Summertime

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S3E26 TRANSCRIPT:

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Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-Based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts Yucca.

Mark: And I’m Mark

Yucca: And this week we're talking about the summer. and connecting with our local ecosystems in general, whether that's rural wilderness, urban, whatever it is, where you are, the.

Mark: right. Yeah. We were talking about this before we started recording, it's, it's inevitable that in the dark and, and. And cold times of the year in here in the tempera zone that we get driven indoors by our climate. And so our observations and rituals and activities tend to be really indoor focused at that time of the year.

Well, now we're at the opposite end of the year, and it's a time to get out and do things and explore the world because as pagans. One of the things we really want to be is really engaged with the world in our lives.

Yucca: Right. Right. And, and we really encourage people to. Be getting out and experiencing things anytime of year, but this time makes it a lot easier. And there are a lot of things that are already happening. Outside is when there are lots of outdoor gatherings. It's pretty typical that somebody might be having a barbecue or anything like that.

Now of course there are some environments. If you are in Tucson, for instance, You might not be wanting to go out during the date time, you might be spending a lot of time at night outside during the summer, rather than being out in the middle of the day at 110 degrees.

Mark: Right. Right. And the desert is amazing at night.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: That's, that's well worth exploring checking out what it's like to be, out there in that nighttime environment with all those millions of stars. So, yeah, so let's talk a little bit about this. One of the things that we, that we talk about a lot here is how all of what we experience on earth is nature, right?

There's there's, there is no, bright line distinction between the so called artificial, which is the human made and the natural, which is the stuff that's made by everything else. Humans. A part of nature. And what we do is natural. Some of what we do, isn't very good for the rest of the biosphere.

But it's still natural. And so engaging with both what's going on in human culture, as well as with with the biological world is it's an important part of our practice. And so, one of the things that we talked about and, and have mentioned many times is this practice of paying attention.

Yucca: And that, I mean, there's so many benefits to that. And some of it is, is just on a very practical level of just how you end up feeling in your health as, as another animal. And some of it is also the sense of connection and satisfaction and. Wonder and awe that we get on that very emotional level as well for just tuning in, right.

Mark: right, right. And that tuning in it can tell us things about what's going on in the hidden world that we can't see of, of. We, we don't get to follow a bee around and find all the, find out all the things that the bee does. Right. We may see the bee on some flowers and then it flies off. And the rest of what it does, unless you're a beekeeper is kind of mysterious.

And the cycles of all of the living, things that are going on around us are very much like that. So we're kind of, observing the tip of the iceberg of everything that's out there. But even that can tell us a lot about what's happening with our climate, what what's happening with the time of year, how that might have changed from our previous year.

And so one tool that we encourage you to take up if you haven't already is what's called a phenology journal. And a phenology journal. Literally, what that means is what happened. Phenol phenology is just keeping track of what happened. And so if you go out and in the morning before you get ready to go to work, if you sit for 10 minutes and write down what you see and what temperature it is and what the sky looks like.

Pretty soon you will have a data set that will give you a lot of information about how to cha, how to celebrate your

Yucca: Mm-hmm right. And, it's kind of funny when we talk about, oh, so what topic do we wanna talk about next episode? Or, what, what can we talk about that we haven't, since we've done, almost three years of episodes and occasionally we'll be browsing through topics, like pagan.

And blog ideas or something like that and come across the idea of a book of shadows and both of us have gone. Well, I don't really do that. I don't really have much to say about that. But this is kind of, this is at least for me, the closest thing that I would do to a book of shadows, where it's a recording of what I see, what I noticed what's happening.

Not so much about me on the inside. But about the land around me, about the, the area where, where

Mark: mm-hmm yeah. And that isn't mutually exclusive with a more traditional book of shadows either. I mean, you could put your, the rituals that you're practicing, whatever Toro cards you drew that day, you could put all that into that journal as well. If you wanted to, or you could keep that stuff in a separate journal

Yucca: Right.

Mark: as, just as easily, but the, the.

The practice of paying attention in that very detailed way of being an amateur scientist and observing and gathering the data about what's happening around you can be really illuminating. And what I find is that it's illuminating about myself too, because if I look at, if I look at my journal entries, I'll notice.

Well, okay. This day I was apparently really distracted cuz I didn't capture very much. This other day I was really engaged because I wrote a whole page of stuff that I was observing. And so you kind of learned things about yourself as well. So. Having said all that about how great it is to pay attention and to, keep track of what we're learning, what you can learn about what's happening around you.

This is the time of year for field trips,

Yucca: Mm-hmm

Mark: uh, which some people call vacations or weekends of camping or whatever it is. And that doesn't have to mean going to a spot of so called nature. Because human activity is, as I just said, human activity is also nature and culture is something that's also very interesting.

So, going to a concert, going to a, a special restaurant, going to a lecture or. Museum, all of those things too, can, be informative of your pagan experience because what we want to be, the reason that we're Pagan's right, is that we want to be engaged with the world. We wanna celebrate that as we go forward.

So I invite you, whether or not you're able to take time and, and go away to somewhere that's, more trees and animals than it is buildings. 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: So bring that, that kind of curiosity to the experiences that you can have in the urban environment too. And we are, this is sort of a, a preview.

We're gonna do an episode on urban paganism. It's a, it's an idea that was just suggested to us, and we want to do that, but it's gonna take a little bit to set up, cuz we'd like to do, we'd like to have some interviews with that.

Yucca: Yeah. So, so thinking about some of the things that. In an urban environment, let's say, you, if you could do a trip to the mountains for camping for a week, like wonderful, but that's unlikely to be what most of us can do. There can be just little moments too, like stopping for half an hour. And people watching or going to the park or actually even just taking a different route home on your commute and noticing what do you see?

What do you pick up on, right? Or is there part of the town where. When you do your, your grocery shopping, if you go to a particular store, is there that same store on the other part of town that you can go to and you can go there just a few times a year and kind of check in like, oh, what is it like in the early spring?

And what's that part of town like in the, the fall or that sort of thing, just that in making a point to pay attention and be aware in the little moments. That is that's

Mark: Right, right. One of the things that we're learning about human memory is that memory, memory that's accessible, that you can, that you can reach back to and, and, bring conjure the, the moment up again, it tends to be of things that are novel.

Yucca: wonderful and helpful

Mark: Things that are new, which is why traveling is so wonderful because every experience is a new experience.

You're not in the rut of the same house, the same car, the same workplace, the same route to work. So introducing novelty into your life that way can make your life a lot more memorable and feel like you're having. More life, you, you don't, you don't wake up one day and realize God, three years have gone by how did that happen?

Cuz you're doing things that are interesting and and keep you awake and alive.

Yucca: Right. And that's one of the thoughts about why it felt like years lasted for so long when we were kids. And then the older we get, the more, it just seems to be flying by. Some of that is perspective in that, the one year is just a much shorter period of our lives now, but when we were a kid, everything was new.

Right. You learned, you learned that other continents existed for the first time. At some point when you were a kid or the first time you learned about the periodic table, or you heard an owl or a something, all of those things were new. The whole world was new and actually. Even though we're, I'm assuming most folks listening are, are adults.

Maybe we've got some, some awesome youth listening as well. But even though things are, are, we've experienced a lot of the world we've not experienced anywhere, close to all of it.

Mark: Mm-hmm

Yucca: could have something new, a novel every single day of your life. If you are looking for it. And paying attention for it.

Mark: Right. And that's why this

paying attention is so important for having an engaged life. One of the big differences between paganism, including non theist, paganism and. The the big monotheisms is that. As far as we're concerned, we're living for this world, we're even, even pagans who believe in an afterlife, don't generally believe that they're trying to qualify for some afterlife.

That's a good one. They believe that something else is gonna happen after you die. But in the meantime, our job is to live this life as well as we possibly can.

Yucca: Mm-hmm

Mark: And as non theist pagans, as far as we're concerned, that's it, you die and nature disassembles you and forms you into new stuff.

So this life and engaging with this world that has brought us forth becomes the central mission. Of our existence and that's a really profoundly different approach than the mainstream approach. And it's so important, I believe for introduction of that into the culture, because it's the only it's that ethic that's gonna enable us to really tackle problems like climate change.

People have really got to understand how important this world is in order to make the appropriate and sometimes uncomfortable adjustments that are gonna be required in order for us to solve this.

Yucca: Yeah. Right. And, and being aware of what this world is, that's a big step in that, right. Because as we've been talking about the, the human world of culture and all of these, that's totally valid and it's extremely important, but it's not all of it. It's a very, very small, tiny sliver of what's happening.

What's part of this planet and this

Mark: Yes. Yes. And so. Having a respectful curiosity about all of these things becomes a really useful default position.

Yucca: system mm-hmm

Mark: I mean, I would take that one step further. I would say that having a respectful curiosity carries into successful to successful relationships, successful business practices, all that kind of thing, because it keeps your mind.

It means that you're listening and it means that you are acknowledging the the dignity and worth of the people that are around you and of the non-human entities that are around you, the, the creatures of the world.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So really encourage you during these summer months to get out there whatever out there means to you. I mean, with COVID, we've been staying in a lot and of course we want you to be safe, but take a field trip, take a walk in a different direction than you used to take a different route home from work rearrange furniture in one of your rooms, shake it up.

Yucca: Yeah. And if you do have an opportunity to maybe do something a little bit more than you typically would if you do have a chance to go camping or just to put that tent up in your backyard, if you have one where you might have just stayed home for your day off, that's also of the things about the summer is that it's a time where you just gotta do.

Right in the winter often we're hunkered down and we're starting the late winter, early spring. We're planning in the summer. Now's the time,

Mark: right.

Yucca: it's the time to do it, if you're gonna do it, do it. And at least for me, sometimes that's the hardest part. Great. At the planning. . And then I just wanna sit there and keep planning about how I will go and do this thing.

But then I gotta actually get up and do it, so that's, everybody's gonna be different with that, but just encourage people if you have the opportunity, whatever it is. And then once you get that momentum going, it's easier to carry it into the colder months or into the times of year. That might not be quite as comfortable or pleasant to be out.

And again, it's gonna really depend on what your climate is. Mark, I would imagine where you live being outside in. January might not be so terrible. Right?

Mark: No. I mean, it, it could be wet. At least we hope it is cuz we're in the middle of a terrible drought. But other than that, I mean the temperatures are still in the forties and fifties. It's just 

Yucca: so it's sweater, weather, sweater, and a raincoat. Yeah.

Mark: Sweater and a raincoat. Exactly. It's not, I mean the kinds of overcoats that people wear in areas that get really cold, we just never see them here because nobody ever needs them.

Yucca: right. Yeah. Very different. But it very, very different than if you were in Missoula. Right. Trying to go out. And, and in January. So, but, but the point is like, whatever it is for you getting that, that momentum going this is a good time for that. If that's where you're at.

Mark: It is. And one trick in doing that is to enlist allies.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: One way I imagine you can make things happen. Yucca is by telling your kids that they're going to happen,

Yucca: Yes, it it, and then.

Mark: then

Yucca: They are. Yes. Oh, they

Mark: hook.

Yucca: ex and you think they forget about it. Right? And then you hear the little voice mom, you said like, oh yeah, I did say it, but it's bedtime now. Nope. Okay. I promised all right, let's go do it.

Mark: Okay. Yeah, it is. It is amazing how the expectations of others could leverage us,

Yucca: Yeah. And if you maybe make a, make a date to, to see somebody in the park, right? Hey, we're gonna meet for half an hour. We're just gonna talk for, hang out for that half an hour and then we're gonna go home. That other person is, is expecting you.

Mark: Right.

Yucca: And yeah, that's a, that's a wonderful point.

So that goes back to some of the stuff we've been talking about, about, finding community and building community. And that can be powerful, but if you don't have that, you can still have that amazing private. Personal relationship with whatever it is you're doing the new route home that you're taking, or the sitting at the park, or, you know what, taking a moment to, to drink your morning caffeine on the porch or whatever it is that you're gonna be doing.

You can do that in that, those quiet moments of

Mark: right, right. So, this is a somewhat shorter episode this time and that's because we want to encourage you to go out and find it, whatever it is. It's it's summer. Which means a lot of different things in a lot of different places. But what it does mean universally for those of us that are in the Northern hemisphere is that the days are long.

There's a, there's a lot of time to do stuff. And so, we hope that you will seize the opportunity to do exciting novel and interesting things and engage with your world.

Yucca: right. And we will be back with you next week to already be talking about that August holiday coming up.

Mark: That's right. Yeah. The, the wheel continues to turn, so we'll be here and we hope you will

Yucca: Thank you everyone.

 

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