Untitled

Litha Arc: Following Litha: Standing in the Light Without Turning Away, this essay carries consequence forward. The longest day passes almost without ceremony. There is no bell. No moral reckoning delivered on schedule. The sun simply begins to tilt, and we discover—sometimes slowly, sometimes all at once—that what we did in the light is now ours to carry. Solstice culture often imagines…

Litha Arc: Following When Strength Is No Longer an Excuse: Ethics at the Peak of Capacity, this essay names visibility as responsibility. By early summer, the light is no longer tentative.Nothing is half-lit. Nothing remains conveniently indistinct.What exists does so openly—and what acts does so without cover. This is the season when being present becomes being visible,and visibility begins to…

Litha Arc: After Restraint Is Not Withdrawal: Choosing Limits at the Height of Strength, this piece marks the solstice without absolution. The Condition of Full Light At Litha, the light does not arrive quietly.It is already here—full, exposed, unmistakable. There is nothing left to warm up—and nothing left to hide behind. The long arc from winter restraint to spring discernment has brought us…

There is a quiet mistake we make when strength finally arrives. After seasons of exhaustion, confusion, or scarcity, power feels like relief. Energy returns. Capacity stabilizes. The tools are finally in hand. And with that return comes an unspoken assumption: that restraint is no longer required, that limits belonged only to weakness. But restraint is not a symptom of depletion.It is a…

Litha Arc: After The Burden of Full Light: When Visibility Demands Accountability exposes consequence, this piece stays with power after ignition. There is a moment—quiet, irreversible, and already past—when power stops being theoretical. Before that moment, we can speak in wishes. In symbols. In ethics shaped largely by intention. We can say we mean well, we’re still learning, we didn’t know…

A Policy Change That Feels Like Erasure The Department of Defense recently announced it is streamlining its religious-affiliation codes, reportedly slashing the list of recognized faith and belief categories from more than 200 down to just 31. For Pagan, Wiccan, Druid, Heathen, Humanist, Atheist, and other minority service members, this “streamlining” looks a lot like disappearance. The removed…

Litha Arc: After Beltane: A Celebration of Life Fully Awake affirms aliveness, this piece asks what strength owes. There are seasons when survival itself is the work.When confusion is honest.When exhaustion explains our silence. This is not one of those seasons. Light has climbed. Energy has returned. The body—personal or collective—has crossed back into capacity. We may still feel cautious,…

Today is Memorial Day, and for many of us around Kansas City, summer has unofficially begun. The grills come out. Smokers get fired up. Families gather on patios and porches. Lawn chairs unfold beside packed coolers. Flags appear near sidewalks and graves. Kids run through sprinklers. Boats head out toward Longview or Smithville Lake. At garden centers, people line up for flowers, mulch, and…

A Pagan Reflection on Looking Within Without Turning Away from the World “For if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without.” I first read these words in Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance, when I was just beginning to find my way into Paganism, and they have stayed with me for years. Back then, I mostly heard the line as beautiful spiritual language. It sounded…

Modern Paganism often begins with hunger. We hunger for meaning. For ritual. For rootedness. For some way to live that feels less cut off from land, ancestors, seasons, body, and spirit. Many of us come to Paganism because something in us is searching for an older rhythm, or at least a more honest one. That hunger can be beautiful. It can also make us careless. When we go looking for…

Not long ago, I saw the phrase “touch grass” while scrolling through one of those online threads where everyone seemed to be reacting faster than they were thinking. The phrase usually shows up when someone is too deep in online drama, endless arguments, or the kind of scrolling that leaves us more agitated than informed. In the Mental Floss article “Why Do We Tell People to ‘Go Touch Grass?’”,…

Not long ago, I was standing in the woods watching a few deer slowly move between the trees. The forest was quiet except for birds somewhere overhead and leaves shifting in the breeze. What struck me most was how connected everything seemed. Nothing in the forest was really “in charge,” yet everything depended on everything else. The trees shaded the ground. The fallen leaves fed the soil.…

Beltane Arc: This essay follows the endurance explored in Standing in the Fire: Sacred Endurance in Pagan Spirituality, entering vitality without forgetting its cost. Beltane is here—and with it comes warmth, movement, and the unmistakable feeling that life is no longer waiting. This is the season when the world feels willing. Light lingers. Green deepens. Energy rises in the body and in the…

Beltane Arc: This essay assumes action has begun and remains, following the commitments named in Choosing What to Feed: Pagan Discernment Around Energy and Growth. With one week left before Beltane, the season tightens in a way I can feel in my body. What I have noticed, I have fed. What I have fed has begun to take form. The room for reconsideration hasn’t vanished, but it has narrowed into…

Beltane Arc: This essay follows When Clarity Lingers: The Ethics of Knowing Without Act, asking how energy is directed once avoidance is no longer plausible. Desire is no longer subtle. It has momentum now. It has appetite. What was once merely visible is asking to be sustained. This is the point in the season where recognition stops being enough. Seeing desire is uncomfortable; feeding it is…

Rudeness is not a failure of manners; it is a failure of relationship. I notice it most in the same pressure points around town—highway merges, grocery aisles, parking lots, sidewalks, school pickup—places where movement tightens, patience thins, and people begin to act as if they’re the only ones there. Moments like that make it clear how easily we forget we’re sharing the same ground. That…

The term “global warming” can be misleading because it makes the problem sound simple—like the planet is just getting hotter. But that’s not what it feels like from where I live. In the Midwest, I don’t experience this as a number. I see it in the weather—storms that seem stronger, seasons that feel off, and patterns that don’t line up the way I remember. What’s really happening is a broader…