Several months and blog posts ago, I said that I wanted to avoid most of the partisan discussions here in favor of moving on with what I actually want to talk about. That was my best-effort attempt at the time to articulate the amount of overwhelm I was feeling about the United States' current events, … Continue reading Reflecting on Ultra-Polarization and Personal Limits
Tag: community-building
Some Media Recommendations
This week, I listened to the first two podcast episodes in The Long Time Academy, which won awards in 2022 for its work. The podcast is a short series with the intent of giving the listener a transformative spark away from short-term thinking — of thinking instead as ourselves as descendants and ancestors in a … Continue reading Some Media Recommendations
Reflecting on a 15-Year College Reunion
I attended my 15-year college reunion. This post describes the travel shrine I set up and some cool things I saw in the library and art gallery. There are also reflections about pagan/polytheistic religious community.
A Relevant Video on YouTube
I watched this video, "6 Ways to Cultivate a Spiritual Path," and since most of the advice is applicable to any spiritual practice (not just the Buddhist lens that the video's creator is coming from), I'm sharing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFweKyr12A0 While Nick Keomahavong mentions that online communities are useful, responsibly, I would like to add that … Continue reading A Relevant Video on YouTube
Teachers, Students, and Community: A Few Initial Thoughts
The title of this post is self-explanatory. Despite being a longer post (with section headers), it isn’t meant to be comprehensive, but part of an ongoing process to understand how people work and what it takes to develop a healthy baseline for thinking about both teachers and spiritual companions/friends. This post is going to combine … Continue reading Teachers, Students, and Community: A Few Initial Thoughts
March 2022 “We Are Individuals in Communities” Divination
Obligatory context: In 2020, due to feeling a lot of social burnout, pessimism, and pain about our wider polytheistic communities, I started doing a divination reading every three months about Western polytheistic communit[y/ies]. The point of this divination, like most divinations I do, is to highlight growth areas that we may be missing that prevent … Continue reading March 2022 “We Are Individuals in Communities” Divination
January 2022 “We Are Individuals in Communities” Divination
Obligatory context: In 2020, due to feeling a lot of social burnout, pessimism, and pain about our wider polytheistic communities, I started doing a divination reading every three months about the polytheistic communit[y/ies]. The point of this divination, like most divinations I do, is to highlight growth areas that we may be missing that prevent … Continue reading January 2022 “We Are Individuals in Communities” Divination
Prayer Itself Isn’t Toxic, but Spiritual Leaders Sometimes Can Be
For the past few weeks, I've been reading Amanda Montell's Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism. I'm two-thirds through reading it. In this post, I will discuss two points within the book: the first my critique of how Montell describes prayer, the second some comments I have on toxic leaders in spiritual communities abusing the concept … Continue reading Prayer Itself Isn’t Toxic, but Spiritual Leaders Sometimes Can Be
Cutting Glass, Releasing Garments
The 'last' garment and the most difficult to cast off is, on the appetitive level, ambition, and on the cognitive level, imagination. §111, Damascius I, On Plato Phaedo On January 1, 2021, when I did my annual 12-card divination draw, it was a very dismaying experience because almost all of it was bad. It pointed … Continue reading Cutting Glass, Releasing Garments
KALLISTI 