flowers. The Aesclepius incarnata is going strong, and the Echinacea pallida still has a few flowers. It’s a lovely time of year in the garden, and a lovely time to sit outdoors and enjoy it (especially because the mosquitoes aren’t so bad this late in the summer).

Midsummer is a time of abundance in the natural world, even where I live in the (at times unseasonably snowy) south of the North. It was a time of abundance at the grocery store again, too, which was a relief after a couple months of shortages and making do. I planned a celebratory dinner for the night before the solstice.

On May 9, I participated in Global Big Day , a birdwatching event coordinated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology . The Lab of O encourages all birdwatchers to participate in Big Day by recording their sightings in eBird , the Lab of O’s citizen science project that collects data from users’ birdwatching checklists in order to learn about bird populations, distribution, and migration. Although I’ve been using the Lab of O’s bird-ID app  Merlin  for years, this was my first Big Day and the first time I’d used eBird. While it doesn’t have anything explicitly to do with Paganism, birding is one good way of tuning into nature and developing relationships with the land and beings of a particular place. Through activities like birding and gardening, I’ve come to love the place where I live and be more aware of the changes and goings-on of each season. Notably, this May 9, it snowed. I don’t think I’d ever experienced snow in May before! The snow stuck in the morning but melted by mida...

Where has the time gone?! I started a new job the day before Beltane and I’ve been struggling to focus on things that aren’t work. I’m awfully pleased about the new job—both the opportunity and the work I’m doing—but it’s taking some time to adjust. I’m starting to feel more mentally settled now, so here at last is my Beltane post. Beltane is when spring really gets going around here. The snowdrops and crocuses have been replaced by daffodils, tulips, and flowering trees. It’s still pretty cold—May 1 is our earliest possible last frost date and it was snowing as recently as the last week of April!—but warm weather is on its way. My garden is starting to come to life. The small handful of daffodils and tulips that were here when I moved in are in bloom; the daffodils actually opened on Beltane! I’d love to plant many more spring bulbs this fall. All the plants I planted last year are native perennials. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s grown and spread this year. The...

It’s hard to know what to say about how completely everything has changed—for everyone—since I last posted. A lot of the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic struck my community shortly before Ostara. But my observation of the spring equinox wasn’t significantly affected: as a solitary Pagan, I was going to decorate and eat and pray and make offerings alone at home no matter what. Here are a few photographic impressions of my Ostara celebration. If you’re interested in the history and science of the holiday, check out last year’s Ostara post ; for an explanation of how I’m blogging about the sabbats this year, see my post from Imbolc 2020 . As I mentioned at Imbolc, I’m in the process of making a decorative bunting for every sabbat. The one at the top of this post was the first one I created; it predates my formal adoption of Paganism and was originally intended to be general spring décor. Right before Ostara, institutions in my city, including the university where...

In a moment of uncharacteristic daring, I volunteered to be a panelist at a multifaith spirituality event hosted by the university mindfulness group with which I volunteer. In order to preserve confidentiality I can’t discuss the other panelists’ talks or the conversations we had with attendees, but I’m happy to share my own answers to the guiding questions, which I’ve edited a little to suit the blog format. How has spirituality and/or religion helped or hindered your development as a person and your life path? My family’s first church was Presbyterian and it had a positive, welcoming vibe; I have a lot of good memories from my childhood as a part of that church community. When I was a young teenager, my parents started looking for a new church. I hated that process and didn’t like the church they eventually picked, which was Methodist. Around the same time, I entered a relationship with an Evangelical Christian boy who was concerned that I’d go to hell if I didn’t practice ...

I promised that when Imbolc 2020 rolled around, I would look back at my first year of Paganism and consider where I’m headed next. I didn’t anticipate that one year would go by so quickly! It took me a little while to organize my thoughts but here they are. I’ve separated them into sections that helped me think logically about where I’ve been and what’s to come. What Worked I’ll start with the obvious: Paganism. I’m still here. Although I experienced doubts and setbacks, at no point did I reconsider my choice to walk a Pagan path. There are things I’d like to do differently in the coming year but try a new religion isn’t one of them. I am overwhelmingly sure that I want to stick with Paganism. Awareness of nature. I’ve been developing my conscious relationship with nature for a few years longer than I’ve been practicing Paganism. Marking seasonal changes by celebrating sabbats deepened my connection with the natural world and leant more meaning to that connection. Tuning int...