PaganSquare


PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.

  • 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
Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Summerland

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
In Praise of Guys Without Shirts

A friend of mine has a chalkboard: Things to Be Thankful For.

Yesterday, going past, I took up the chalk and wrote:

Guys Without Shirts.

It's the kind of weather that they named the Summerland for, and finally, after a long winter of visual deprivation, the shirts are coming off.

Thank Goddess.

Don't get me wrong: I appreciate rippling pecs and box-grater abs as much as the next (gay) guy.

But they're not required. Young or old, rounded or taut: it's all beauty to me, and yes, I always look. As the sage once said: The contemplation of beauty is its own reward.

When peonies bloom and shirts are shed, it means that Summer, our beautiful, poignant Summer, is come: burgeoning, urgent, and always O so brief.

And so with poet Dan Pagis I see, and I say:

Last modified on
Recent comment in this post - Show all comments
  • Haley
    Haley says #
    Hear! hear!

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Cicada Song

Well, it's almost here: the time of year that they named the Summerland for.

The apples ripe and fragrant on the branches, and overhead in the trees, that unmistakable, piercing, electric drone.

Welcome to the Season of the Cicada.

Around here they say that the cicadas call only when it's 80° or warmer: clothing-optional weather. To judge from my own experience, this may well be true.

The name comes from the Romans, by way of the French. Before that, say the etymologists, it was a “Mediterranean” word. Who knows? It may even be Minoan.

Because cicadas, like snakes, shed their skins as they grow, and because their nymphs incubate in the earth and pop forth whole and all, they're associated in the Received Tradition with rebirth and immortality. Fittingly do they sing to the dead in the orchards of that Other World.

Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Polyatheism

So, the cat died.

Me, I'm not an Afterlife person. I think that when the breath is gone, we go back into the grand dance of everything, the eternal sabbat of the atoms. And this seems to me both beautiful and good.

But as I move through a house newly filled with absences, stillnesses where I expect movement, it somehow consoles me to think of the Antlered sitting cross-legged with all the animals around Him, and old Mr. Rudycat snugged up in His lap. Or, more likely, draped around His neck and across His shoulders like a black-and-white fur collar, but with a pink nose. And probably switching Him in the face with a long, black tail from time to time.

Yep, that's the Rude all right.

Emily was the first kid to grow up in the local pagan community, and you couldn't help but feel a sense of investment in her. Smart, talented, charismatic, it was evident to everyone that she was going to be High Priestess of Minnesota some day, if not the first pagan president. When she died unexpectedly at 21, her death shook us all.

Last modified on
Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    Apparently there is something like nine times as much to do and explore in the spirit as there is physically, but without the burd
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    In the greater scheme of things, the loss of a pet seems a small grief, but it's a grief nonetheless. Thanks, Mark.
  • Mark Green
    Mark Green says #
    Beautifully said. As a fellow atheist Pagan, I like the framing and I'm sorry for your loss.
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I once read that we lay down our path through the afterlife in the dreams we have when we are asleep. That we know the dead live
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Oh gods. You mean the scheduling crunch doesn't let up after death?

Additional information