Pope on Ecology - Latest Encyclical on Ecology Fits Within my Mission Statement

I try not to get too religious or political here, since this is an author's blog about nature and mythology, but this is too apropos to ignore. If you want to read Pope Francis Encyclical on Ecology yourself, I'll warn you, like all philosophical, theological, historical and scientific writing there is a bit of staging and wordiness to it. [I generally leave the seriously factual stuff to my husband and let my inner teenager yawn. But I am forcing myself to digest this because I really wanted to read first hand Pope Francis's view.]

Mythological Species #29 – Ghosts

One of the most popular Halloween ghouls are ghosts. Ghost stories are so abundant around camp fires, at sleep overs, in the movies and on TV, that I expected to claim that they had a universal presence among the cultures of the world, to find an abundance of information about them and then move right on to the different presentations they made. [WRONG!]

My first go-to reference book, The Dictionary of Celtic Mythology (MacKillop, Oxford, ISBN 0-19-869157-2), stated that the word "ghost" is a foreign word to the Celtic language, borrowed from another

Crowns – May is the month of the Crowning of Mary, Queen of Heaven, Mother of God, Theotokas; Mythological Species of Humans # 20 – Royalty; Book Review (Middle Grade) – The Hero's Guide to Saving your Kingdom, by Christopher Healy

May Crowning

The Crowning of Mary as Queen of May probably started in the early 1700's in Italy.

 It varies a great deal but usually consists of adding activities to normal devotions such as singing hymns about Mary, reading scripture passages or devotional books about Mary, praying the Hail Mary, etc. May 31st devotionals usually end with crowning a statue or picture of Mary with May flowers. 

Mothers – Mother's Day, MSH # 17 and #18 – Ancestors and Saints, Picture Book Review – How Are You Peeling?

Sunday is Mother's Day, one of the deep days of the year. As mothers, we are celebrated and yet we

remember our own mothers and our mother's mothers and our mother's mother's mothers, back through countless ages. I find motherhood an amazing experience.

I tell my kids, motherhood is like the Marine's slogan : the toughest job you'll ever love. The image of a mother is not easily overlaid by the image of a Marine, but the truth is, mothers are the first line of defense against the chaos that each of us holds within ourselves. And fighting chaos is an endless, almost thankless job. But when mothers fail us it is a bitter setback, one that some never overcome.

Fertility – May Day; MSH#15 – Vanir; Mary, the Virgin Mother of God (celebrated the month of May)

May Day is a joyful celebration of the return of fertility to the earth. [Yeah! Spring!] It is often pictured as flower bedecked girls dancing around May poles. [A pretty phallic symbol and celebration of sexuality.]

Mythological Species of Humanoids #15 – the Vanir – From Norse Mythology, The Prose Edda (the Younger Edda) and The Poetic Edda (the Elder Edda). Long ago, the war gods, the Aesir of Asgard, waged a war on the fertility gods, the Vanir of Vanaheim, known also for wisdom, prophecy and dark magic.

Easter Vigil Mass and Happy Earth Day

Well, I wasn't planning on writing on this topic. I've already written about Easter, but the Easter Vigil mass this year moved me. And the topic of the homily was directly related to this blog, so I decided to post an extra entry.

Let me set the stage. It was a typical busy Holy Saturday, full of grocery shopping, Easter Egg dying, taxiing kids, defending Peter Jackson's

St. Patrick's Day and Leprechauns

Briefly, St. Patrick was born (c. 456-93) to a Roman family in Britain near Scotland, captured by Irish raiders at 16 and sold as a slave in Ireland to herd pigs and sheep. For 6 years, he survived solitude and weather by prayer and singing psalms and realized he had a vocation to the priesthood. Guided by a dream he escaped and traveled across Ireland to find a ship waiting to take him home to Britain, where he was trained as a priest and became a bishop. Then in another dream he heard the Irish people calling him to come back and bring them the Christian message. He returned to Ireland, where several missionaries had already died, now 'a slave for Christ', to be instrumental in the mass conversion of Ireland. There are many fun hagiographic stories about St. Patrick,

Ash Wednesday and Lent

Ash Wednesday is in five days and starts Lent. Have you ever noticed that many people observe Ash Wednesday and Lent who aren't even regularly practicing Catholics or Lutherans. I think this is an indication of how deeply meaningful these rituals are.

Things like Ascension Thursday, the Feast of the Assumption, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, though important, haven't reached into the average human psyche to touch us deeply. There are no sacramentals, they are not closely associated with a season, so it is only the obedient or the spiritually attuned who observe those Holy Days.

Can an Animist be a Catholic Christian?

This post is a contribution to the February issue of Animist Blog Carnival :

                                 lifthrasirsuccess.wordpress.com/animist-blog-carnival/
 on the theme of Animist Ethics, through a blog called animist jottings:
               http://animistjottings.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/animist-ethics-call-for-contributions/

The question I ask as a person who feels a strong connection to both Animism and Catholic Christianity is: Can an Animist be a Christian and vice versa? Are they mutually exclusive or can they be compatible?

The Animist Blog Carnival suggests that animism is open to interpretation. Many examples of other's definitions are listed. Graham Harvey’s Animist Manifesto  states that “All that exists lives All that lives is worthy of respect You don’t have to like what you respect Not liking someone is no reason for not respecting them Respecting someone is no reason for not eating them” This and other definitions proposed suggests that Animism doesn't have with the Christianity.