Quaker Pagan Reflections

I ’m feeling a bit torn this morning.  It’s time to head out to meeting for worship, and I’ve been kept away from worship far too often this winter; I really feel the need to be there. On the other hand, I’ve been just a little under the weather for the past two weeks, and physically exhausted for no reason all weekend.  If I go to meeting, I doubt I’ll have the energy for anything else: not shopping for groceries, not cooking the staples for the week, not grading the stack of student essays on my desk. And certainly not celebrating Beltane.  And that does not seem acceptable to me. So I’m staying home, but, as I said, I’m feeling a bit torn by all that needs to be done, and how little energy I seem to have this week to do it with. Which puts me in mind of a story… Once upon a Beltane , Peter and I were at a Church of the Sacred Earth retreat in northern Vermont.  Despite being almost on the Canadian border, it was warm that year, and we wer...

Sign Number Five Is Ready for Business… Dear Thief  Who Keeps Stealing My Black Lives Matter Sign,   Thank you. W hile I realize it was never your intent to encourage me, I want you to know: your efforts have made a real difference to me.  In the nine months since I first put up a hand-lettered Black Lives Matter sign in front of my house, you have taken or vandalized it five times. Now, I know that’s not record breaking: one friend in the area has had her sign stolen or vandalized nine times.  Still, I want you to know how much your efforts have meant to me. When the Peace and Social Concerns Committee of my Quaker meeting took the suggestion that we, too, put up a sign in front of our building, the one reservation that I heard expressed was that the Black Lives Matter movement was “just on social media.” And it is true that without the connections I’ve made through social media, I might still believe that racism was on the ropes, a thing o...