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olivia0823yxa · 11 days ago

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I don't have strong opinions on the term "culturally christian" either way and honestly I try not to participate in discourse™ much but I will say I do appreciate that it's prompted me to think more in depth about my orientation towards Christianity in our culture.

Like, I am not and never was christian so when I decided I was an athiest at a young age it wasn't really anything I had to grapple with belief or identity-wise, it was more just like learning a new word. Athiest: someone who does not believe in any god*. Okay that describes me. But I only had that ease because my parents both converted from Christianity to Unitarian Universalism shortly before I was born. So my entire extended family is christian, and the religion that I was brought up in historically originated in Christianity.

My early religious education that wasn't about UU beliefs focused mostly on the Bible, even if they weren't telling us to believe in it they wanted us to know the basic stories for some reason. As I grew up they started teaching about other religions and sex-ed, and then I left the church before I learned more.

In my extended family, we celebrated Christmas and Easter, and at every family gathering someone led a traditional christian grace before eating. Now in my nuclear family we celebrate Winter Solstice which also is more major at the church my parents attend, but we celebrate in pretty much the same way most non-religious Christmas celebrators do**. At my school we also had off for those two holidays, even though we had a very significant number of jewish and muslim students they never got off for those holidays. Some of my classes had so many jewish students that we didn't even do any school work on the jewish High Holidays because there would be too many students who needed to do make up work, but of course the administration didn't really care.

In terms of morality, I was never taught the concept of "original sin" but since I didn't have an alternative framework I guess I somewhat absorbed the "default" sin->punishment->forgiveness christian model that pervades our society's idea of justice. As I grew up it became pretty clear that this is dumb though. Like I don't really understand how people rationalize punishment as necessary outside of a religious framework so it's actually really surprising to me that so many non-religious people believe that. UUism promotes some values, including that "the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all" but I left the church before I learned what they mean by that.

But despite all this being enmeshed in christian culture, I'm still frequently shocked when I consciously realize some common belief or practice from so many people. The first wedding I ever went to was some distant relatives who were catholic, and I remember being horrified when it came to the vows and it was all about God and what wasn't about God was about the husband literally owning the wife. It wasn't until I was 21 that I went to another christian wedding, and I was so tense before the pastor started speaking because I didn't know if they were all like that or not***. I don't get how some people justify continuing to be a part of the Catholic Church with all its blatant evils, but are still able to reason normally in other contexts. In 2020 when the government allowed large gatherings for Christmas despite the pandemic, but didn't give a shit about the major holidays for any other religions and the news didn't even comment on that hypocrisy, I didn't understand how they could be that blind. Despite extremely accepting parents and community, it was still really difficult to be confident as a young queer, when the religous "debates" about gay marriage were still raging in mainstream media, and all I wanted to do was hold my boyfriend's hand but some asshole on TV says we can't because we'll go to a hell that I thought most people didn't actually believe in. And then as I became politically aware and it became clear that so many people care about politicians' exact standing in the micro-taxonomies of christian sects that I still can't tell apart. As far as I can tell the, the german president's only job is to give the Christmas speech once a year??? The more I learn how seriously everyone was taking it the whole time the weirder and scarier it is to me.

For a long time I also equated all religions with Christianity and came dangerously close to becoming a militant athiest. Luckily for me, when the "new atheism" thing turned rabidly anti-feminist I was put off enough that I stopped watching those youtube videos. Unlucky for society they succeeded in radicalizing so many people. Still today I'm suspicious of faith as a way of knowing, but all beliefs do require at least some faith so I'm still grappling with that.

I don't have a coherent thesis or anything I just hadn't really thoroughly and consciously thought through how much living in a christian-dominant culture affected me apart from the obvious things.

*: at this time I was so surrounded by a christian-derived notion of religion that nobody even told me any other conceptions of divine entities / faith. I did have some thoughts about deism later in high school but that's not really the point of this post

**: except sometimes we go to the church for their Solstice ceremony which is very pagan, but we do gifts and have a tree and such

***: happy to say it was great. The speech was about having fun and about how jesus was apparently a huge party animal. Later in the night I ended up sitting on the floor with the pastor drunk as fuck and talking about random shit I don't remember.

#found this in my drafts from 2 years ago #posted unedited but might delete or follow up later with new thoughts

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revlyncox · 5 months ago

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Perspiration (2024)

Whether we are creating a garden or building a movement, there are some important questions involved in moving from aspiration to inspiration to perspiration. This sermon was presented to The Unitarian Society in East Brunswick on August 18, 2024

“No matter what issues I have with other Unitarian Universalists regarding our visions of God/Spirit, justice, race, and age–at the root of everything is community, love, and faith. That day, something larger than our individual beliefs rose up in my mind. I thought of the principles, values, and family that are the connective tissue of our faith community …”

(From "We Are Community" by Elandria Williams, an essay in Becoming: A Spiritual Guide for Navigating Adulthood)

That’s what my friend, Elandria Williams of blessed memory, said in 2002 about the way the congregation and faith held E and other members of the Tennessee Valley UU Church in the aftermath of trauma. Elandria spoke about connective tissue, experiences and relationships that transcend differences of identity and opinion. Years before we started the process to amend Article II of the UUA bylaws, Elandria was putting love at the center.

[Here's Elandria's charge to the Article II Commission as UUA Co-Moderator in 2021. E's part starts around 4:25]

E was very much in my heart during the discussions at General Assembly and as I cast my vote in favor of lifting up our values in a new way.

Our values–Justice, Equity, Transformation, Pluralism, Interdependence, Generosity, and Love–explain how we get things done as Unitarian Universalists. From the outside, UUism doesn’t seem like it should work. We do not all follow the same creed in terms of the existence or nature of a God (or gods) or what happens after we die, yet here we are, finding our spiritual grounding as one congregation, supporting one another, and changing the world together. When I tell people on airplanes or buses what I do and about our religion, they often find it unbelievable. It’s beyond belief! How can so many different ideas translate into a faith movement?

There are some ideas we tend to have in common, like the idea that we are born worthy, but I don’t think the secret is in the realm of ideas at all. The secret is in the connective tissue: the values and the relationships, the why and the who. I know the members of this congregation find a lot of meaning in the Bond of Union, which emphasizes individual freedom, but the only way that premise can work is through practices of welcome, inclusion, accountability, support, and connection. We might think about how to make those practices more clear, and remind ourselves of the promises of community that create the trust necessary for liberation. There is a lot holding people together within this congregation and more broadly in the Unitarian Universalist movement. That’s how we turn our hopes into action. We go from inspiration to aspiration to perspiration, and we don’t do it alone.

As many of you know, one of my personal favorite ways of turning inspiration to perspiration is a garden. Tending a garden is a process of turning ideas, soil, and water into food and beauty. Elandria’s observations about Unitarian Universalism turn out to also be true for how other things come to fruition. There might be changes in how we do things, but the emotional and spiritual energy we need to put wheels on our sense of purpose runs on mission and relationships. Values and people are the connective tissue holding a group together as they pursue a shared purpose. Keep coming back to the why and the who.

When I first started the garden, the why was about my children. I wanted them to have a concrete sense of where their food comes from, even if we only grow a small percentage of it. I wanted all of us to feel a connection with the earth, and to have an experience of working toward something over time. Over the years, the why and the who expanded. Gardening in the front yard has deepened my connection with my neighbors, both human and more than human. I talk with my human neighbors and their canine friends as they walk by, I trade stories and strategies with the other gardeners on my street, and I get to know the birds and the bugs and the hungry mammals who are all part of the interdependent network of my local ecosystem. Supporting pollinators has become increasingly important to me each year, for their own sake and also because their fates and that of my human family are intertwined. Finally, I have come to understand that there is a why and a who about gardening for my own soul. It is a practice of grounding, patience, relationship, and generosity that helps me to be more like the person I want to be.

Knowing the “why” and ��who” guided my decisions about how. Years ago, I consulted my family and the seed catalogs and made graph paper charts to figure out how to plant the things we wanted to eat. The “why” came from what we wanted to eat and what I was interested in growing, and it turned into the “how” of a garden plan. This year, I also thought about the flowers that my human neighbors tell me they enjoy, and that my pollinating neighbors seem to like. I thought about plants that grow well together, and about rotating crops from one part of the garden to another from year to year, and about what the soil needed to stay healthy. A friend of mine who grew up on a farm and who is a plant biologist now says that one of the keys to gardening is figuring out what the land wants to grow. Adding that wisdom to my “who” and “why” understanding helped me to adapt as needed, watching what grows well and what doesn’t, changing course mid-summer, no longer attached to theoretical graph paper charts.

One of my experiments over last winter was to allow more dry leaves to rest on the ground. We did not keep all of the leaves where they fell on the ground because we live in a forest, but I had leaf sanctuary areas around the edge of the patio and the yard, and left them in the paths and the raised beds in the garden. Natural leaf litter may have contributed to the spectacular fireflies we had in June and July, and the green patches of clover in the backyard, and to the health of some of the smaller mammals seeking an escape from the foxes. I discovered in the spring that the old leaves needed to be moved from the flower beds before any wildflowers or herbs could grow, and that I had a very happy colony of isopods attracted by the decaying leaves who needed to be persuaded to renew the soil in another part of the yard rather than munch on the new seedlings in the raised vegetable beds. I had to start my beans over twice because of the hungry bugs. I didn’t get too frustrated with the isopods, because they are part of the “who” in the interdependent web that I garden for. I went ahead and moved the decaying leaves to the roots of some trees, clearing space so that flowers could grow for my pollinator friends and so that the trees could enjoy the mulch. It was a learning experience, part of the practice of patience and resilience that answers the “why” of working in the garden.

The wildflowers were another experiment this year, once I gave the seeds enough air and light. I planted a wildflower mix just outside the vegetable garden fence in a little aisle of soil between the garden and the driveway. I got nervous when a lot of plants with fern-like leaves popped up, worrying that they were baby invasive honey locust trees. But the plant identification app I use on my phone assured me that these were Sensitive Pea plants. A few other plants were mixed in, and perhaps another winter will unlock different wildflowers next year. Once the sensitive peas bloomed with little bright yellow blossoms all up and down the stalk, the bees flocked to my garden. It made me so happy to see the stalks of the wildflowers sway with all of the buzzing. What I did not take into account is that this meant all of the low-growing herbs next to the fence within the vegetable garden were now in the shade and didn’t flourish as usual, so that is a learning experience for next year.

The garden is never perfect. Not only are there things that are beyond my control, I’m always learning something new, always adapting to the needs and hopes of all of the beings who are connected to the garden, always finding new insights about the patience and resilience I am trying to grow within myself. But even with all of my mistakes and learning experiences, we got a fair number of beets, carrots, strawberries, cucumbers, Mexican sour gherkins, cherry tomatoes, and tomatillos this year, among other things.

Turning the idea of growing things into a living garden was a project powered by the “why” of learning and relationships and by the “who” of people in my family AND other beings in ever-expanding circles of love and care. When we’re transforming goals into action, it doesn’t hurt to start with a plan, yet the connective tissue of values and relationships is necessary for holding the whole thing together and giving a project or a mission the spark of life. In addition to household projects, I’d like to think that the questions of “why” and “who” are relevant in big goals, huge endeavors that span decades and borders and cultural divides.

Once upon a time there were two religious denominations. They had a lot of ideas in common. They both liked the idea of a faith that learned, grew, and adapted through the ages. They both liked the idea that loving God and one’s neighbor were important. Yet the denominations remained separate. It took almost a hundred years between the time they first started discussing their common ground until the time when they completely joined forces to become a unified faith that brought its combined history and potential into the future. I’m talking about the Universalists and the Unitarians, and their consolidation into the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1961.

Universalists were convinced that union with the Divine is the shared destiny of humanity, and therefore we joyfully choose to care for all of our siblings on earth. Unitarians were dissenters who used reason in matters of faith, and by applying critical thinking to the evidence, found support for free will and a loving God, along with skepticism for the doctrine of the Trinity. Briefly, Universalists: no Hell; Unitarians, one God; both: free will, love your neighbor. These are powerful ideas. Ideas need people to put them into action.

The first time there was a resolution for a merger of the two denominations was in 1865. It was defeated, but the two movements had so much in common, they kept talking about cooperation. What separated them was not so much theology as culture. Universalists were more likely to be found in smaller and more rural communities. There were perceived differences of wealth, class, and education. For many years, the two groups focused on the mechanics of the how question, “How can we cooperate with the people who are different from us in these ways?”

Meanwhile, at the local and regional level, cooperation was happening all over the place. Many ministers held dual fellowship and sought positions in either or both denominations. Some individual congregations merged or federated, starting with congregations in Mukwonago, Wisconsin, in 1878. Even congregations that stayed separate got into cooperative arrangements, like the Universalist and Unitarian congregations in Syracuse, New York, that remain good neighbors to this day. Sunday School leaders swapped books and lesson plans. These relationship-building efforts sped up as years passed. Meanwhile, Humanism gained strength in both denominations, further moving questions about belief to the side in favor of commitments to values and relationships. In 1953, the Universalist and Unitarian youth groups merged for form Liberal Religious Youth. In 1955, faith development professionals combined to form LREDA, which is still the professional association for Unitarian Universalist religious educators.

The question of “who” was clearly involved. Then there is the “why.” In the documents prepared for congregational discussion about the consolidation, the authors stated reasons about religious freedom and responding to the issues of the modern era. In retrospect, I would phrase it a bit differently. Universalists and Unitarians grew from the same source material of faith that moves people to love their neighbor and to promote liberation, and a faith that comforts its people in the spirit of love. By coming together, they were able to carry forward the most vital, transformative parts of their reasons for being, and leave behind the mechanics--the “hows” and “whats”--that didn’t necessarily support the “why” and the “who.” From there, Unitarian Universalism was able to adapt to a changing world.

We find ourselves in a changing world in 2024 as well. We have clarified our values as a UU movement, our national and state-wide faith-based justice organizing is focused on building power according to those values, and we understand more than ever how important it is to have a place of grounding and spirit and joy and belonging. As we continue our anti-racism and anti-oppression work, we have more clarity about who we are, who we are accountable to, who our community partners are, and how deeply interdependent our world is. All of those contribute to our “who.” Love is at the center. That’s a big answer to the question of “why.” And we are coming to understand that the “how,” the forms, techniques, organizational structures, and technologies that have served us in the past may no longer be the best vehicles for our purpose. We must ground ourselves primarily in the “who” and the “why,” not the “how” and the “what.”

Church consultant Carey Nieuwhof, in his article, “10 Predictions About the Future Church and Shifting Attendance Patterns,” writes that there is a seismic shift happening right now in American religious life. He writes from the perspective of mainline Christianity, but his observations are relevant for Unitarian Universalists as well. Nieuwhof readily admits that no one is really sure what’s ahead, but talking about the trends and the possibilities can help us to be more effective at being loving, spiritually grounded communities making an impact on the world. He predicts that gathered faith communities are here to stay, but how we gather and how we organize and how we implement our values can and will change. Nieuwhof writes:

Churches that love their model more than the mission will die.

That said, many individual congregations and some entire denominations won’t make it. The difference will be between those who cling to the mission and those who cling to the model.

Nieuwhof goes on to compare the model of how we gather in spiritual communities with different technologies that come and go. A musician or a musical group may have a mission of creating beauty and catharsis and emotional connection with the human condition through music, and that mission might be shared in 8-tracks, cassettes, CD’s, MP4s, streaming, or something we haven’t yet thought of. People may arrive at concerts in horses and buggies, trains, cars, buses, electric scooters, online, or some other way. The mission is the guide, and connecting with the people who are part of the mission is more important than any given model for how to make it happen.

This congregation has a busy year ahead. You are going to work together to clarify your mission, and the Mission Task Force is going to help you do that. Having a new mission statement will only be the beginning; you’ll need to spend the next several years in lively engagement with questions about how to implement that mission and how to let mission, rather than form, guide you. You are also in search for a Contract Minister. The Contract Minister Search Committee is going to do a lot of the legwork for you, and they will be asking members for your input, your discernment, your heart and soul work as you expand your imagination about who your next minister might be. A renewed sense of mission will be really helpful as you get to know your next minister, and you will need to be creative and courageous in partnership with that minister as you transform the model of congregational life to best fit your mission, your resources, and the world that is changing around you. If you are a member or a committed friend of this congregation, your participation in both the Mission work and in the feedback for the Search Committee is vital. I’m excited that I get to accompany you on your journey this year.

Moving from inspiration to aspiration to perspiration is a process. The energy we need for that process comes not just from time management and noble abstract concepts, but from a deep sense of our purpose and values, and from a sense of connection with the people and forces that sustain us. There are techniques that can help us refine the “what” and the “how,” and yet we must change and grow and adapt our “what” and “how” in the service of “why” and “who.” May we remain true to our purpose and values, and in right relationship with the interdependent web of life.

So be it. Blessed be. Amen.

#unitarian universalism #uu

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ripples-of-thought · 3 years ago

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The wilderness at my door

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest was a privilege that I was quite unable to appreciate as a child. It seemed from my earliest memories that I was never far from a delightful garden park, towering cool forest, or rich field teeming with life.

Not that I didn't love my neighborhood or the city I was raised in. I just had no idea how very rare the wealth of natural beauty that surrounded me was. Out at the edges of Portland, Oregon, a lot of the land had yet to be developed. Zoning laws were very strict to limit sprawl and the pollution that comes with it.

When I stepped outside, my lungs pulled nothing but fresh air. Traffic was a dim hush in the distance. In the morning, songbirds chorused together. In the evening, when the sun sank over the hills, the stars peppered the night sky in countless twinkling points.

Today, you would say that we were "free range kids". In those days, before cellphones, nobody had heard of "helicopter parenting" and roaming the neighborhood was just how kids met outside school. Assuming we had no homework (which almost nobody had until they reached middle school) we were allowed to go anywhere our bikes could take us, under the condition that when we saw the streetlights come on at the end of the day, we came home.

Frequently, my bike took me around the corner and down to the bottom of a little valley, where a wooden footbridge crossed a meandering creek, leading to a great mountain forest forest of fir trees, with paths running through it. It seemed to span miles - I never did find the far end of that forest, as I would usually reach an impassible point where the trails turned back or came to a stop at a small clearing, speckled white, yellow and blue with wildflowers.

To me, that forest on the other side of Fanno Creek was Middle Earth, or Narnia, or Camelot. I howled like one of Wendy Pini's Wolfriders, and I searched (in vain) for the musical unicorns of Phaze. It was a place I could escape, imagining myself a daring explorer penetrating the lush ferns, or a naturalist, studying the complexities of an ant colony. Some days I was a "mountain man" (think Grizzly Adams), rationing out the fuzzy red wild raspberries I found and "fishing" in the creek with a hook-free string dangling from the end of a stick. In the hottest days of August, I removed my shoes and socks and waded up the chilly creek in search of its source.

I would also go there to cry. So few people trod those paths that it made a really great place to find solitude and comfort. It was a bad day at school that day, and I hiked up the hill to breathe in the scent of pine needles and wood rot, and write my some moody poetry in my spiral notebook. I chose a large fallen tree to sit on, and opened to a fresh page.

Until then all I had known of woodpeckers were from Woody Woodpecker cartoons, so when I heard the rapid thunkathunkathunkathunkathunka of a bird after its next meal I almost didn't believe what I was watching. It was female, and bore no resemblance to the rascal cartoon character. As I stared, it continued hammering away at the remains of the tree that had furnished the log I was sitting on.

Suddenly, I remembered that I had brought a journal with me, so I began to try to draw what I was seeing. When it pecked at the tree, it was nothing but a blur, so that is what I ended up putting to paper. Wood chips flew all around as it bore into the soft, rotting column. It paused occasionally, cocking its head one way and another watching for any sign of danger.

A recreation of the sketch, somewhat improved from the original.

My mood shifted with the distraction. The angst was abated, but time is short for someone so young, and the woodpecker was more patient in its pursuit of bugs than I was. I closed the book, stood to return home, and startled the poor thing off.

One of the principles of my religion today is the acknowledgement that all things are interconnected in a great web, and that what affects one affects us all... touch a single thread and the whole web vibrates. My time spent within small pockets of nature, like that forest, was one of the cornerstones of that affirmation for me.

#nature #forest #woodpecker #imagination #childhood #paganism #religion #uuism #unitarian universalism #woods #oregon #pacific northwest #portland #suburbs

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smallblueandloud · 4 years ago

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it's raining outside and i have the fairy lights on and like? you know what? this is good. i am good. i am glad for this.

#sb and l rambles #i think i'm feeling odd because i haven't seen my church in easily five months #they've been doing online services of course but i always always cared about the grounds more than the service itself #i miss my church but the spirit of it can be found everywhere #oh man it is SO weird to not be depressed. is this what it feels like to be not depressed?#i've never been more than slightly depressed but somehow all of this [losing everything that gave me joy] helped? somehow??#that is a lie i did not lose everything i have been baking bread and writing and petting my cat and those are Good Things #praise to the singing praise to the morning praise to them swinging fresh from the morn #mine is the sunshine mine is the morning #uuism #let me know if there's another tag i should use for talking about going to church or being religious

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midnightmusinggs · 3 years ago

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hi! I’m a UU and I’m super excited to see my faith traditions mentioned here!!!

Secular Celebrations - Yule

At the very end of the Gregorian calendar comes the winter solstice and Yule. Technically, this is the FIRST holiday on the Wheel, since Samhain is the boundary between the old year and the new. But since most of us have to follow the January to December schedule in our day-to-day lives, we’ll end with Yule.

The winter solstice is a time when we focus on hunkering down and staying warm. We look to the homestead, we take care of our families, and we make sure our communities are surviving the winter as comfortably as possible. This is one of the times that the Wild Hunt was said to ride, their presence indicated by howling winds and stormy nights when it wasn’t safe to venture out. All manner of entities personifying hunger and cold and death stalk the landscapes of winter mythology, so we fortify our homes however we can and indulge in a little midwinter revelry to keep ourselves going until the spring.

Decorate with pine bunting, pine cones, holly, mistletoe, snow symbols, fairy lights, electric candles, ribbons, streamers, local fauna active during winter, whatever you like. There are plenty of Christmas wreaths out there, so don’t be afraid to make a witchy one with a big old star in the middle. Make sure that any ACTUAL foliage is kept away from the pets, and of course, observe fire safety for any lights you put up. Way too many house fires are caused by electrical shorts in holiday lights, so be extra careful. Do NOT plug an extension cord into a power strip. And go easy on the plastic glitter. Anathema to some, I know, but the more of that we can keep out of the waste cycle and the water system, the less will end up in the oceans.

If you have a fireplace, you can burn a symbolic log “to drive the cold winter away.” Or, if you only have a cauldron or a burning bowl, you can find an outdoor space to burn some twigs and incense for the same purpose. Or you can light some candles with appropriately wintry scents. Or, if you can’t burn anything at all, an LED candle left alight overnight on the altar should do the trick. The whole idea is to symbolize keeping warmth in the home, keeping the dark and the cold at bay, and keeping the home fires literally burning for those who must be elsewhere. However you manage this is fine.

Spend time with your near-and-dear, if you can. Eat good food, drink good wine, and do cozy things. Share treasured memories, and tell stories. Fun fact: Yule and Christmas are another traditional time of year for ghost stories, so feel free to pull those out again. If there’s a family tradition of feasting and gift-giving, lean into it. There are a lot of Christian traditions from Christmas that have made their way into the secular sphere. Sure, they still have some religious associations, but I know plenty of atheists who still exchange presents because it’s FUN. You can also give gifts to others by contributing to charitable organizations, donating to clothing drives and food pantries, or through random acts of kindness to those who need it.

Charity and compassion should be emphasized during this time of year. I mean, you should be charitable and compassionate ALL year when you can manage it, that’s just common decency. But especially when it’s cold and people are feeling that lack of money or resources and we’re surrounded by all these super-capitalistic ad campaigns telling us that our love for others is worth only as much as the kitchen appliances and diamond jewelry we put under the tree….yeah, maybe bring something a little more altruistic to the table. It doesn’t have to be huge, it doesn’t have to be performative. Just look for those opportunities to help someone out or make their life a little easier. You’ll know them when you see them.

If you’re crafty, pull out those projects you’ve been saving for a rainy day. We often spend a lot of time cooped up in the house during cold weather, the more so in 2020 with the various lockdowns, so why not turn it into something productive? Fix something, create something new, work on that scarf you’ve been meaning to finish since last winter. Make a pinecone feeder for the local birds, or scatter some nuts and dried berries for any critters that happen to be out and about. Do winter crafts with your kids to keep them occupied, if they happen to get bored of watching Frozen 2 for the hundredth time this week. (Hey, I only have nieces and a nephew, but I’ve still heard the horror stories.)

Let me pause a moment to address the proverbial elephant in the room. And this MIGHT be dipping a toe into the religion pool, but it’s an issue that a lot of us face. Late December can be a tough time for witches who were raised Christian but are, for one reason or another, disconnected from the faith or the Church at present. There’s the constant symbolism in music and decorations all around, pressure from our friends and families, people gnashing their teeth about red coffee cups, and so on. And we’re not even going to talk about the annual arguments over who stole whose holidays. If you know me, you know exactly how salty I can get on the topic, and we don’t have time for that today. This is about finding ways to celebrate, not my personal rage over people who don’t understand the difference between conflation and syncretism, and can’t be arsed to read history that doesn’t come from-...

Ooooo deep cleansing breath. Come on, Bree, you promised. (-hiss- I LIED.)

ANYWAY. Yule is a time when it might be worth remembering literally anything positive that came out of your experience with Christianity. Some of us have it, some of us don’t, that’s purely a personal matter. Some of us miss the carols, okay? There can be a lot of nostalgia involved in the season that’s disconnected from whatever trauma or differences in belief led to that split. And if you want to pause and remember that fondly, that’s okay. I will fully confess to singing along to Christmas hymns on the radio in my car at top volume because that’s a big part of the season for me and always has been. Heck, I might even attend a service at the local Unitarian church. They’re nice and non-denominational and they focus much more on the meaning behind the season than any particular holiday. So if you feel the need for that fellowship, see if there’s a UU church near you, or a virtual service online. There’s nothing wrong with revisiting your roots.

Moving back into witchcraft territory, you can collect clean snow and icicles to melt for winter moon water. This isn’t really much different from moon water you’d make at any other time of year, but it’s another method of gathering the base material. Also, icicles are great for any water you’re setting aside for more aggressive or protective purposes. The fact that they look like hanging spears isn’t lost on me.

Check your household protections and see if anything needs shoring up. Like I said, I cast my wards every year at Samhain, but they always seem to need a bit of detail work by the time Yule rolls around. Or heck, you might find Yule a more appropriate time to perform that casting, or maybe you refresh your wards at every holiday, who knows. Whatever works for you, as long as you remember to do it at some point. Cleanse your thresholds and the corners of your home, at the very least, just for good measure. But don’t go sweeping anything out the door. That’s sweeping away your good luck for next year.

And speaking of New Year’s, if the year you’ve had has been particularly….well, like the year we’ve had, you can also burn the year in effigy and cleanse with incense for a fresh start. Just write it on a piece of paper and burn that S.O.B. in the cauldron. While you’re at it, you can symbolically burn lingering worries, bad habits, bad memories, and regrets with either candle flame or a burning bowl. And yes, that includes all those negative things you think about yourself that you wish would go away.

And finally, reflect on the year as a whole, with all the joys and lessons it’s brought you. What memories have you made? What has brought you joy? What do you regret? What have you learned? What skills have you developed and how will you use them? What improvements do you still wish to make? And what do you want to do with the coming year?

And around and around it goes….

Like I said at the beginning, this is by no means exhaustive. These are just some basic ideas to get you started. You can make your own celebrations and your own traditions as you, either by building off of existing ones or by creating something new. As long as it has meaning to you and marks the occasions you deem important in ways that are fun and festive, it’s all good. This is something I’d love to see more often as a discussion - personal traditions, things that are unique to families or particular regions or individual witches, all the places they intersect, and all the various ways that we celebrate ourselves and each other and our craft.

- Hex Positive, Ep. 011 - Secular Celebrations (November 1, 2020)