Democratic Forest Trusts (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.Democratic trusts with leadership elected by citizen-members promise to solve many of the problems afflicting both traditional government and corporate ownership of forestlands. This article explores these issues in some depth.Complexity and the Dream of Human Control of Eco-Systems (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.The title captures it. I then explore the kinds of institutions compatible with both nature and the modern world that are implied from this analysis.Rethinking the Obvious: Modernity and Living Respectfully With Nature (PDF)The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, Winter, 1997.Modernity is usually considered a wrong turn in terms of respect for and sustaining the environment. I argue the reality is more complex, for modernity has freed us from personal dependence on agriculture, ended the economic value of children, radically reduced the likelihood of large scale wat, and shifted much production to intellectual rather than material capital. This partially decouples society from nature, which gives us important opportunities as well as problems.Towards an Ecocentric Political Economy (PDF)The Trumpeter, Fall, 1996.This paper begins my effort at showing how liberal modernity can be harmonized with an ecocentric perspective on our relationship with the natural world. It is a corrective to much “free market environmental” literature that sacrifices Nature to money as well as to anti-liberal attacks by well-meaning but economically naïve environmentalists.Unexpected Harmonies: Self-Organization in Liberal Modernity and Ecology (PDF)The Trumpeter, Journal of Ecosophy, 10:1, Winter 1993This is my initial paper exploring how what I term ‘evolutionary liberal’ thought can be an important means by which society and nature can be brought into greater harmony. The other Trumpeter papers build on it.Deep Ecology and Liberalism: The Greener Implications of Evolutionary Liberalism (PDF)Review of Politics, Fall, 1996.Liberal thought and deep ecology are usually regarded as mutually exclusive. But the “evolutionary” tradition offers a way to integrate the two through commonalties in the work of David Hume, Michael Polanyi, Arne Naess, and Aldo Leopold, providing a stronger foundation for liberalism while strengthening the case for an ecocentric ethic.(Related subjects: Ecology)Saving Western Towns: A Jeffersonian Green Proposal (PDF)in Writers on the Range, Karl Hess and John Baden, eds., University Press of Colorado, 1998.Developmental pressures in the rural and small town West involve three groups: long term residents, new arrivals, and environmentalists. Today their interests often conflict. This conflict is in part the outcome of institutions which prevent harmonizing competing interests. The concept of developmental trusts, both for rural regions and for small communities offers a means whereby these interests can be harmonized for the benefit of all concerned.(Related subjects: Politics)Social Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Liberalism (PDF)Critical Review, 6: 2-3, 1992.Murray Bookchin is considered a leading radical environmental theorist. However, his analysis is incapable of leading humankind towards a more respectful and sustainable relationship with the natural world. Criticisms of Bookchin from both the deep ecology and evolutionary liberal perspective complement one another, pointing the way towards a better understanding of how modernity relates to the environment.The paper as a whole offers an early discussion of issues that are more clearly addressed in later papers, particularly Deep Ecology and Liberalism (1996) and the three Trumpeter articles in 1997, 1996, and 1993. However, there are other ideas in the article which have not been developed more thoroughly elsewhere.
Imbolc or Brigit is fast approaching. My Wicca 101 group will soon learn
about candle consecration as we prepare new quarter candles. This year we’ll do the altar candles as
well, for there isn’t much left of them.
While most of the country is still deep in snow, the days
have grown noticeably longer since the depth of Winter’s darkness. In California the first flowers of the
year are already blooming. Up
here, north of San Francisco it’s mostly not natives. But the ubiquitous wild mustard that has naturalized so
spectacularly out here is already covering fields in yellow. A few eager natives are adding spots of bright orange, just a hint
of what’s to come. But the
wildflower spectaculars of Spring are still many weeks away. That fits Imbolc, but it’s subtle.
Imbolc is one of the less intensely celebrated Sabbats, I
think because it has fewer real world connections in our lives. In most places the coming Spring
Equinox, Ostara, is well suited to its symbolism of the triumph of the sun and
powers of growth and regeneration. Yule, our previous cross-quarter Sabba,
celebrated the Winter Solstice, and the wealth of meaning it carries
symbolically and experientially.
Both are Solar, and the sun ‘s cycles are the same everywhere in this
hemisphere. Beltane to follow is,
well, it’s Beltane.
But Imbolc?
I think its invisibility may be fitting. The first sprouts of new growth are
invisible to those who do not look carefully, and sometimes even to those who
do. One of its major early meanings,
celebrating ewes beginning to lactate for the new year, is far removed from most of
our experience. Perhaps the slow emergence of the first buds are California’s equivalent, and there are sheep out on hills near the coast. But we rarely see them.
I prefer the name
Brigid (or some alternative spelling- there are many). Brigid is a fire Goddess. She has
also given us Her name, and for this time of year in California, it’s
perfect.
So far we’ve not had serious flooding, but the past two
weeks have been of almost constant rain.
I had to take some geraniums, succulents, and cactus inside as they
started showing signs of drowning and rotting. This year’s rains would quickly drown any fire that dared show its
face, and back east of the Sierra the snows of winter promise to last for quite
a while yet. Not much sense of
fire there, either.
It seems crazy that a fire Goddess be the alternative name
for Imbolc. But at least for
coastal Caifornia, She might be the perfect patron for what this season
signifies. Looking around at the
rushing streams, moss growing everywhere, and leaden skies, one could scarcely
guess that much of California’s landscape is dominated by fire, by the fact it
burns regularly, and that dousing the burns simply guarantees they will be all
the worse when they come again. As
they will.
Fire in California really fits NeoPagan symbolism. Left to its own devices, or employed
carefully as the Indians used to, fire is a force for life and renewal. In its destruction the seeds of future
growth are planted, and here, when it seems farthest away, the growth that will
feed future blazes is stirring.
posted January 26, 2010 at 8:36 pm
Imbolc is actually my favorite Sabbat, because it means that Winter will soon be over. I live in Northern Delaware and new life is just starting to peek out around here. Green daffodil leaves have poked up an inch or so for a few weeks now, and even my peonies are showing their little red noses in the beds. The goldfish are wiggling just under the surface of my fish pond, and I saw a large frog splashing there just yesterday. And the birds are getting chirpier and have begun inspecting the bird houses I have for them.
Snow is forecast for Saturday, but it won’t make a difference. Life is stirring and around these parts anyway, one can see it. It’s the beginning – the VERY beginning – of the season of new life. Hope and all possibilities stretch out before us. I have to get my peas in the ground by the middle of February, and as always I can’t wait to get gardening again after months of planning and dreaming over seed and plant catalogs.
The first flowers – usually the crocuses and even the dandelions (an important early food for honeybees) – will soon grace my altar and my statue of Brigid. The days are starting to get noticeably longer. On Imbolc, my altar will be blazing with beeswax candles. I haven’t made my own in years; maybe one day I’ll have time again. Best of luck making yours
posted January 26, 2010 at 8:49 pm
I like Imbolg, too, and I’m always kind of sad that it isn’t celebrated more than it is. This year my partner and I are having a poetry, singing, dancing, etc party as a way to drive away the winter blahs. I also usually do some early “spring cleaning” by smudging the house and doing the major acutal cleaning (you know, like, the tub and stuff like that).
I’m hoping that among my circle of friends we’ll start a new tradition of reading poetry to Brigid this time of year!
posted January 27, 2010 at 7:38 am
Here in northern England, we don’t get much snow. This year we had quite a bit a few weeks ago, but it’s all gone now. Winters are just grey and wet, usually a few degrees above freezing. I don’t mind them, but a lot of folk do.
However, the days are now getting longer (we have much shorter days at Yule than you do in the USA – dark at 3 pm). There are sheep out in the fields, with the first lambs to arrive any day now – there’s more sheep-farming than in the USA. Snowdrops are just coming into bloom, and crocuses are getting ready. Spring always seem to take a long time coming – the first signs are there at the beginning of February, but it’s not really here until April.
BTW: Did you know that they celebrate Imbolc as Setsubun in Japan? People go outside and throw soybeans to drive away oni (hobgoblins).
posted January 27, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Well, whilst Brigid is the Lady of the Forge, She is also the Lady of the Well, neh?
And Gina, for the past 4 years or so, Anne Hill has hosted a bloggers Poetry Reading on February 2nd. Haven’t heard that she is doing so again this year, but I will be posting poetry to my LJ. Last year’s invitation read in part:
Let poetry bless the blogosphere once again!
WHAT: A Bloggers (Silent) Poetry Reading
WHEN: Anytime February 2, 2009
WHERE: Your blog
WHY: To celebrate the Feast of Brigid
HOW: Select a poem you like – by a favorite poet or one of your own – to post February 2nd.
posted January 31, 2010 at 2:23 pm
As a child in the Bluegrass, I well recall my grandfather getting up in deepest dark and snow to look after his sheep and lambs. Slipping out of bed, I would go down the backstairs to meet him in the huge lovely kitchen and talk to him as his filled the ancient Franklin stove with coal. He told me little stories about lambs and foxes and the tales of Scotland and Ireland and I’d stand on the back porch steps and watch him vanish into the shadowy blue-cold hills to look after his ewes and lambs.
Coming from a family that has over thirteen generations of deep deep roots to their land (what’s left it and what they are trying to keep) I never ever got as far away from the natural world as so many of my generation and i tried hard to listen and pay attention to every story, every song, every thing my great-grandfathers, grandfathers, grandmothers and aunts and uncles shared with me.
In spite of being devout (well, some of them) and upright, well-read and respectable, I learned a lot of what was simply called,”the old ways.” I wish I had been able to spend all my time with them! I truly cherish every sign, every bit of weather wisdom, baby-care, even animal husbandry i observed. Mostly, it was the deep sense of the earth was truly alive and aware and how we are steward of earth and all that live upon it.
They even explained to me the old pagan history of just about everything, my great-grandfather telling me that the cross is a symobl much much older than Christianity!
So, yes, Feb. 2nd is and has always been celebrated, even when others have not a clue as to what we are doing!
Take care,
Jae
posted February 3, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Gus,
I wasn’t sure how to contact you on this subject so please forgive me for adding it to this discussion.
I know you did a piece on the circle at the Air Force acadamy in Co.
It was nice to see fellow Pagans/Wiccans finally have a place to worship. There is not an article about the circle that at the end of January 2010, a large cross had been placed there by someone or group.
here’s the link. I’d like to see it mentioned as I doubt that beliefnet will touch the subject.
link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-wicca3-2010feb03,0,3367750.story
Thanks,
Gwyddion9 Ron