THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

 

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Event links mentioned and transcripts:

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Atheopagan Saturday Mixer - June 5 - 10:15am PDT:  https://www.facebook.com/events/748671529133222/?acontext=%7B%22event_action_history%22%3A[%7B%22surface%22%3A%22group%22%7D]%7D

 

Atheopagan Sex Salon:  https://www.facebook.com/events/458783078686816/?acontext=%7B%22event_action_history%22%3A[%7B%22surface%22%3A%22group%22%7D]%7D

 

Free Spirit Gathering 2021 Online: https://www.fsgonline.org

 

S2E20 TRANSCRIPT:

Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder: Science-Based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts, Mark. 

Yucca: And I'm Yucca.. 

Mark: Today we're going to talk about the reopening after the waning of the COVID-19 pandemic obviously the pandemic isn't over and there are certainly causes for concern in many places about reopening too soon or places elsewhere in the world where the, the pandemic is still very much raging but in many parts of the United States with the advent of the vaccination and so forth we're talking about reopening and going back to some of the activities that we weren't able to do during the shutdowns. And so today we're going to talk about that and what we think it means for us and what we'd like to retain from what we learned during the pandemic and some hopes for what we'll get to do soon.

Yucca: We certainly are not saying that the pandemic is over or that it's gone or anything like that, but we're in such a different place than we were a year ago today. We're just looking at very different futures. And. I would still really encourage people to be very, very thoughtful about their activities.

But knowing that, if you've got the vaccine, if you're going to go spend time with people who also have been vaccinated, that the options of how to be safe are much, much greater than they used to be. Yeah. 

Mark: Yes. I mean, we all know what the safe practices are now, you know, wear a mask, practice, safe social distancing, wash your hands. Particularly if you're not feeling well put a mask on and try to avoid contact with other people. It's not rocket science. And it works. We know that it works not only because we had far fewer fatalities from COVID than we would have if we hadn't shut down by a factor of hundreds of thousands of deaths.

But also because we have indicators from other diseases that were stopped in their tracks last year, I was, we were just talking Before we were recording and the United States only had 2,300 cases of flu last year that were reported. Now, ordinarily we have 32,000 deaths from flu and millions of cases, but there were only 2300 cases reported throughout the entire country.

So that's social distancing and mask wearing prevented people from transmitting influenza, which is a deadly disease.

Yucca: Yeah. And in our household, our immediate household of four, which includes two very young children, we weren't sick at all.  And with little people are very good at getting sick and spreading sicknesses, nothing. And. That's because we, they weren't sharing snot with their, with other children.

That's a big one. Right. But we also, weren't taking them to stores where they would be touching the shopping carts and then putting their hands in their mouths and then jumping on top of grownups and coughing in their faces, which is just all normal primate behavior. right.

Mark: Right, right. Nothing wrong with it. And actually it does help to build a stronger immune systems in children to be exposed to a lot of different contaminants like that when they're very young. But of course, when something, this deadly is going around, you kind of have to make that take a back seat to safety.

Yucca: Yeah, so we said eat plenty of dirt. 

Mark: Okay

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

S2E19 TRANSCRIPT:

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[00:00:00] Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder: Science-based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts Yucca 

Mark: and I'm the other one, Mark.

Yucca: And this week we are talking about slowing down, centering, paying attention, really valuing that stillness. 

Mark: Yes, because if we are, if we, as nature-based pagans are going to build a relationship with the world, we have to be able to see it. We have to pay attention to it so that we're not relating to an idea of the world we're relating to the actual world as it's going on around us.

Yucca: Exactly. And when we say, see, we don't just mean sight, we don't just mean physical sight, but experience the real world 

Mark: Yes. Yes.

Yucca: and in a way that allows us to be present with the biosphere, with what's actually going on around us, but also with the symbolic meaning with poetry and art and all of that richness of existence. 

Mark: yes. So I'm going to start out today's podcast with a poem, which is actually called invoking a book. But I'm going to call this Invoking a Podcast today,

Bathe with vervain.

Walk naked, counting 13 steps, 13 more,

Cool feet padding to the circle place. Turn three times around,

Place a pinch of dried Oak leaves there on the brazier

Soft plumes of sweet autumn scent and the memory of a forest. 

A tiny bead of Dragon's blood for mystery, and just perhaps

frankincense to call what threadbare gods there may be left.

Now the cauldron: odd for such a particular art, no liquid is defined,

Only double and bubble and herbs resembling creature bits, but we know:

wine. Alchemy of soil and rain and sun

Gone stiff and wild in the barrel. Pour it in, brew, fumes rising and stir

saying earth, air, water, fire, burn, and cauldron bubble. 

And then add the particular things.

A twig, a button, salt, and oil of Cedar.

Place left hand on your sex. Whisper the wish three times and stir, saying

Earth and sky. Let it be so. Let it be so.

Let cool. 

Tomorrow you will pour into cool dark earth saying

it is finished. It is finished. It is magic. It is done

Repeat.

Yucca: so beautiful. 

Mark: Thank you. Thank you. I wrote that because creativity requires a jumpstart sometimes. I do a lot of writing and various other creative things. And sometimes the pump is just definitely not primed. You know, you sit there and you confront the blank screen or the blank page, and then there's nothing there.

And so becoming connected. With what's around us becoming present in the moment becomes a process that can lead me to tap my creativity and celebrate those things that I'm feeling in the moment. That's my experience of poetry a lot actually is moments of hyper presence that I then captured with words.

So we've been talking about paying attention and we've alluded to this in the podcast before, but we live in a world wherever everything has been speeded up to unnatural rates: the world of the screen, where you get instantaneous gratification after clicking on a mouse. And of course we want faster and faster internet don't we?

Yucca: And it's not even mouse anymore for most folks. It's the screen in our pockets. 

Mark: yes. 

Yucca: Hey, it's your thumb? 

Mark: it's just a finger touch. That's all it is. And that can be and that swipe can mean everything from ordering a refrigerator to be delivered to your house. To agreeing to a date, to any of a wide variety of different sorts of things that are now mediated by these screens. And the natural world moves both faster than that and slower than thatt i

At its smallest scales, it moves much more quickly. But at the scale that we live at here in the world, There's a cycle and it's about a year long. And every day is only about 3% of that, that long annual cycle that, that passes around. And so it's really incumbent on us to slow ourselves down and do what's called the phonology, which is paying attention to

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

S2E18 TRANSCRIPT:

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Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark.

Yucca: And I'm Yucca.

Mark: And today we are going to talk about the first four of the 13 atheopagan principles, which are embraced by those who follow the non theist pagan path of atheopaganism, which you can find much more. [email protected].

These are ethical principles which are designed to help us guide our decision-making and how we live in our lives. They're not commandments they're virtues and there are things that we aspire to. So that's what we'll be talking about today.

Yucca: And as always sharing this is not a saying. Like Mark, you were saying, this is not a commandment. This is not a saying you need to see the world in the exact same way that we do, right. This is us talking about it's this is a useful framework for us. Let's dive into what these concepts are, what these principles are and how they enrich our lives and experience as pagans in the modern world.

Mark: Yes. For a couple of reasons, one of them kind of additive and one sort of subtractive in the additive sense just as we did. Episode on the four pillars, a couple of episodes ago, the four pillars of atheopagan ism, which are the four sacred things. These principles are sort of derived from the four sacred things that is, if you believe that those four things are sacred, then you will conduct yourself according to these principles.

There's a logic there.

Yucca: They really feed into each other.

Mark: exactly. And so. What this does for us is it gives us an ethical framework that helps us, especially when dealing with thorny situational questions that are complex. We can ask ourselves, how does this square with these principles? I've embraced? How, you know, how do I best make a decision?

That is in accordance with these guidelines. So that's sort of the additive sense. The other is the subtractive sense is that paganism has often been accused of being very weak in the world way of ethical development. There's a lot of, I have rights and I'm free and I'm going to do whatever I want because I'm free.

And there's very little, well, there, you have to respect other beings and you have to be considerate about causing damage in the world and you have to be, you know, all those sorts of things

Yucca: The responsibilities that come hand in hand with those rights.

Mark: Precisely. And so, so when I was developing atheopaganism as a pagan path, one of the things that I really wanted to address was that paucity of ethical guidance and the atheopagan principles and the four sacred pillars are the results of that work.

So today we're going to dive into the first four of the 13 atheopagan principles and we'll come back to the rest in subsequent episodes. Not all at once. We'll put some interruptions in between the principles episodes so that we have some variety. But I think this'll be a really great conversation about what we see as important in terms of perspective and behave.

If you're in the world.

Yucca: Just on a structural level. I really appreciate it being 13. That's really fun. There's the 13 moons and the one solar year. And I think it was somebody on the Facebook group who suggested applying the principles to the full moons.

Mark: yes. Which was just a wonderful idea. I was so excited about it. We've just had the laughter moon and which is the perspective moon. And we'll be coming up soon on the Praxis moon, which is the regular well, we'll talk about that. When we talk about principle five But having 13, this is kind of a magic number for pagans because of the 13 moon cycles.

And it's a prime and it's just got all those

Yucca: just a fun number.

Mark: it is,

Yucca: That's great.

Mark: kind of number And so as I worked up these principles and then kind of arrived at the end of the list and realized that I think I've covered everything

Atheopagan Zoom Events:

https://atheopaganism.wordpress.com/2021/05/04/please-join-us-for-zoom-events/

Food psych podcast mentioned, by Christy Harrison: christyharrison.com

 

A few food and sustainability podcast resources:

Sustainable Dish: https://sustainabledish.com/podcasts/

Regenerative Agriculture Podcast: http://regenerativeagriculturepodcast.com

 

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

 

S2E17 TRANSCRIPT:

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Food

Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-Based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts Yucca.

Mark: And I'm the other one, Mark.

Yucca: And this week we are talking about food. And there's a lot of different directions to go with this topic, but it was actually inspired by the topic from this mornings atheopagan zoom mixer. So do you want to touch on that Mark?

Mark: Sure be happy to the atheopagan Facebook community holds a zoom in-person mixer every Saturday morning at 10:15 Pacific time. And it's It's something that you, as a theist pagan are welcome to check out. If you go to atheopagan ism.org, there is a post up right now that invites you to various zoom mix, various zoom activities that the community is doing.

And so the links are there.

Yucca: I'll put a link to that post in the show notes

Mark: perfect.

Yucca: so that everyone can click on that. Yeah.

Mark: We We didn't really have a pre-set discussion topic for today's mixer, but we stumbled into this conversation about our personal relationships with food and with eating and all of the sort of issues around that. And the reason why that is pertinent from a pagan standpoint is that paganism.

To a large degree is about liberation from the over culture. It's about getting those kind of disempowering authoritarian anti pleasure. Anti-sexual anti-women anti gay, anti black. Frameworks off of us to as great a degree as we possibly can and being liberated as people as a result. And so this conversation.

I mean, it was just really lovely and everybody had something to contribute to it. And we don't really talk about our relationship with food. Very much. We get bombarded with messages, but we really don't talk about it much. And so I thought that for Yucca and me to have a conversation today about that would make an interesting post an interesting podcast for you folks to listen to.

Yucca: Yeah. And so I wasn't present for this conversation this morning. But I think in addition to what you've just said, Mark, about, about paganism often being about this liberation, there's also a component of it being about connection. Connection with our world with the rest of nature. And food is one of those ways that we are connected.

This is the primary way in which we relate to the rest of the biosphere food webs that's and no matter what choices we're making, we're tied in that way. And so there's a lot of. Really interesting directions to explore with that.

Mark: Yes, I think so too. And we, I mean, we really only scratched the surface too, to some degree, much of what we were talking about in the mixer this morning had to do with people's individual feelings around eating. And we touched some on the dreaded D word dieting and the. You know, how hungry people feel.

At various times, some people don't, aren't very able to detect when they're hungry. I'm one of those, and I'll talk about that more later. Other people feel hungry all the time and have a hard time differentiating when it's that their body really needs the food. And when it's that it doesn't. So there.

Are some there are just some very interesting ways that all of this can go. And we're going to explore some of that today.

Yucca: This topic could be its own podcast. It could be its own weekly podcast of paganism and food, but we're going to try and handle it a little bit today and jump into that.

Mark: There is actually a podcast that I'm going to mention later that was brought up by someone in the zoom. I'm opening the chat now and I'

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

If you enjoy the podcast and would like to help us reach more ears, please consider leaving a rating or review on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-wonder-science-based-paganism/id1501228156

 

S2E16 TRANSCRIPT:

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[00:00:00] Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-Based Paganism. My name's Mark. And I'm one of your hosts.

Yucca: And I'm Yucca.

Mark: Yeah. And today we are going to talk about non theist pagan values. And specifically we're going to be exploring the value framework within atheopagan ism, which are called the four sacred pillars.

But first we're going to have to talk about what is sacred mean.

Yucca: And that's a big one. So. One of the things that pagans often get asked is, well, how do you know what's sacred? Or how do you decide what's sacred? If you don't have a book to tell you that, or if you are part of a tradition in paganism that doesn't have a set, defined belief around that, how do you do that?

Mark: Right. And one of [00:01:00] the criticisms that has been leveled at modern Neo paganism, mostly by, you know, conventional monotheists, but also by some other people who are closer into that community is that it doesn't have a robust ethical framework. There is. You know, w we're accused by conservative Christians of having no values and no morals and therefore, you know, being able to be rapists and murderers because there's no God to punish us and threaten us with hell.

Now as a skeptic, just on the face of that, that's a pretty remarkable set of claims that I would love to see some real evidence for, but beyond that I think that it's fair to say that because the modern neopagan movement grew in association with counter-cultural movements, that there has been a real emphasis [00:02:00] on rights and freedoms and not nearly as much emphasis on responsibilities. And what what an ethical framework outlines for you is what are you responsible to? What are you responsible for doing what is a value? What deserves service what kinds of behaviors are acceptable and what kind of behaviors are not? And pagans, to be honest, don't have much of that. There is the three-fold law, which is roundly rejected by many pagans.

The idea being that whatever you put out into the world comes back to you times three, which. It's very loosey goosey to begin with. I'd be real interested to hear an explanation of what the mechanism of that is supposed to be. And more than that, it's still doesn't really hold you accountable for specific kinds of behavior and specific responsibilities to other beings.

[00:03:00] Yucca: There's also the do no harm, you know, and if you do no harm, do you will something along that?

Mark: Right. And every action creates change and some of that change will be negative to some actor involved with it. So the idea of not doing harm becomes almost irrelevant because it's meaningless.

Yucca: Yeah, well, you get into the, what is harm and to whom, right? What are, who are you talking about? What you've got to really start defining what you're talking about. So something like that is just so broad that it, as you're saying becomes somewhat meaningless

Mark: Yes. And of course there are many pagans who simply reject both of those rules to begin with and their whole deal is I'll do whatever I want, according to my own value judgments in the moment. And. There's nothing inherently wrong with that [00:04:00] necessarily, except that situational ethics without any kind of guidelines can really get you in trouble sometimes because all of us have confirmation bias towards what we really want to do in the first place.

Right. Desire is a thing. So it's it becomes problematic that if you haven't actually explored this question of what's important. What kind of person should I be? How should I interact with others? What is my broader responsibility to the society I live in to the ecosyste

https://atheopaganism.wordpress.com/2019/04/10/may-celebrations-that-arent-about-sex/

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

If you enjoy the podcast and would like to help us reach more ears, please consider leaving a rating or review on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-wonder-science-based-paganism/id1501228156

 

S2E15 TRANSCRIPT:

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Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm your host Yucca.

Mark: I'm Mark.

Yucca: And today we are talking about Beltane, May Day, Gwanwyn, whatever it is that you call it for where those of us in the Northern hemisphere coming into spring.

Mark: Yes. Or depending on how you count it coming into summer, because during the Renaissance, this was considered the beginning of summer, there are all these madrigals about, you know, the beginning of, of summer for the wonderful one of Maine. And that of course is because they were in the middle of what's called the little ice age and What they considered summer.

Wasn't exactly what we consider summer a day that reaches 60 degrees was, was ball money in those days. And they were very happy to have them. So when may rolled around, it was a time when people started feeling like they weren't trapped indoors all the time.

Yucca: Yeah. And that a lot of the agriculture side could really pick up. And until very, very recently, the majority of the human population was involved in agriculture. The fact that today it's a minority is a, is really, I think this is the only time in history since we have been doing agriculture, that that has been the case.

Mark: Yes. Yes. With the, with the innovation of agriculture and concentration of populations in cities. So-called civilization. That's what we've been doing until the advent of industrial capitalism and the, the industrial farming and all the things that go along with that.

Yucca: Yeah. So really the 20th, the beginning of the 20th century into the little bit into the med, but let's, let's talk about what this holiday is to each of us and what it is on a. Larger community level.

Mark: Okay.

Yucca: Yeah. So Mark, what is happening in your climate right now? It's been spring for a while,

Mark: Yeah, but it's still lovely. It's where we are starting the beginning of the Marine fog cycle, which means that if we have a couple of days of heat, which to this point has only meant into the eighties or so. Then what will happen is that there will be an upwelling inland because of the heat. The air is expanding and therefore there's a low pressure zone and it pulls the cooler moisture Laden Marine.

Layer in from the ocean and we get fog and it cools everything down for a couple of days. And so there's this cycle of 55 degree days and then sort of 80 degree days. And then sort of maybe you get a little bit of heat, but then the fog comes in really aggressively. It's fantastic for growing things.

To my understanding Sonoma County is considered one of the most fertile places in the world. You can grow almost anything here. The the only exception are tropical plants that won't make it like coffee and pineapple and things like that. But even bananas I've, I've seen, I have seen a banana tree.

I have no idea whether it actually generates any bananas or not, but it is a banana tree. So right now the, the fruit trees have mostly finished. Blooming, but there are still some blooms on them. Some of them are now, you know, starting the process of creating fruit. I've just finished working at a plant sale for my organization, a fundraiser for the last couple of days.

And so all these little sprouted starts of tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers and summer squash and winter squash and leaf vegetables and flowers and all these things. I've really kind of been up to my elbows in it for, for a couple of days. And it reminds me that this is really the time in my region when people are putting in gardens.

We had the most amazing ex

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

 

If you enjoy the podcast and would like to help us reach more ears, please consider leaving a rating or review on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-wonder-science-based-paganism/id1501228156

 

 

S2E14 TRANSCRIPT:

----more----Mark: Welcome back to the wonders. Science-Based Paganism. I'm your host Mark.

Yucca: And I'm Yucca.

Mark: And today we are going to talk about boundaries. Really important concept for relationships and for our mental health, a really important concept for a practicing rituals with one another. Just basically an important concept to be aware of and to have tools in the kit to be able to manifest when necessary in your life.

Yucca: Exactly and something very important to keep in mind. As we move into the season of Beltane. This is something that can come up maybe a little bit less this year when there will be fewer in-person gatherings, but still just to a critical concept.

Mark: Right. And in my experience in going to festivals in the pagan community and so forth there is that kind of American mistake of being really amped about our rights and freedoms and maybe not so focused on our responsibilities. And I feel as though the way that we can have healthy lusty play and all that kind of stuff is for people to get really good with the concept of boundaries. Very, very clear about the concept of consent,

Yucca: Yes.

Mark: Because what consent is saying this behavior that we are engaging in together is within the boundary of what I consider to be okay. And that's very different than, well, I'm going to figure that out later or,

Yucca: I'm just not going to think about it.

Mark: going to think about it. Yeah.

All of those kinds of things, which are very problematic and fundamentally mean that that whatever behavior you're involved in is not consensual.

Yucca: and before we go any further, I think that it's worth mentioning that someone else's boundaries is not a reflection on your worth. Right. What's somebody else's comfortable with what they want with their, how they are treated their emotions, their body, despite what decades of social programming tells you, that's about them. That's not you and your worth.

Mark: Right. And it can be very hard to be rejected in some way and not take it personally in that sense. And that's why it's really important that we work on our self-esteem because it helps us to get through those moments when we're not getting what we want and it doesn't feel so great.

Yucca: So maybe a good place to start would be talking about what are boundaries and what are boundaries not.

Mark: Okay. Great. Great. Well, the fundamental idea of a boundary is literally what it sounds like. It's like a fence around you, right? you define a certain amount of personal space and that can be physical space. It can be emotional space can be psychological space and there's a fence around it that you don't feel comfortable letting anyone in without making a deliberate agreement to do so. And if someone pushes their way past that fence, it feels uncomfortable and you feel invaded. and. So it's really important for us to understand what are our natural limits? what are the places that feel comfortable for us and the places that don't feel comfortable as well as how do we articulate those with other people and how do we, what are the techniques we can use to assert that?

And we'll be talking somewhat about that later on. So when you think about boundaries what kind of definitions do you use? Yucca?

Yucca: Sure. Well, there's lots of different kinds of boundaries. There's physical and emotional social, all of those. But I tend to think of boundaries as what you are establishing is not okay to do to you, not what you want somebody to do to you, but what is not okay for them to do to you. It is a boundary to say it's not okay to call me names. Right. It's not okay to use derogative terms. It

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

 

If you enjoy the podcast and would like to help us reach more ears, please consider leaving a rating or review on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-wonder-science-based-paganism/id1501228156

 

S2E13 TRANSCRIPT:

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Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-Based Paganism. I'm your host Yucca. And today we are talking about astronomy, and space, science and the wow of all of it. So the reason that we chose today, Is this episode comes out on April 12th, which is Yuri's Night.

Mark: Exactly. And that is the anniversary, and as it happens, it is the 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's orbiting of the Earth, the first entry of humanity into space. And this was a remarkable achievement in many ways, not least of which was that he actually orbited.

Later missions of the United States for example, tried to get capsules into orbit, but until John Glenn, they didn't succeed. So this was really a remarkable thing. And he had the first extra terrestrial view of space.

Yucca: Yeah, and helped us gave us that view as well. And since then, there have been many, many humans who have gotten to see our planet from outside of it. Which is just amazing. And of course the space age has unfolded since then. And now we have the satellite images continuously watching our world and looking out far into the distant past.

And it just amazing, amazingly beautiful and mysterious objects and giving us a completely different understanding of the context that we exist in.

Mark: Yes. And to be fair, I think a different understanding of ourselves as exploratory creatures, we have invested, and it may not seem much relative to how much we invest in ways to kill one another. And other

Yucca: weight loss pills.

Mark: Yes. things that we invest, but we have invested a tremendous amount of money and effort, expertise, and knowledge and genius into flinging our machines into space so that we can learn extraordinary things. Extraordinary things.

Yucca: And going back to the April 12th 61. we hadn't even flown past Mars yet.

Mark: No.

Yucca: That comes later. Now. Amazingly, we did that very, very quickly. But. We hadn't even glimpsed at are our neighbors that are sibling planets are telling us so much, or our studying of them is teaching us so much about ourselves, right?

The studying Venus, studying Mars, that comparative planetology has really given us a leg up in understanding climate change and the history and the different possibilities of where our planet goes, depending on human management and all kinds of things.

Mark: Yes. Yes. I am old enough to have lived through almost the entire space era. And I remember that when I was a kid, this misshapen smear was the highest resolution image we had of Mercury. For example, it was the very best we could do. And. That remained the best we could do until the Mariner missions. When suddenly we had these beautiful crystal clear Moon like shots of Mercury, it wasn't like we advanced in little steps. We went from essentially nothing, a completely undifferentiated smear to these beautiful high resolution images in a very short period of years. We've just learned so much.

Yucca: And we did something very similar with Hubble, the Hubble space, telescope and excitingly, lots of fingers crossed, but the James Webb telescope, which is scheduled to launch on Halloween this year is one of those that we hope is this going to be another one of those, amazing transformations of the imagery and data that we can get back just to completely new level,

Mark: An order of magnitude jump.

Yucca: literally.

Yes.

Mark: A literal order of magnitude. And when you consider the extraordinary imagery that has come back to us from Hubble the miraculous the deep field images, the nebulae the galaxies. The extraordinary quality of these images in the way that they've helped to inform us about the nature of the universe,

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

 

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider leaving us a rating or review on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-wonder-science-based-paganism/id1501228156

 

S2E12 TRANSCRIPT:

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Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder: Science-Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark.

Yucca: And I'm Yucca.

Mark: And today we're going to talk about families, about approaching your family with your non theist. Science-based paganism, about how to negotiate the conflicts or mutual incomprehension that may arise from that about how we integrate our personal spirituality into our families and just other issues that have to do with relating to families as a part of our life and our practice.

Yucca: That's right. And this is one of those topics that is huge about a year ago. At this point, we did talk about family and we talked about what is the role of family and blood versus chosen and all of that, but there's no way that we can cover all of it in one go. So we're back again, to look at it from these different angles.

Mark: Right. And it bears saying that today when we're recording is the day before Easter. And so there's a lot of kind of confrontation of family that happens at around Easter time because at least in the United States where the Christian holidays have become secularized and made normative for people to practice, even if they're not Christians.

Or if they're just very nominally Christian. People get expected to go to Easter dinner or to come over for an egg hunt or to do something with the larger body of their family. And that may be uncomfortable if all of the symbology and the supposed meanings around the Easter holiday are things you don't believe in or support.

Yucca: There's going to be a huge range of what of listeners are going through. But I suspect that some of our listeners are in the position of this being something that the being a pagan is something new in their life or something that perhaps their family that they come from doesn't know. And they don't know how they, the family might respond or maybe they do know.

And it's it. Isn't what they're looking for.

Mark: Right. Yeah. And there's kind of a double whammy in our particular neck of the woods, because it's not only by the way, I'm, you know, a godless heretic. It's also, I'm a, you know, wild heathen I'm doing both of

Yucca: Best kind of combination though, in my opinion. Right. I like it.

Mark: I'm right there with you, but especially when you consider how propagandized some people in some sects of especially Christianity, but also Islam and even the very conservative Jewish traditions.

You know, they can have heard all kinds of horrible things about people that are atheistic about people who are witches or pagans, and it can be a very difficult bridge to cross when trying to get all that stuff out of the way and actually meet your family and say, Hey, look, this is who I am and it's good for me.

Yucca: I think that the, that approaching this, I mean, there's again, so many directions to go, but one of the first places is to think about the different roles that families can play in people's personal lives. And this, a lot of this depends on the larger culture that people are from. And then the family culture and personal beliefs in terms of what is the role of the individual and what is the role of family and where does authority lay within that?

And how much does everybody's should be or not be in everybody else's business and there's not a right answer. This is a cultural answer. Whether family or larger culture.

Mark: Right. Yeah. I mean, there are some, some cultural traditions, like, Greek and Italian traditions, for example, where you have, you know, kind of matriarchs and patriarchs of the family that have tremendous influence and power. And, you know, if you're on the outs with them or they've decided that you're somehow you know, a bad pe

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

 

Content warning: Brief mention of drug use. 

S2E11 TRANSCRIPT:

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Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-Based Paganism. I'm your host Yucca

Mark: And I'm your host, Mark.

Yucca: And this episode, we are talking about personal growth. So both, or all three of the past, present and future.

Mark: Right, right. Because one of the things that is incumbent on us as science-based pagans is to recognize that a personality is a process that life is not about arriving somewhere. It's about. Taking an ongoing set of steps forward. And we as pagans choose to pursue those steps in the pursuit of being better people, being kinder, being more effective being more competent in being happier. And so those are places you never completely arrive. There's always more that can be done in order to teach yourself about those things. And that's what we're going to talk about today.

Yucca: Exactly. So the journey is never done, right. There's always more to learn more, to grow more, to change.

Mark: So frustrating for those of us that are oriented towards perfectionism. The idea that you never actually can get there is incredibly frustrating, but I kind of made my peace with it a while ago.

Yucca: You can make tremendous changes. You can really change your experience of life.

Mark: Indeed. And you can change your experience of yourself. I mean, one of the things that many, if not, most of us are saddled with is harm. That was either intentionally inflicted upon us or accidentally inflicted upon us through processes like neglect from our earlier years. And we benefit by growing to heal from those experiences and taking what wisdom we can from them, but no longer laboring under the messages that they send us it's about who we are and how valuable we are and so forth.

Yucca: Yeah. And no matter how wonderful of parents or families we might've had, they're still human. And we're still part of larger societies. And there's a lot of work, at least for my perspective, that our societies have to go. And lessons that we pick up about ourselves, value judgments about us. That probably aren't very healthy and not very helpful in the long run for living a happy and fulfilled life.

Mark: Yes. And this to take one of what I'm sure it will be many trajectory, side trips. This is a gift that was given to us by the humanistic psychology movement of the 1960s, because until then, at least in the United States and in Europe, people were living to role. The idea was that you were to fit into your expected role as best you possibly could.

And that was supposed to give you fulfillment. And of course it didn't, and that's why the societies were filled with alcohol abuse and kind of quiet misery of people feeling in a trap, but in the human potential movement and humanistic psychology movements of the late 1960s into the early seventies, the idea of.

Really fleshing out and living in the fullness of our individuality became something that was celebrated. And that is now something that many of us see as the worthy pursuit of a conscientious life. And. So we're here to talk about some of the ways that we can help ourselves and one another to be happier and freer and less in pain than we have been because if our spirituality isn't for that, then what exactly is it for really? We don't believe in deities that are going to judge us. We don't believe that we are involved in some kind of a great cosmic balancing act. That's going to measure our quality and then make a determination about whether we reincarnate as cockroaches or not. We have this life. It is the life that's given to us.

And so being ourselves as fully as possible and doing that in a way that's as joyous and as beneficial as possible, becomes the obvious answer to the question. What is the meaning of life?

Yucca: That's beautiful.

Mark: Thank you.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Thank you.

Yucca: Well, let's