For the last five years, September has had one specific focus for me – the Pagan Pride Day festival. Like many CUUPS chapters, my own chapter hosts an annual Pagan Pride Day in Frederick, MD. I have had the honor being the lead organizer since our inception. We have been fortunate – our festival has…
Tag: holidays
This sermon was for the August 2nd, 2020, service of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Frederick. Sermon text below: My day begins in the garden right now. I hand water my vegetables, fruit, and flowers with water from rain barrels. There are more efficient ways to water a garden, but I’ve discovered that hand watering…
“For many of us, the prospect of multiple family gatherings over the next couple months can be anxiety-inducing. Add shopping, holiday parties, school obligations and packed grocery stores, and we have the ingredients for a very stressful season. The good news is that we know it’s coming, which means we can prepare for it. So…
October 31st marks one of the High Holidays in the widely-used Pagan Wheel of the Year – Samhain. Out of all our holidays, I’d say this one gets the most press. Our celebration of the end of the growing season coincides with all that is spooky in the larger culture. This time of endings in…
“The green world around us will appear to slip into death or sleep. The truth, of course, is that deep beneath the winter soil, the plant spirits are recovering: healing, resting, growing and rooting deep for their rise in springtime. When we follow the cycle of the inward spiral, we can take advantage of the…
I am today’s guest writer on the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans Patheos blog. “It’s bad right now. The news is a horror show of atrocities and it seems like anytime we find a brief moment to breathe, another earth-shattering round of violence explodes across the networks. Our social media feeds are often just as…
The Wheel of the Year just passed August 1st, a cross-quarter day for most of the Pagan world. On August 1st, we honor the halfway mark between the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal Equinox. Two of the most common names we see for observances at this time are Lammas and Lughnassadh. Lammas translates to loaf-mass…
This past Sunday, I had the privilege of speaking to the Sugarloaf Congregation of Unitarian Universalists. The video recording and text of my sermon is below. As always, if you have any thoughts to share, I’d be happy to hear from you. Hit me up in the comments. My name is Irene, and I am…
Today’s offering is a guest blog on Nature’s Sacred Journey, the CUUPS Patheos blog: “Midsummer offers us the longest day of the year – a golden gift of sunlight and warmth. How will you say thank you this year? How will you deepen into this season of abundance and growth?” Click here to read more.
Here in the mid-Atlantic, festival season is in full bloom. There are so many events going on that it’s impossible to go to everything I want to attend and also live anything resembling a normal life. And that’s a real shame since I LOVE festivals. Over the years I’ve had the great fortune to attend…