Naturalistic Paganism

In this series, I want to strip away everything non-essential from pagan ritual and build it from the ground up–literally, starting with our interaction with the earth and the other-than-human beings who we share it with. I previously wrote about the process of creating a ritual, starting with listening–to nature, to our own bodies, and to our unconscious. I have described ritual as a conscious structure applied to an unconscious response to the more-than-human world. And I focused on using simple gestures and poetic language, inspired by the practice of deep listening.

In this part, I want to talk about daily practice. We’re coming up on the New Year, which is the time when people traditionally recommit to healthy, life-enhancing practices that they have let fall off over the course of the year. Many years, my resolution has been to recommit to my daily spiritual practice. And many times, I have quickly fallen out of practice soon after recommitting.

Before we get into the what of a daily practice in the next post, I want to talk about talk a little bit about spiritual discipline.