Monthly Archives: November 2011

The creative process fascinates me. Not just the finished products that artists produce, but the ways in which we go about producing them, and deciding to produce them in the first place. I especially love creative interplay between artists and forms.

One quiet evening, during a game of Wise and Otherwise, I came up with something like, “The night of Autumn walks with the morning of Winter.” Intrigued by the line, Leora drew a picture of two women walking through a forest: the night of Autumn and the morning of Winter. That drawing, in turn, led me to start writing a story about two women, the personifications of Autumn and Winter, walking through the forest of Time. The story remains unfinished, but Leora’s already said that, when I finish it, she might be inspired to add further illustrations.

I tell you all of this because of Jessica Prescott. Jessica is a North Carolina-based ecologist, crochet designer, and poet, and a reader of No Unsacred Place. A couple days ago, Jessica dropped a note to say that my most recent NUP post, “S and R Dance On”,, and the astronomical event that inspired it, have now inspired her to write the poem “Stars in Love”.

I love the dance of the creative process, and the way that artists, even without having the chance to meet in person, can inform and play off of each other, shifting and transforming an inspiration into something new at every turn, making, unmaking, and remaking. Much like the Cosmos itself.

Leora and I don’t much give Winter Solstice gifts. To avoid the consumerist insanity that often accompanies the winter holidays, we give gifts to each other and Leora’s family at Samhain, while with my family, we focus on birthdays. So I had to giggle when Cara Schulz of the Pagan Newswire Collective’s Minnesota bureau contacted me for a feature on Solstice gift-giving suggestions.

Still, a good gift is a good gift, whether it comes at the end of December or the end of October, and I think I made a pretty good choice.

PNC Solstice Gift Picks

On a naturalistic Paganism list I belong to, the conversation turned to aspecting, a fairly common practice in the Reclaiming tradition (of which I am a practitioner), among others. Aspecting is a way of allowing a deity, spirit, or other entity or even a characteristic, such as Love or Joy, to speak through a person, and it can be a very powerful magical and ritual tool.

The question arose of how those of us of a naturalistic mindset, who do not necessarily believe in the external existence of deities, handle an experience like that. I dashed off a response detailing my own history with aspecting and why it still works for me, even though I don’t believe in gods and goddesses as literal beings out there somewhere. A few weeks later, B. T. Newberg, blogmaster of the remarkable Humanist Paganism blog, asked if I would let him publish it as a guest post. I consented with great joy, and the post appears today.

Deities as Role Models at Humanistic Paganism.

A tragic love story about binary stars? It must be “Restorying the Sacred” time at No Unsacred Place.

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics press release regarding the star called SDSS J090745.0+24507 and its ill-fated companion was issued in 2005, but I don’t think I found out about it until later, maybe sometime in 2007. Ever since, I’ve wanted to “do” something with the story, but nothing’s ever been quite right. Finally I realized that that’s because I’ve been trying to write about the item, when what I really wanted to do was rewrite it as a narrative, offering it to the world in a way that lets everyone know why it affected me so deeply. I’m honored to at last have had a chance to do so.

My first “official” post at No Unsacred Place is up. It honors the recent passing of Minnesota Public Radio’s Tom Keith and his role in creating my personal story of Minnesota.

I realize that the broad readership of NUP might not be familiar with Mr. Keith, so here’s a bit of MPR’s coverage at the time of his death:

*A Montage of Tom Keith’s work
*Tom Keith, a showman but not a showoff, a commentary by Keith’s long-time Morning Show co-host Dale Connelly.

With delight and humbled awe, I come to tell you that I have been chosen as a staff writer for No Unsacred Place, the science and nature blog of the Pagan Newswire Collective!

I will be embarking on an adventure called “Restorying the Sacred”, in which I will explore myth-making and storytelling and how the creation of new sacred stories can help modern Pagans connect to their now and here.

Neoshamanic practitioner and writer Lupa will also be joining NUP, taking over the “Earthly Rites” column.

I am more thrilled than I can say and hope you’ll join me on this new adventure!