Nature spirituality & pagan readings

An 8-minute break at your favorite nature destination, to recall how we've changed our ways in the past, and where the inspiration for change came from. Mono Lake is an ancient lake to the east of Yosemite National Park in California. In this essay included in the newsletter and the calendar sent to Mono Lake Committee members, the writer calls for nature writing to change. Awe and wonder is not enough to save our planet; it is decision making that will.

A 7-minute time travel to the 1870s to find out what John Muir meant when he wrote to his sister, "The mountains are calling and I must go...". There is a second part to this popular quote, and it's written a year after John Muir discovered his first glacier in the Yosemite. This is 1 letter out of John Muir's numerous books and correspondence, currently in process of being archived by University of the Pacific. It's countdown to election day. Are environmental practices on your ballot or part of what you look for in local candidates? Share with us by sending a voice message at http://anchor.fm/naturespirituality.

A 7 minute walk to birch trees at the edges of Elfland, where fairies dwell, stories are felt, and time is difficult to tell. This is taken from the book, The Runes of Elfland, a collection of the Elder Futhark runes and the stories they embody. Nature is not just something to study. Through stories and lore, emotions and imagination, we nurture the rich connections that become legacy. Written by Ari Berk and illustrated by Brian Froud, this is not a conventional take on the runes, but an interpretation from the perspective of Elfland, Elfheim, or the Otherworld of fairy lores. This is 2 pages out of the 111-page book.

Following episode 3, here's a 10 minute reflection on how we think about illness, from Patrice Bouchardon's book, The Healing Energy of Trees. When are we the farmer, looking at the most obvious, and when are we the ecologist, taking time to consider what has brought us to this situation? "All of us carry microbes and viruses, but not everyone gets ill from them." If we believe health is larger than our individual state of being, this reflection will help us consider how to heal together with others and the environment. This is 2 pages out of his 150-page book.

A 10 minute reflection on the 7 attitudes to nature: the farmer, the biologist, the romantic, the gardener, the shaman, the ecologist, and the mystic, from Patrice Bouchardon's book, The Healing Energy of Trees. No Celtic lore or druidry here, but a down-to-earth examination of our own journeys in developing a relationship with nature. This is 2 pages out of his 150-page book.

A 5-minute peek into the late spiritual activist Patricia Monaghan's deep dive into "the landscape of Celtic myth and spirit", in the chapter "Mountains of the Hag". This is 2 pages out of her 250 pages book, The Red Haired Girl from the Bog. These Irish words or English words derived from Irish are listed: * Ceann na Cailleach: Hag's Head * Slieve Echtghe: mountains of the awful one * rath: hill fort

A 5-minute peek into Seamus Heaney's essay on the praises of the Irish landscape in words and poetry throughout time.