#ecopagan

But I promise you, nature is not as far away from you as it may feel.

I’ve felt that too. Some days I desperately want to go outside, to be surrounded by trees and dirt and wind, but I’m limited by my own circumstances. So I’ve had to learn how to find the natural world in smaller, softer ways.

Sometimes I sit on my porch, lie on a blanket, and just stare at the sky. I thank it for being there. I watch the clouds move. I let the air touch me.

Sometimes I look out my window and see birds, and immediately think of Hera.

Some days I’m too sick to get out of bed, so I get a glass of water, swirl it around, and listen to it. And yes, maybe it sounds silly, but I hear the ocean in it. That water still belongs to the natural world. It still came from somewhere ancient.

If you can’t go to the woods, you can watch a nature documentary and thank Pan or Artemis or any deity you associate with the wild.

If you can’t walk barefoot in the grass, you can touch a houseplant.

If you can’t sit under the moon, you can look at a photo of her.

If all you can do today is breathe, then breathe with the earth. That counts too.

Nature is not only found in forests, mountains, rivers, and beautiful places far away from you.

It is in your tap water. It is in the birds outside your window. It is in the weeds growing through concrete. It is in the sky above your home. It is in your own body, your breath, your hunger, your tiredness, your heartbeat.

Please don’t feel discouraged if your connection looks small right now.

Small is still sacred.

So I was thinking about that, and wondering what would be the embodiment of the God? My immediate answer is lichen. I am biased here because of my love and fascination with lichen but listen. Yes I know that everyone is into mushrooms and fungi these days because it’s so fun and cottagecore goblincore aesthetic. But for me, discovering lichen was a spiritual revelation. I felt awakened into an entirely different world.

Lichen is EVERYWHERE. I live in a very suburban area and I see lichen covering trees everywhere I look, some of the most beautiful lichen-encrusted trees I’ve seen are in the shopping center parking lot. It’s almost omnipresent and yet gets overlooked by almost everyone.

There are so many people out there who don’t even know what lichen is. Lichen is a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and an algae (and/or cyanobacteria). Fun fact, the word “symbiosis” was invented to describe lichen! This is an entire classification of life that was so unique it changed our language and understanding of the world. Even today, there is so much that scientists just do not know about lichen (yet). The people who devote their lives and careers to studying lichen will always be chasing some element of mystery.

When you learn about anything new, there’s a brief period of time where you feel confident that you have a good amount of knowledge, for a beginner. At some point afterwards, as you continue to learn more, you will realize that you know nothing about this topic. Lichen has the courtesy to give you this realization up front. There are lichens that can only be identified to species by microscopic dissection. Many of them rely on chemical analysis in the field to be able to reliably identify. There are lichens that are so small and intricate that, due to my vision problems, I cannot even look at them with any detail. Using a magnifying lens strains my eyes too much. I have to use my camera as an intermediary, but the camera isn’t always reliable either! My hands shake a little, or I didn’t realize that the photo was a bit out of focus until I get back home and review the photos in my laptop.

Maybe I can talk in more detail later about my path of becoming completely fascinated with lichen. But like I said, it was a spiritual revelation. It completely changed my way of viewing the world around me. I feel like I’m walking in two worlds at once. Everywhere I go, I am noticing something that most people cannot even begin to understand. And I don’t understand it either! I know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about lichen and it is the most incredible feeling!!! I am near tears writing this post!!!

I'm pagan (non denominational goddess worship) and I'm growing more interested in ecology and everything encompassed in solar punk, so I'm interested to hear how your interest coincides with being/interest in paganism

Hi! Yes. I’m still very much just dipping my toe into paganism, so I use the term loosely as I don’t feel informed enough yet to be more specific. I’m interested by neo-Druidry and drawn to Celtic Polytheism, but mainly because it’s most compatible with my heritage, not because it seems more right or true than any other pagan belief system I’ve come across.

I call myself a pagan because I believe that the matter of the earth itself is what is sacred, that the world is full of gods older than any of the names we have given them, inhabiting the water and the rocks, the trees and the soil, the animals and the herbs. I guess you could say ecology is my religion in some senses - the way everything fits together in harmony, from the Wood Wide Web to the salmon run, never fails to make me feel close to the divine.

For me personally, my paganism is very close to solarpunk. I’m a solarpunk because I think living in harmony with the earth is sacred. I’m a pagan because I think saving the planet requires all aspects of our lives and selves. And vice versa, if that makes sense. Now of course, I’m sure there are many deeply committed, principled and hardworking solarpunks who are atheists, agnostic, humanists, Christians, Jewish, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Baha’is and Zoroastrians, or who follow indigenous spiritualities, and I think all these belief systems are compatible in their own way with solarpunk (which actually has a lot in common with an apocatastatic religion but don’t get my theology nerd brain started on that). But for me, I couldn’t conceive of being a pagan and not a solarpunk too, or a solarpunk and not some sort of nature worshipper. But religion is very personal.