This short sermon was offered to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Frederick on Sunday, April 23rd. When I’m in emotional pain, I seek the outdoors. I grew up here in Frederick, which means that throughout the region I have special places I go to find solace – certain boulders at Cunningham Falls, the far edge…
Tag: cuups
This sermon was offered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Frederick on Sunday, July 10th, after my the ceremony that made me a Commissioned Lay Minister. I remember the moment it happened. The exact moment I accepted my call to service. I was just a kid – nine or ten years old. There was…
When the world gets scary, the comfort of home becomes even more important. We need places where we can let our guard down – where the hypervigilance so many of us adopted during the pandemic can ease a little bit. For a lot of us, relaxing has become difficult. Devices that keep us connected to…
I will never forget the first time I heard the music from the Pure Moods album in the early 90s. I was a tweeny and my parents brought home a copy of the CD. I clearly remember dancing around the living room while listening to it. I needed to move my body in order to…
Within the world of agriculture, there is a vital part of crop growing known as letting land “lie fallow.” To fallow a piece of earth is to leave it deliberately unsown – to let it rest. This time of rest allows more fertility to gather in the soil, guaranteeing a better crop later. It is…
The intersections of older spiritual practices and modern life are interesting and complex. Halloween season is a bubbling brew of history, belief, contemporary attitudes and goofy good times. Within paganism, the world of Earth-centered spirituality, October is the season of the ancestors and contains our New Year on the 31st. Our cycle ends, and then…
Sometime during summer, I go a little dormant. The high heat and humidity where I live in the mid-Atlantic weighs heavily on me. I begin to drift, to slip into the doldrums. I tend to slide out of my patterns of practice and choose checking out rather than dialing in. I go through the motions…
If it seems like the people around you are more volatile than usual, you’re not alone. Over the past month I’ve stood on the sidelines as multiple relationships around me caught fire in various ways. The stress of over a year’s worth of pandemic concerns and the whiplash of relief to restriction is applying pressure…
I was recently interviewed by Sam Arthen-Long for the The EarthSpirit Community‘s EarthSpirit Voices podcast. Our conversation is wide ranging – witchcraft, spirituality, community service, Kindred Crow, and so much more. Give it a listen here.
Sometimes I hit a nerve. Last week, I released a new tarot spread for getting back on track after life has really shaken up your snow globe. It can be tough to find our center, or to even know where all the pieces should go, after a period of intense change and chaos. The response…