An Atheopagan Path: Journeys in the Sacred World

Musings, values and practices in non-theistic Paganism

  • Home
    Home This is where you can find all the blog posts throughout the site.
  • Tags
    Tags Displays a list of tags that have been used in the blog.
  • Bloggers
    Bloggers Search for your favorite blogger from this site.
  • Login
    Login Login form

Contemplating a Red Moon

Last night, 2019’s only lunar eclipse took place: a spectacular “supermoon” eclipse. We watched it from our back yard, watching the Moon slowly darken into a ruddy ball, and then, dramatically, the bright edge of ordinary Sun-lit surface burst into being and steadily reclaim it.

Lunar eclipses are really cool. Astronomical events as a whole are really cool: meteor showers, eclipses, transits, and particularly that extraordinary rarity, a prominent comet visible to the naked eye. Whenever possible, I take the opportunity to experience these phenomena, as they bring home in a visceral way that we are on a planet, in space, and there’s a lot of other stuff going on out there.

Until three years ago, when I was forced to move, I lived in a rural setting. I knew the passage of the year by the changes in the trees, the choruses of frogs and crickets and coyotes and turkeys, the ripening of the crops. Now we are in a suburban neighborhood and, though it’s pretty good in terms of light pollution and silence, it’s harder to keep hold of that knowledge that all the time, things are happening. 

That mountain may look as it did yesterday from a distance, but it isn’t. Countless changes have been made, as Life does it’s thing and all the individual creatures go about their tasks.

As a Pagan, I do my best to keep this in mind: Nature is hard at work here, every day. The great beauty of an eclipse, a sunset, the breathtaking flash of a heron overhead, the rainbow, the lightning strike: these are the “postcard moments” in a panoply of activity that carries on unseen and incessant. Nature casts weather across the land and sea, stirs dust and seeds and migrating spiders high into the air and over distances. Animals eat and mate and complete their cycles; trees and plants turn their solar collectors to the life-giving Sun, powering the whole enterprise.

It’s magnificent and ordinary. It’s Sacred.

Having a Pagan practice helps me to remember this. My daily observances at my Focus bring me into recognition of the wonders of this world, this life. I hope, as I age, that I will never forget how miraculous it is to be here, to be a part of all this.

Originally published at Atheopaganism

Last modified on
Mark Green is an activist, writer and nonprofit professional with a background in environmental public policy and electoral campaigns. He is the author of "Atheopaganism: an Earth-Honoring Path Rooted in Science", published in 2019. A Pagan since 1987, he presents at Pantheacon and has been published in Green Egg and the anthology "Godless Paganism" (for which he wrote the foreword). His Pagan writing appears here, at the Humanistic Paganism website (humanisticpaganism.com), at the Naturalist Pagan site (naturalpagans.com) and at the Atheopaganism blog.  

Comments

Additional information