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" An Atheopagan Prayer by Mark Green
Praise to the wide spinning world
Unfolding each of all the destined tales compressed
In the moment of your catastrophic birth
Wide to the fluid expanse, blowing outward
Kindling in stars and galaxies, in bright pools
Of Christmas-colored gas; cohering in marbles hot
And cold, ringed, round, gray and red and gold and dun
And blue
Pure blue, the eye of a child, spinning in a veil of air,
Warm island, home to us, kind beyond measure: the stones
And trees, the round river flowing sky to deepest chasm, salt
And sweet.
Praise to Time, enormous and precious,
And we with so little, seeing our world go as it will
Ruing, cheering, the treasured fading, precious arriving,
Fear and wonder,
Fear and wonder always.
Praise O black expanse of mostly nothing
Though you do not hear, you have no ear nor mind to hear
Praise O inevitable, O mysterious, praise
Praise and thanks be a wave
Expanding from this tiny temporary mouth this tiny dot
Of world a bubble
Going out forever meeting everything as it goes
All the great and infinitesimal
Gracious and terrible
All the works of blessed Being.
May it be so.
May it be so.
May our hearts sing to say it is so. "
― , Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans
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" Salt Marsh Goddess by Michelle Joers
"You may need
a super-human
super-hero
super-natural god/dess,
hammer or harp in hand,
horse-bodied or jackal-headed,
Lady of the Lake or Lord of the Seas.*
But I have the deep, deep ocean
and strong winds driving waves upon the shore
driving me to my knees for absolution
driving me to oblivion;
I have a sun that warms tender shoots,
crooning them from the loamy body of a Living Earth;
The caress of the Willow branch as I lie beneath her roots,
book in hand, and squirmy child in lap.
The Salt Marsh Goddess speaks to me in ringing tones,
as clear as any god of myth does for you
& she speaks in a thousand tongues—
Spartina, Juniperus, Myrica, Sesarma,
Uca, Littorina, Malaclemys, Ardea, Alligator
…just to name a few.
I have prayed at her temple as the tide pours into my boots
And divined my future with her bones
I have bled for her | I have tasted her flesh
And drank of her blood | And given her mine
While you argue
over how to resurrect
gods of long passed cultures,
I’ll be the one covered in mud and dancing with the rushes,
celebrating a goddess born of glaciers. "
― , Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans
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" I sing to you of many more gods, gods of wind and water, gods of each mineral and the events that created them. I sing to you of the gods of protons, of quarks, of atomic forces binding and holding. I sing to you of the god of the dust that flies off the ice-burned comet, and the god of the spaces in between. I sing to you of the god that twists like a serpent at the center of every sun and is found again coiled within every electron, shared by both and worshiped by each in its own way. I sing to you of the god that collects asteroids together in mockeries of his sister’s solar systems, jealous of his elder sibling’s power. I sing to you of all these, and many, many more." - Lupa, "The Forgotten Gods of Nature "
― , Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans
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" The heron must be used to people, and yet it never lets you get too close. Draw parallel to it with the width of one of the marsh’s holding ponds between you, and it will duck its head, eyeing you with suspicion, then fly. I cannot approach the heron, certainly could never touch it; I can only look for it, entranced.
This is how I understand the divine, and why I continue to seek it in the resolutely non-human world, with which we nonetheless recognize a numinous kinship. Sometimes, it will turn and lock eyes with you, lifting you out of yourself, changing everything. Other times, it will give you the side-eye and swoop away, leaving you longing for retreating beauty. You might not see it every single time you go looking, or where you expect to find it. No matter how common the experience, every time you stumble across mystery, or independent wild being, it is a surprise and a miracle. And every day, you can look." - Sara Amis, "A Daily Heron "
― , Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans