Light a candle. Watch the flame for a while. Feel its heat, then blow it out. Watch the smoke drift away. Look at the blackened wick. That is birth, life, death, and non-existence. If you re-light the candle, that’s a new life; the original flame exists only in memory. Now remember the smoke and consider … Read moreAccept death, embrace life.
An unusually hot and dry Fall has delayed some of the usual seasonal cues, but now it is undeniable; Memoria has arrived once again. We actually began our observances very early by taking part in the annual Sacred Harvest event at Sky Meadow in Vermont. … and we’ve just returned from an anniversary vacation that … Read moreMemoria 2025 (Part 1)
Recommended viewing. There hasn’t been a new addition to the canon for quite a while; this movie qualifies.
In connection with the launch of Poetic Faiths: New Religions and Rituals as Works of Living Art, here’s my recent conversation with Metamodern Meaning luminary Brendan Graham Dempsey. We discuss the Poetic Faith ethos from a variety of perspectives, the structure and aims of the anthology, my own practice of the Mysterium as an example … Read more“Metamodernism and Poetic Faiths”
The first volume of the Poetic Faiths interview anthology is now available! Poetic Faiths: New Religions and Rituals as Works of Living Art is an anthology of illustrated interviews with an emergent counterculture of artists and activists who take secular humanism as a given, then ask, “Now what?” and find their answers in artistic creation. Poetic … Read more“Poetic Faiths: New Religions and Ritual as Works of Living Art” Vol. 1 now available
Petals fell, poetry was spoken and honey tasted to commemorate the life and death of American author Tom Robbins: The search for meaning is not a whole lot different than the yearning for certainty, which is to say, an unsuitable pursuit for any who might aspire to nimbleness of mind, amplitude of soul, or freedom … Read moreTom Robbins (July 22, 1932 – February 9, 2025)
My Memoria symbolically began very early, with the inaugural Sky Meadow Mystery School event in Vermont; at that time there were just the first hints of change, tiny patches of russet in an arboreal sea of green, spreading almost imperceptibly during our magical week in the mountains. Now Fall has finally fallen; an exceptionally dry … Read moreMemoria 2024
Taking place during late August of 2024, the inaugural Sky Meadow Mystery School was a free, week-long, residential immersion into wholesome permaculture practice and the mythopoetic mysteries of Life and Death. As an experiment in countercultural community-building, the Mystery School was also a time and place to learn new skills and perspectives. One of our … Read moreThe Sky Meadow Mystery School, Harvest 2024 in a few words and many images
Part of my morning ritual walk, which is undertaken partly for exercise, partly as a kind of moving meditation practice, is to navigate this stretch of several hundred feet of shoreline adjacent to the local river. Because of its position, slightly downstream of the point where two branches of the river meet, tree trunks washed … Read moreWalking the boulder field
A conversation about this upcoming residential retreat event in Vermont, which will combine permaculture praxis with mythopoetic art, ritual and philosophy on the memento mori ergo carpe diem theme.