-
How Does Divination Work?
I pulled three ogham out of the leather pouch and laid them, one by one, onto the surface of my shrine. This divination would be the omen for all of the Solitary Druid Fellowship, a broad swatch of Pagandom that joined one another in a shared practice for the first time on the Winter Solstice. […]
-
Yule on HuffPost and the Question of Decentralization
What a week this has been. The SDF liturgy is live, and the response has been tremendous. I don’t have any way of knowing what the perspective is from every person participating, and I kind of prefer that for the moment. It may seem that I’m coordinating some massively social endeavor, but there is still […]
-
Liturgy And A Cocktail
Let me try to explain how I’m feeling right now. When I exhale, my breath shakes a little. Not the crying kind of shake, but almost the laughing kind of shake. My fingers are cold, which is partly on account of the freezingness of Colorado (and I’m using that word, regardless of what the auto-spell […]
-
The Solitary Druid Fellowship Lives!!
It is an exciting day in the world of Druidry and Pagandom! (For me, at least.) I’m happy to announce that the Solitary Druid Fellowship has launched! The Solitary Druid Fellowship, an extension of Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF) is live and running at SolitaryDruid.org. This has been a labor of love, and would not have been […]
-
I Read My Kid’s Tumblr, And I Cried.
I stumbled across my kid’s Tumblr. In 2012, that’s the equivalent of accidentally reading your kid’s journal, which he carefully stashed away in his sock drawer for you not to see. I scrolled down the page slowly, examining what it looks like inside my kid’s brain. I got to see which parts of pop-culture are […]
-
We Don’t Have Faith: We Make Agreements.
A couple weeks ago I wrote about creating the Solitary Druid Fellowship, an extension of ADF designed to serve the broader community of solitary Pagans and Druids by providing them with a shared liturgical practice. I’m currently in discussion with the Clergy Council of ADF to work out the final details of the site launch […]
-
Fragments of a Full Life
I tore it down. I tore it all down. I looked at my space, my little corner room, which is both an office and the home to my small shrine, and I realized that there was something wrong. There was something stale. It did not feel like a sacred space, like an active creative space. […]
-
Blood Sacrifices Are So Messy
My inbox over Thanksgiving weekend was flooded with talk of — you guessed it — blood sacrifices. The debate raged over whether making blood sacrifices, a practice strongly rejected by my tradition, ADF, is worth consideration. After all (the argument goes), the ancients did it. Plus, there’s a case being made for the awareness of […]
-
BUY NOTHING on Black Friday!!! Or, buy one of these books.
This is a strange day, Black Friday. One day after Americans give thanks for the blessings in their lives, hoards of deal-hungry shoppers rush out to (mostly) big-box stores, stomping over whomever is in their way, to acquire more things. The pilgrims would be — what? Confused? Bewildered? A little terrified, perhaps? I know I’m all of […]
-
Letters on BITG: Bringing Druidry and Druidism Into Balance
Letters is a series on Bishop In The Grove that allows readers to initiate the dialogue. Submit your letter on the Letters page, and it may be chosen to be included in a future post. This first post in the series is centered around bringing Druidry and Druidism into balance. “You’ve talked before about wanting […]
-
Serving Solitary Pagans: An Experiment in Liturgy
In September of this year, I submitted an application to start my own ADF protogrove for solitary Pagans. I planned on calling it, Sojourner’s Protogrove. Protogroves are the precursor to fully-chartered groves within the ADF organization, and their main responsibility (as with groves) is to provide public rituals for each of the eight High Days […]
-
In Search Of Context
I went to a Unitarian Universalist church this past weekend. After several weeks of intense blogging I felt exhausted, emotionally. With all of the new traffic to BITG, there has been a wave of new readers who have no context for why I write or who I am. Without context, without a sense of where […]
-
How Does Paganism Reconcile Pagan Bureaucracy?
I’m coming to terms with the truth about why I left the Church. It wasn’t that I had an experience of deity that fell outside of the Church’s teaching. That would come later. My experience of God was always mysterious, never concrete. I was taught that one could, if centered and open, feel a presence […]
-
HuffPost Live Paganism Roundtable Followup
If you missed yesterday’s HuffPost Live Paganism roundtable with me, Amy Blackthorn, Gus DiZerega, Morgan Copeland and Patrick McCollum, you can watch it here: We covered a fair bit of ground in the brief time we had allotted, and it was an honor to be seated beside (digitally speaking) so many interesting thought-leaders and organizers […]
-
I’m Not An Expert On Paganism, But I Play One On The Internet
I’m not an expert on Paganism. If you’ve spent any time here on Bishop In The Grove you’ll know that being an expert on Paganism wasn’t why I got into blogging. I blog in order to be a better student. I ask a lot of questions. I point out the things that are curious to me or that […]
-
Heartfelt Thanks And A Call For Letters
This has been a challenging week. My post on Monday transformed this blog into a dynamic, charged space. The reactions and responses to my account of the PPD ritual covered the whole spectrum of human emotion, and reading them took me on quite a ride. Today, I’d like to simply offer my heartfelt thanks to […]
-
My Pagan Pride Day Post Went Meta
One of the most valuable contributions to the conversation around my Pagan Pride Day post came from a single commenter, who I’ll leave unnamed. He joined the comment thread and my Pagan Pride Day post went meta, because he gave me cause to take a closer look at the function of this blog, and the […]
-
I Felt Ashamed At Pagan Pride
The circle. The circle is fundamental. This simple shape, along with the square and the triangle, introduces our early minds to geometry, to symmetry, to physical and social design. This past weekend I felt ashamed at Pagan Pride on account of a circle. My body helped form the edge of a circle. My body stood […]
-
Keep Paganism Weird
Ever been to Austin? If you have, you’ll recognize the title of this post, Keep Paganism Weird, as a variation of the city’s popular catch phrase. Plastered on buildings and bumper stickers is a reminder that Austin has a history of wild, weird culture, and that it’s important that the young’ins continue the cultural tradition […]
-
A Daily Practice Matters
This morning we slept in until 7:30. That may not seem incredibly early to some (it isn’t all that early for my husband and I), but it’s a vacation compared to the day of surgery and the first day of recovery. We woke to discover that my kid was experiencing some sharp pain, a common […]
-
Gender Essentialism is a Problem, Pagans.
Inspired by a comment posted on Trans Is A Teacher For All Of Us, I posted the following status update to Facebook: “I wonder how my Wiccan friends might respond to the idea that the Lord and Lady gave us our form, or that a trans person transitioning is the greatest insult to them.” The […]
