Category: Community
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To Be Pagan Without Community
I spent the morning catching up with an “online” friend, forging a new “on ground” relationship. The internet is amazing, really. To be able to initiate these kinds of relationship and build community having only the context of Facebook or an e-mail forum is phenomenal. I’m a transplant to this town, and yet there are […]
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Faitheist: A Lesson for Pagans in Storytelling
Faitheist serves as an example to Pagans, polytheists, Witches, Druids and Heathens (I think it’s time we get our own LGBTQAI abbreve, no?) of the impact and power that storytelling can have on furthering our ideals. Browse the bookshelf at a local metaphysical bookstore, and you will find book after book which explains the hows […]
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Where Does Love Fit into Pagan and Polytheist Traditions?
I am not a Christian, but I have no problem with placing love at the center of my religious ideology. (That I should feel the need to qualify the centrality of love with an “I am not” statement is notable.) When I check in with my desire, my deepest yearning, I discover love. It’s there, […]
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Faitheist: A Quest for Meaning Within Reason
Welcome to the first Bishop In The Grove book club discussion about our February book, Faitheist, by Chris Stedman! Let’s get something out on the table: I have never done a book club before. As such, I’m kind of winging it. My hope is that it can be informal, conversational, and ongoing; I envision there […]
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A Blessed Imbolc, and a New Book Club!
Blessed Imbolc to all! In case you missed it, I published an Imbolc post on HuffPost Religion called A Faith Made of Fire. Check it out, and feel free to leave a comment there if you feel so inspired. After a wonderful round of comments on my last post, I’m happy to announce that we’re moving forward with […]
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Brainstorming and Crowdsourcing a BITG Book Club
I’m starting a book club. The Bishop In The Grove Book Club. Cool, right? For those who are keeping track of the number of projects mounting on my desk, the thought of one more new endeavor probably seems like insanity. But I don’t care. I think a book club sounds like fun. I could use a dose of […]
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Keeping Vigil to the Fire, Again
In a week I will publish the next Solitary Druid Fellowship liturgy. This morning, I spent some time going over the previous one, seeing where small adjustments might be made and looking for places where supplemental material would be useful. It’s been interesting to take on this position, which is a little like leadership, but […]
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Privilege: The Other “P” Word
Yesterday I said, “Be nice.” Perhaps encouraging nicety is not the right approach. Perhaps to say “be nice” is too simplistic, and worse, reads very much like, “Hush now, your problems are not important,” or, “You are making me uncomfortable with your anger,” or “There really isn’t that much to be angry about, so can’t you […]
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Be Nice, Pagans. Be Nice Polytheists. Be Nice.
I had occasion to speak to a very nice, young man last week about online etiquette. For me, what it boils down to is this: Be nice. It may seem simplistic, or perhaps reductive to some. But, I think it’s a good rule. Be nice when you talk to people, whether you know them or […]
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Top of the Week at BITG
Top of the week to you! This week is starting off with a whole bunch of Internet happenings. First, it seems that my RSS Email subscribers haven’t been receiving my blog posts since mid-December. Sorry everyone. Here’s what you missed: I wrote a post on Yule at HuffPost, and we talked about decentralization. After pulling […]
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A New Year’s Blessing from Teo
On this, the last day of 2012, New Year’s Eve, I offer you these words: May you look back on the year, and feel a sense pride. May you remember the strength of your character, the resilience of your spirit, and the inherent worth of your being. May you know that you are a part […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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How Do We Respond to Conflict in Pagan Communities?
Paganism, on the surface, seems like a retreat from the challenges posed by organized religion. Our great, mostly-pentacle-shaped umbrella, under which all shades, shapes and sizes of earth loving, god or goddess invoking creatures rest, looks to the untrained eye like a respite from bureaucracy, miscommunication, and any of the other ills of “The Church.” It […]
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WAKE UP, PAGANS! The End is Here!
I think “eschatology” is a funny word. Speaking it out loud makes potty-jokes come to mind. Say it, and I remember being 5. The definition of eschatology, “the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind,” is much less funny. It, one might say, is a […]
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The Problem of the Pagan “Us and Them”
When I questioned the place of compassion in Pagan and Polytheist philosophy a couple of weeks back, I got an interesting response from one of my readers, “LaurelhurstLiberal”. She wrote, “Now, about compassion: as a Heathen Reconstructionist, this is one of the big questions I’m still trying to puzzle out. Right now, it seems to […]
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Where Does Compassion Belong Among Pagans and Polytheists?
I’m having a hard time with compassion. So far, I’ve developed a daily ritual at my altar, I’ve reconciled (for the time being) my differences with my Christianity, I’m working to hold the tension between my Druid Revival leanings and my ADF approach, and all of that feels good. I feel like I’m developing a […]