You can be a Christian if you believe that Jesus was the son of the Christian god and that he died to save you from your sins. And even if you only go to church on Easter and Christmas, and even if you seldom pray to the Christian god, well, you’re a Christian. You’re maybe not a devout Christian, but you’re a Christian.
And you can be a Witch even if you only practice on the 8 Sabbats. There are a lot of Pagans like that. They go out into the woods or go to a festival on at least some of the Quarter and Cross Quarter days. They have a good time and a bit of an ecstatic experience, and then they go “back” to being average American consumers, people too busy watching tv, going to two jobs, feeding their kids, and cheering their sports teams to bother much with nature religion. And maybe they’re not devout Pagans, but they’re Pagans.
But some of us want more. I do. I want to be a Witch every minute of every day. Dreaming under my heavy covers. Waking up to another day of work, gardening, drinking tea picked by someone I’ll never know in a country far away, blogging, commuting, breathing, grounding, centering, going to the toy store with G/Son, doing conference calls, writing briefs, sitting at my altar, walking on the treadmill, visiting with family and friends, engaging in social networking, being a member of the body politic.
What does it mean: to be a member of a nature religion EVERY DAY and not just on the high holy days when you find yourself dancing naked in the forest (not that that’s anything but wonderful)? For me, it means, whenever it’s at all humanly possible, spending some time outside. I do bring some nature inside. There are potted plants in my office and my home. There are stones and feathers and a jar of rain water on my altar. There’s a fruit bowl on my kitchen counter and there’s a tiny cloth bag of elderberry blossoms hanging from the rear-view mirror of my car. But bringing nature inside is, IMHO, a poor substitute for taking myself out into nature and simply spending time, simply being in relationship.
I’m lucky to have a screen porch that lets me be “outside” even in rather extreme weather. I’ve wrapped up and gone out there in the worst blizzard of the last 80 years, in thunder and lightening, in some of the worst heat ever. And whenever the weather allows, I go outside and spend time at my altar rock, deep in my woodland garden, surrounded by Japanese temple pines, an ancient maple tree, magnolias, ferns, toad lilies, voodoo lilies, day lilies, and butterbur. I do a lot of my magic out there. I often do my daily practice out there. I do Hecate’s deipnon out there.
In addition, having a garden is a practical way for me to be in regular relationship with nature, to practice a nature religion. Lately, my rain barrel has been acting up and, yes, for me, going out, stretching out on the damp ground under the euonymus bush, and fidgeting with the hose and valve of the rain barrel is my version of Matins. Laying the river stones, marked with runes, to make paths through my herb bed is as sacred a practice for me as praying the rosary is for a Catholic nun. Pulling the wood sorrel out of the rain-loosened ground is my version of preaching the gospel. (Repent! Wood sorrel! Repent! Go thou and do not infest Hecate’s herb bed, this I say unto you!) Feeding the squirrels who live here and the multiple families of cardinals, the bossy blue jays, the really stupid morning doves, the robins who show up for every watering of the garden is as sacred to me as doing good works is for any Christian.
My day begins in the middle of my garden, having breakfast on the porch. It ends in my garden, pulling weeds, spreading mulch, moving the sprinkler, wrapping a shawl over my bathrobe and going out one more time to see the stars, the Moon, the garden at night. In between, I drive beside the beautiful Potomac River to go to work, water the potted plants in my office, send love to the fey-filled Spout Run.
How do you practice a nature religion? Are you able to do so in a city? A suburb? At the beach? In the mountains? How often are you able to do it?
I talk to every living thing I come in contact with. And many times I speak to “non-living” things like toilets. Right now I am trying to negotiate with a female squirrel who has gone from enjoying our stale cereal on the deck to chewing her way through our screen door, making her way into the kitchen and helping herself to snacks in our cupboards. I address her as Squirlene. I tell her that she can’t be an indoor pet. She must remain outdoors and wait for treats. So far she isn’t listening. And neither our male cat, who hangs out with her on the deck nor our male dog, who is afraid of her, do anything to thwart her incursions when I am not here.
My nature religion is my philosophy, my way of life. I do it in a city, in a townhouse with no yard, but two blocks from a park with a lake. During the summer, I’m outside more often than not – camping, four wheeling, hiking, picking up trash, having rituals in the park. During the winter, its really hard to get outside (and in Alaska the winter window is quite long) but I try to meditate, do yoga, say prayers to the Goddess, and spend time with my Pagan community. I surround myself with potted plants to bring the green inside. And I still go out every full moon and honor Her in the snow
Thank you for your post!
Thanks for the reminder. Every second should be filled with the gods of our choice, but I forget that. I get caught up in the mind/ego struggle and think I can run the show by myself, pretending I’m director, producer, and all the principals, when in reality all I have is a walk-on part. It’s a small part in the overall play, and all that’s required to perform it is to stay focused, to be present.
I clean the yard of the junk left by my hoarder father, the rust and the wood and the old cars and the iron and the oil and the poisons he left behind; and I harangue my sister into helping, as it’s her responsibility too, though she would wash her hands of it, and though a good deal of the mess, of the junk cars, is hers.
I harangue and yell at my mother from 600 miles away to take the kitten to the vet when she found it mostly dead one morning last week while I was away, and I curse and scream at her until she does it. Because if I didn’t she would not have bothered. That is damning but true. The kitten survived and is on his way to thriving again. May he long outlive my mother.
My classroom looks out on an asphalt parking lot and another wing of the school building. I’m not allowed to have live plants in my classroom. Someone could be allergic. Instead I hide crystals and feathers among my supplies. As for Nature, it comes abundantly into the room in the form of vibrant young people, each and every one of them an individual. I am not allowed to use terms of endearment towards them, so I call them my “lieblings.” It’s like working with a garden full of plants, and you don’t know how any of them will mature and grow, so you have to tend them all. This is my day. My Druid day.
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I live in a relatively urban environment where it is hard to find large swaths of “nature” outside of the suburban parkland. I find myself acknowledging that nature occurs even in the most urban of cities. There’s all sorts of wildlife that live in urban places – sparrows, pigeons, red-tailed hawks, falcons, bees, mice, and squirrels are a few good examples. There’s also sidewalk trees, urban gardens (container gardening, community gardens, etc.), plants that grow through the cracks in the sidewalks… Seeing those things and incorporating them into my structure of everyday spirituality is incredibly grounding and humbling.