In the fall of 2005, the year I entered the Catholic Church, my editor at Beliefnet asked me if I would write an Advent Diary from the perspective of a former Neopagan who became a Catholic. This I did, and it turned out to be a bit of a fiasco, for the folks at Beliefnet, used to posting my writings on their Pagan page, posted at least one of these Advent posts on their Pagan page instead of the Catholic page — which only stirred up folks who understandably were not interested in my post-pagan spiritual musings.

Sigh.

Well, that was seven years ago, and I have avoided writing about a) my feelings about Neopaganism, and b) the season of Advent, pretty much ever since. In ’05, I got fussed at for saying things like “Advent has no real equivalent in modern Paganism (at least, not to my knowledge).” Yeah, that was a stupid thing to say. Not because it wasn’t true (I still would state that, as a matter of opinion, particularly with the closing qualifier), but because it closes down dialogue rather than opening it up. Nowadays I would be more interested in finding poetic or metaphorical parallels between the liturgy of one faith and the rituals of another, rather than making dogmatic statements that all too easily can be interpreted as a put-down.

Because here’s the deal: Advent is all about pregnancy. And if any religion honors pregnancy, it would be Goddess spirituality, don’t you think? I suppose it’s remarkable that I couldn’t see that seven years ago. But I was infatuated with my newfound religious home (both in the macro sense, as a newly minted Catholic, and in the micro sense of someone just beginning to receive spiritual guidance from the Trappist monastery in my neck of the woods). And in that infatuation, I lost sight of some basic realities. Like the fact that Advent is a season of pregnancy. Or that there is far more that unites different religions (even religions as different as Catholicism and Neopaganism) than divides them.

Looking back, I think my blind spots — both about Advent, and about the distinctions between Catholicism and Neopaganism — had to do with me being in a rather Neoplatonic headspace. For me, becoming a Catholic was all about immersing myself in the wisdom of the Christian mystics, and I have always had a particular fondness for the Neoplatonic stream within mysticism — the writings of figures like Pseudo-Dionysius, Meister Eckhart, The Cloud of Unkowing, and John of the Cross, figures who were so influenced by Platonism that their spirituality runs the risk of being interpreted as dualistic: embracing a cosmology that places “spirit” above (and against) “matter.” I think a rich and healthy spirituality can embody a distinction between spirit and matter, as long as both of those categories are seen as united within a larger category like “nature.” But if “matter” and “nature” are somehow seen as basically the same thing, and inferior to “spirit,” then we’ve got a problem. I’m not sure that I fully fell into that trap back in the fall of ’05. But rereading what I wrote back then, certainly I was flirting with that unhelpful dualism.

So if I could go back to myself, circa seven years ago, I might say this: “Enjoy your first Advent as a Catholic. But keep it grounded. Anchor it in the good earth, the silence of the soil, the pulsing heartbeat within all living flesh. The only Advent worth celebrating is an earthy Advent, just as the only spirituality worth practicing is an earthy spirituality.”

So, sitting here in 2012, what can I say about an “earthed” Advent? What do we need to do to keep our spiritual practice grounded — especially for those of us in religious traditions shaped by patriarchy, monotheism, and both the glory and the shadow of Neoplatonism? Here are a few thoughts, which hopefully can be useful for anyone, regardless of spiritual path or religious identity.

1. Stay in the body. Advent is about waiting, about pregnancy, about hope and desire and living in the not-yet space. But this doesn’t have to be a head trip. Children wait to grow up, adults wait to find rest, those who suffer wait for relief (even if it’s the relief of death). And while obviously I’ve never been pregnant, I suppose there is a reality behind getting into the last weeks of the gestation and waiting, with joy and weariness and anticipation, for the coming birth. For those of us who aren’t physically pregnant, Advent might mean something slightly different. But for us to find that meaning, I believe we have to start with the waiting that is embedded in our own flesh.

2. Enjoy the season. I’ve never been south of the equator, but I suspect that celebrating Advent in December in Australia has to be somewhat out of joint. Advent is, celestially speaking, all about the growing darkness, the shortening of the days, the onset of winter. It’s a grand metaphor for the “waiting” from the perspective of the baby — moving into the uncertainty of the birth canal, away from the reassuring heartbeat and warmth of the womb into the compressed space that will lead to a new world undreamt of. Every year when we round the solstice and begin the climb back to the warmth of spring, we are creating a new world, a new life, a new year. Or co-creating, of course, with the help of the sun and the good earth. But Advent is the crunch time. We remember that when we pay attention to just how dark and cold it’s getting.

3. Be quiet. One of my favorite verses in the Bible is Luke 2:19: “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” The “words” it refers to are the prophetic words spoken by the shepherds over the infant Jesus lying in the manger. But I’m not sure that really matters. Here we see Mary in a contemplative stance, and indeed many Catholics regard her as the first contemplative. She is also the star of the Advent season (it was her pregnancy, after all). So there seems to be a link here between pregnancy, motherhood, and the contemplative spirit of treasuring and pondering. Again, it fits the season. In this time of darkness and the coming cold, settling in to stay warm inside, bundled up, huddled by the fire (or the heat pump) all makes sense in a very earthy, embodied way. So, too, does being quiet, conserving energy, and sitting still. The Hebrew word for contemplative silence is dumiyyah, which has a connotation of waiting (see Psalm 62: “For God alone my soul waits in silence”). So as we wait in the Advents of our lives, let’s wait in silence. And be present to our bodies. And remember that, no matter how “spiritual” we might be, all our sacred experience is embedded in the holiness of nature and our bodies. And for that, let us be thankful.

Carl McColman is an author, retreat leader and spiritual director. His blog, www.anamchara.com, celebrates the mystical and contemplative dimensions of both Christian and world spirituality.

Carl’s books explore spirituality from a variety of perspectives. His Christian writings include The Big Book of Christian Mysticism and Answering the Contemplative Call. His Celtic and nature-based writings include The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Paganism and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Celtic Wisdom.

Since 2005 Carl’s spirituality has been anchored in the Cistercian monastic tradition. He is not a monk, but a professed lay associate of a monastery that owns and protects one of the largest green spaces in the metro Atlanta area. In Cistercian spirituality Carl has discovered the link between the Christian faith, contemplative practice, and a foundational love for the natural world. Carl’s writing reflects Cistercian earthiness integrated with the recognition of contemplation as an essential tool for peacemaking and sustainability.

Photo Credit: (CC) Ondra Anderle (source)

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Post tags: Advent, Catholicism, interspirituality, matter, nature, Neopaganism, spirit

In Episode 224 Pro – Archetypes of the Soul, we discuss Bill Plotkin’s work as a depth psychologist and wilderness guide exploring the stages of a soul-centered, ecocentric life. We delve into the world of archetypes to discover the deepest impulses of the human psyche that move us through childhood, adolescence, adulthood and elderhood, and the challenges of trying to live a soul-centric life in an egocentric world.

This Weekend Pro episode is only available for our Pro Members. To learn more about becoming a Pro Member, click here.

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Links:

• Bill Plotkin’s website
• Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche, by Bill Plotkin
• Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World, by Bill Plotkin

Music Credits:

• Opening and closing theme: “Dragonfly” by Brian Boyko
• “Through Time,” by Solarein

Art Credits:

• “Unfurling,” by Gillie

© Faith, Fern & Compass, 2012. | Permalink | No comment
Post tags: adulthood, archetypes, Bill Plotkin, childhood, deep ecology, destiny, ego, individuality, life, place, soul

A Guest Post by Naomi Jacobs

I grew up in London and lived there for most of my adult life, with only short times spent in other places. Put me down almost anywhere in London, and I can tell you a story about what that place means to me. I know the people, and I like them, with all their grouchiness and refusing to look at each other on tube trains. I know how to wind my way between suburbs and into the city, and where to find a quiet, green place to meditate in the midst of the chaos of concrete and footfall. I know where the river runs, and how it feels vastly different between leafy Richmond and the crowded Embankment.

Then I moved a bit more than a hundred miles north, to the Midlands of the UK. This may not sound far to most Americans, but to people in Britain, it’s halfway across the world (or up the country, at least). In theory, there’s nothing that different about Nottingham from London. It’s a smaller town, but it has almost as much history and at least as many memorable tales attached to it. And maybe it’s the story I tell myself about the place, or maybe it really is the spirit of the city, but it doesn’t feel like home yet.

I study sociology, and it’s a way of understanding the world that helps me to understand myself and my communities. This week I came across Thomas F. Gieryn’s article ‘A Space for Place in Sociology‘. It’s an academic article, and he’s talking about the importance of place to an academic field – but really, he’s also talking about its importance for all of us. He asks whether, lost in our fast-moving, dislocated lives, we’ve forgotten why physical places matter. We live in a world where every shopping mall looks the same and you can find a branch of Starbucks in London and Nottingham and the Forbidden City in Beijing. Yet, Gieryn says, for all the illusion of sameness of our world, specific places still matter to us. As I drove 50 miles in metal on concrete to get to university today, I thought about whether he might be right.

Place is about the stories we tell. A sense of place, Gieryn says, is about more than knowing where you house is or how to get to your town. It’s about the meaning we give to the places around us. We create myths about our lands and our communities. We have done for as long as we can remember. Think about who decided where borders between countries would be, and why – especially in colonized countries. And that matters, because our ideas about place have real consequences. Gieryn gives the example of Native Americans whose environment is protected by their beliefs about their land, until a more powerful group sees the land as a source of profit, displaces its residents, and takes the land for mining or other commercial uses. The people are left in some of the poorest conditions in their country, the land is used unsustainably, and only a very few people benefit.

Place is about power and control. Gieryn talks about how place is planned and managed, and how political interests and commercial power are often at work behind these things. He doesn’t just mean urban sprawl replacing green spaces, either. He talks about how domination over nature is built into the way we use places, from the closed design of laboratories where animals are experimented on, to the way that urban planning has the effect of isolating us from each other and from responsible living. We learn to drive to out-of-town commercial centres instead of walking through towns, because that’s where invisible forces have decreed that we will be led. Our use of place can divide us from each other: communities are split along lines of race and class when housing is unaffordable in one area and slum-like in another. And city design itself is linked to health and stress. Perceptions of a neighbourhood as dangerous will rise when streets are narrow or isolated, regardless of actual crime rates in the area. Interestingly, this perception can lead to a rise in depression and anxiety among residents, even when statistics show that these places are safe. A decrease in green space has effects on the health of residents, too. But what if we could learn to question and resist some of this? Can place be planned and used more positively, for us and for the environment?

Place is about community and change. Gieryn gives some great examples of how people have engaged with place, and how this has transformed their communities. Some places lead to collective action, either because they allow people to gather and protest together, or because they represent a struggle. Think of the Berlin Wall, literally and symbolically dividing a city in two, and the global impact of the news images of people stepping over that barrier. When urban planning is done right, it can create opportunities rather than isolation. Public spaces like plazas and parks draw a diverse range of people, giving us opportunities to meet other people in our communities. Planners can involve the whole community in the design of communal places, and when they do, civic participation rises. Ask people to take responsibility for planning community spaces, and we do that in ways that make community more sustainable.

As a sociologist, I think about concepts a lot. I believe that those concepts matter, because they construct our reality. The way we think about place matters. Do we think of ourselves as members of community, enough that we know and help our neighbours? (I’m not sure I do.) Do we accept or resist the way that we are funneled into patterns of movement and lifestyle by town planning? Even on the level of whether we think enough about where we live in relation to where we work, these things matter. When my PhD supervisor moved to a university over an hour away from my home town, and asked me to move as well, I barely thought about the new university as a physical place (except to worry about wheelchair access to buildings). It’s only now that I’m driving a 100-mile round trip three times a week that I recognise the impact of my transient lifestyle on the environment. That interacts with community and social justice issues – public transport is not accessible to me – but most of all, there’s a big element of personal responsibility there. I’m now working on ways to be more sustainable in how I relate to place, including working from home as much as I can, but those options aren’t open to everyone – and in today’s economic situation, people may have no choice over where they work. That’s where collective action comes in. Like the people in Gieryn’s examples of collective action around space, we can work together to challenge uses of space that are unjust, whether to us, the environment, or both. We can campaign for better spaces to live, work and play in. (And for better access to public transport for people with mobility impairments, so that I can choose to have less of an impact on the environment.)

But I think there’s one glaring thing missing from this discussion: the spirituality behind the sociology. We relate to places in many different ways, and that includes spiritually. Gieryn talks about how, when people describe the places that are important to them, the meanings that they give to those places are the most important thing to them. Those interpretations shape the ways we use and relate to these places. In Ireland this summer, I connected with mountains, villages and my family’s old farmhouse based on the ways these places are associated with my ancestors. That was a perception I imposed upon the land, but I believe that the land spoke back to me in response. I may not know the spirits of Nottingham very well yet, but I’m learning how to relate to them, and one day I will know the course of the river, and lots of quiet, tucked-away places to meditate in.

Place matters. The places where we live, work and spend our time become meaningful to us in lots of ways. For many of us, that includes the spiritual meaning of place. What stories do you tell about place, and how do they impact your life and community?

Naomi Jacobs is the co-host of the Divine Community podcast, where she is known as Sophia Catherine. She likes the outdoors, gluten-free cake, and her cats. She’s working on a PhD in the field of sociology of religion, and is a teacher and occasional writer on the side. Sophia is a member of OBOD and ADF and is attempting to carve out a balanced path that draws on different approaches to Druidry and polytheism. Her blog is at Lighting My Candle, and she sometimes writes about disability rights and other things for the Guardian newspaper in the UK.

Photo Credit: (CC) Dave Heuts (source)

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Post tags: community, environment, place, placemaking, sociology, space, spirituality

In Episode 223 – Apocalypse 2012, we celebrate our 50th episode with in-depth coverage of how we’re all going to die! After unraveling the Mayan prophecies about December 21, 2012, we turn our attention to the coming technological singularity and speculate about what a world ruled by super-computers and nanobots will look like. We check in with a NASA scientist to find out if Planet X is still on schedule to crash into the earth next month, and whether or not solar flares and geomagnetic pole shifts might make Apple’s new Maps app even more useless. In our Pro extension, we get real with some of the actual predictions coming from astrophysicists about the Big Bang, Big Bounce and Big Freeze, and we end with the heart-warming holiday message that we’re unlikely to be special and unique snowflakes after all.

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Links:

• “Fire and Ice,” by Robert Frost
• More info on archeology.org here and here
• The Tortuguero Prophecy Unravelled




• Was Psychedelic Guru Terence McKenna Goofing About 2012 Prophecy?
• Five-Minute Introduction to the Singularity
• Three Major Singularity Schools
• Why Work Toward the Singularity?




• Doomsday 2012 Fact Sheet

Pro Extension Links:

• A Grim Reckoning
• The Ultimate Fate of the Universe
• Big Bang or Steady State?

Music Credits:

• Opening and closing theme: “Dragonfly” by Brian Boyko
• “Beautiful” and “When the Floods Come,” by Beltaine’s Fire

Art Credits:

• “End of the World,” by Adam Baker

This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA License.

© Faith, Fern & Compass, 2012. | Permalink | No comment
Post tags: 2012, apocalypse, astronomy, calendar, cosmology, doomsday, Mayans, Robert Frost, singularity

In Episode 222 Pro – Seasonal Redux, we catch up on stories from earlier in the season with the latest developments. Great news on the Colorado River Delta gives us something to celebrate, as a decade’s long tragedy gets turned into a success story of water security and international cooperation. We revisit our conversation on placemaking with a discussion of the role of nature and wilderness in literature. And we wrap things up with post-election coverage of the impending fiscal cliff and what a second term for Obama means for the environment.

This Weekend Pro episode is only available for our Pro Members. To learn more about becoming a Pro Member, click here.

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Links:

• Love-Struck Peacock Saves a Turkey From the Dinner Table
• The United States and Mexico Can Restore the Colorado River Delta
• A Global Treaty on Rivers: Key to True Water Security
• United Nations International Year of Water Cooperation
• Are You 28 Yet? No? Then You Have Never Seen a Cooler-Than-Average Month




• Nature, environment and a sense of place in fiction
• “Speaking a Word for Nature,” by Scott Russell Sanders




• President Obama Mentions Climate Change! But Says the Wrong Things
• Faith in Obama to Fix Environment Declines
• The Fiscal Cliff And The Environment
• Fiscal Cliff Threatens Environmental Protections that Voters Supported

Music Credits:

• Opening and closing theme: “Dragonfly” by Brian Boyko
• “Hex” by Beltaine’s Fire

Art Credits:

• “Mitchell River delta,” by Feral Arts

© Faith, Fern & Compass, 2012. | Permalink | No comment
Post tags: Colorado River, environment, fiscal cliff, global warming, literature, placemaking, steampunk, water security

I’m writing this on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Like I do every year, I’ve pondered the meaning and role of gratitude in our lives. The great mystic Meister Eckhart once said, “If the only prayer you say in your life is ‘Thank you,’ that would be enough.” I think he’s right. Gratitude really is that important. A therapist once told me, “If you are living in gratitude, you simply are not available to waste time feeling like a victim or a martyr.” I’ve tried it, and it works. For some reason, counting our blessings is like a detergent for the soul (an organic detergent, I should hasten to add) — it simply helps keep things clean.

So if thanksgiving is such a wonderful spiritual practice, why have we turned this uniquely American holiday into an orgy of gluttony and avarice? I speak of course not only of the overconsumption of food at the big meal on Thursday, but the overconsumption of just about everything else that commenced, in some cases, just after nightfall on Thursday evening — and extending into the notorious shopping frenzy of Black Friday.

Eat more turkey. Buy a larger television. Somehow, in the midst of those two messages, the “thanksgiving” part of the holiday seems to have been lost.

Meanwhile, this past Wednesday — the day before Thanksgiving — the United Nations’ Environment Program released an annual report that noted just how rapidly our worldwide greenhouse gas emissions are accelerating, far above pledged levels of reduction and likely to cause a global temperature increase of several degrees Celsius by the end of the century. As reported by Reuters, “the world is likely to warm by 3-4 degrees by the end of the century and extreme weather will become the ‘new normal’, affecting every region in the world.” On Thursday I read on Yahoo an article that proclaimed Greenhouse Gases Hit Record  High in 2011, This article quoted a report from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization, with this statement from WMO director Michel Jarraud:

“Until now, carbon sinks have absorbed nearly half of the carbon dioxide humans emitted in the atmosphere, but this will not necessarily continue in the future. We have already seen that the oceans are becoming more acidic as a result of the carbon dioxide uptake, with potential repercussions for the underwater food chain and coral reefs. There are many additional interactions between greenhouse gases, Earth’s biosphere and oceans, and we need to boost our monitoring capability and scientific knowledge in order to better understand these.”

To put icing on this particular cake, the Atlantic Magazine published 5 Charts About Climate Change That Should Have You Very, Very Worried on their website today. These charts demonstrate how rapidly the ice is melting in Greenland, how pervasive drought is in the United States, and how likely (given current emissions) it is that the coral reefs will be not only dead, but dissolving, by the year 2050.

Sigh.

When I read balanced, well-grounded news on climate change, I get scared. I suppose this is true for most reasonable people.

Of course, there are the deniers out there, with portentous, conspiratorial websites like Climate Skeptic and No Carbon Tax (one of my favorites is the barely coherent screed Global Warming? MAN MADE?! NOT!!!, which concludes that climate change science is a socialist plot to undermine American exceptionalism). Although I think the deniers have their heads up you-know-where as far as science is concerned, I’ll grant that they are at least clued in to what is really at stake here: American-style consumerism.

So you see where I’m going. We’ve taken a day originally set aside for the spiritual purpose of gratitude, and perverted it into an infernal (pun intended) ritual in honor of the American god of consumption. Black Friday — and, I would add, the over-consumption of food on Thursday — are integrally linked to the devastation of the biosphere.

It’s hard to be grateful for the blessings in our lives when I’m so frightened about how we, as a culture, over-consume those very blessings. For me, it is a challenge to remain anchored enough in gratitude that I can consciously make choices consistent with my desire to live a sustainable, rather than hyper-consumptive, life. The temptation of the fear is a temptation to despair. And I suspect that many Americans, and perhaps folks from other parts of the planet, have already succumbed to that temptation.

The Bible says that the fear of Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111.10). Most liberal Christians like to explain this away as “we’re not supposed to be afraid of God, just, well, in awe of God.” I’m no Hebrew scholar, but my sense is this verse may make more sense not if we try to mitigate it, but if we consider that notion of beginning in it. Wisdom begins with the kind of existential, reverential fear that in Hebrew is called “the fear of the Lord.” But true wisdom does not remain grounded in fear, for that can lead to despair. Rather, fear is the impetus toward action: toward a change of heart and mind (repentance), a change of behavior, a new way of living or behaving.

When we stare into the horrifying implications of climate change, the reaction of dread and anxiety that we feel is, in my opinion, very much related to the old Hebrew idea of “the fear of the Lord.” It is a fear we feel because we know in our guts we’ve done something wrong. So what do we do now? Denying it is foolish, and despairing of it is useless. The only truly holy response to the fear of the Lord is to grow in wisdom. For climate change, this means as individuals and as a society we need to take responsibility for living sustainably. This means everything will change: our lifestyle, our economy, our reliance on artificial entertainment and unnecessary comforts. But once the coral reefs die and the ice caps are gone, our hyper-consumptive lifestyle is going to go away anyway. The critical question is, just how willing are we to embrace the inevitable change that awaits us?

Just think. Once we move into the brave new world of a post-consumer society, it might just lead to a new day where Thanksgiving is once again about, you know, giving thanks.

Carl McColman is an author, retreat leader and spiritual director. His blog, www.anamchara.com, celebrates the mystical and contemplative dimensions of both Christian and world spirituality.

Carl’s books explore spirituality from a variety of perspectives. His Christian writings include The Big Book of Christian Mysticism and Answering the Contemplative Call. His Celtic and nature-based writings include The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Paganism and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Celtic Wisdom.

Since 2005 Carl’s spirituality has been anchored in the Cistercian monastic tradition. He is not a monk, but a professed lay associate of a monastery that owns and protects one of the largest green spaces in the metro Atlanta area. In Cistercian spirituality Carl has discovered the link between the Christian faith, contemplative practice, and a foundational love for the natural world. Carl’s writing reflects Cistercian earthiness integrated with the recognition of contemplation as an essential tool for peacemaking and sustainability.

Photo Credit: (CC) Faith Goble (source)

© Faith, Fern & Compass, 2012. | Permalink | No comment
Post tags: Avarice, Black Friday, Climate Change, consumerism, global warming, Gluttony, Greed

In Episode 221 Pro – Thanksgiving Special, we explore the dark underbelly of this quintessential American harvest festival. Is the classic turkey dinner really a kind of animal sacrifice, symbolic of soldiers returning from war to be dismembered and cannibalized to nourish the homeland? Does the all-American obsession with football speak to our history of colonialism and military conflict? Is Black Friday just another shopping day, or is the consumerism that drives mobs into violent frenzies an inevitable result of our culture’s subconscious desire for blood sacrifice? What does our modern Thanksgiving holiday have in common with the ancient Aztec creation stories in which the gods themselves must sacrifice their flesh and blood to appease a ravenous earth? We investigate the disturbing underpinnings of this American holiday of gratitude and friendship.

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Links:

• An American Creation Story
• Aztecs: An Interpretation, by Inga Clendinnen

Music Credits:

• Opening and closing theme: “Dragonfly” by Brian Boyko

Art Credits:

• “Truly Sir…..You’d like a pork roast much better!!!” by Andrea Westmoreland

© Faith, Fern & Compass, 2012. | Permalink | No comment
Post tags: America, Aztecs, blood sacrifice, civil religion, creation stories, harvest, holiday, Thanksgiving, violence

In Episode 220 Pro – The Soul-Centered Life, we discuss Bill Plotkin’s work as a depth psychologist and wilderness guide exploring the stages of a soul-centered, ecocentric life. We begin by examining his definition of the soul as a person’s “ultimate place” in the universe, taking up the question of what we can learn from comparing the human soul to the concept of the ecological niche. From there, we delve into the world of archetypes to discover the deepest impulses of the human psyche that move us through childhood, adolescence, adulthood and elderhood.

This Weekend Pro episode is only available for our Pro Members. To learn more about becoming a Pro Member, click here.

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Links:

• Bill Plotkin’s website
• Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche, by Bill Plotkin
• Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World, by Bill Plotkin

Music Credits:

• Opening and closing theme: “Dragonfly” by Brian Boyko
• “Smiley-Mould” by Hugh Doolan

Art Credits:

• “Maze,” by Aaron Harmon

© Faith, Fern & Compass, 2012. | Permalink | No comment
Post tags: adulthood, archetypes, Bill Plotkin, childhood, deep ecology, ecological niche, life, soul

In Episode 219 – Oil Lamps and Astrolabes, we share some fascinating examples of how cultures from all over the world have looked to the sun, moon and stars for guidance in crafting meaningful liturgical calendars. Ali wishes everyone a Happy Diwali before delving into the mysteries of the Hindu lunisolar calendar, and Jeff ponders the lost zodiac of the ancient Celts and how the Coligny Calendar and the Gundestrup Cauldron can give us clues to how our ancestors might have seen the stars. In our Pro Extension, we bring you the stirring conclusion to the saga of the ages — and we find out why exactly everybody hates hipsters.

**Help Us Fight Homelessness** In honor of National Hunger & Homelessness Awareness Week, FF&C will be donating HALF of the first month’s subscription fee for all new Pro Members who sign up between now and November 18, 2012 to the National Coalition for the Homeless. Thank you for helping us contribute our small part to help make the world a little better.

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Links:

• Diwali, India’s Festival of Light
• Diwali gets a wag of the finger on The Colbert Report
• India Celebrates Diwali Using Eco-Friendly Firecrackers
• More info about Diwali and the Hindu Calendar




• “The Druid Zodiac,” by Jeff Lilly
• The Lost Zodiac of the Druids by Gregory Clouter
• Technovate.org




• Tom Wujec demos the 13th-century astrolabe (embedded below!)

Pro Extension Links:

• Strauss–Howe generational theory
• Generation Sell

Music Credits:

• Opening and closing theme: “Dragonfly” by Brian Boyko
• “Silhouette of Longing Love,” by Marc Gunn

Art Credits:

• “Astrolabe,” by Charles Tilford

This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA License.

© Faith, Fern & Compass, 2012. | Permalink | No comment
Post tags: calendar, Diwali, Druidry, generations, Hinduism, liturgical calendar, ritual, seasons, zodiac

In Episode 218 Pro – Generations, Part 2, we continue our conversation about the cyclical nature of growth and decay in ecology and human society. We wrap up our exploration of Doug Pagitt’s book, Church in the Inventive Age, with an in-depth examination of the Inventive Age and how it’s shaping our ideas, values, aesthetics and tools in powerful new ways. What defines shared sacred space in an age of virtual worlds and virtual lives? How does this new vision of religious organization and leadership lead us to more sustainable, eco-friendly spiritual traditions? And what are some of the potential problems that might arise as a result? Then, we look at the evolving nature of the American Dream and how it shapes the political and social landscape of whole generations.

This Weekend Pro episode is only available for our Pro Members. To learn more about becoming a Pro Member, click here.

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Links:

• Doug Pagitt’s website
• Church in the Inventive Age, by Doug Pagitt
• The Evolution of the American Dream

Music Credits:

• Opening and closing theme: “Dragonfly” by Brian Boyko
• “Father’s Footsteps,” by Derek Cornett

Art Credits:

• “Walking It Alonw,” by Lance Shields

© Faith, Fern & Compass, 2012. | Permalink | No comment
Post tags: American Dream, community, cycles, Doug Pagitt, emergence, history, industrial age, information age, inventive age, patterns