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| Coast Starlight |
November 2014
San Diego, CA
Day One: Friday
The Pacific Surfliner
Amtrak train arrived in San Diego at 1:00 a.m. on Friday, having boarded the Coast Starlight in
Emeryville at 6:10 a.m. on Thursday. Due
to confused arrangements for lodging, I had no place to stay. Took cab to home of my niece Ally and crashed
on inflatable mattress in their living room.
The good news is that I got to spend a little time with her, her spouse
Lisa, and their darling little Rockwell, aged 19 months, on Friday morning. I taught him a new word. He was identifying animals in one of his
picture books. He liked to go “hoo, hoo”
when he saw owl. He could say something
approximating “sheep,” but didn’t have sheep’s sound. I said “baaa, baaa” in a really croaky sheep
voice, and he cracked up. Now he has
another word in his vocabulary: “baaa.” Meaning I blew off the early Friday sessions
I’d planned to attend.
Ally dropped me off at a
hotel where I was staying for one night, thanks to my friend Megory Anderson of
the Sacred
Dying Foundation. Checked in and made my way to the colossal San Diego
Convention Center, where I picked
up my nametag and bag. (Purple this
year, and sturdily made.)
Feeling a bit lost in the
vastness of this convention center, I headed for familiar territory and found
myself at the Forum on
Religion and Ecology, Yale University, annual luncheon. I decided
to stay for a while because the luncheon was headed by John Grim and Mary
Evelyn Tucker; John Grim and I had participated in The
Biodiversity Project[1] Spirituality Working Group[2]
at a small retreat near Madison, Wisconsin, in 1999. The first person I encountered whom I knew
was Bron
Taylor, headed for this luncheon.
I was fortunate to have a little time
for one-on-one with Bron, when we shared optimism about the emphasis on climate
change at this AAR, and considered more recent changes in radical environmental
activism with the death of such notables as my friend Sequoia in 2008. I chatted with some of the organizers for a
while because we were early, and learned that one of them, a man from Vermont,
has a son who is a grower in California.
You never know.
Soon we were joined by Graham
Harvey, Doug Ezzy,
and others. As I listened to every
person in the room -- I would guess more than 100 -- introduce her or himself
and say something about where they were working (universities, graduate
students, NGOs, et al.), I was pleased to hear all the references to ecology,
nature, climate change, and the like. Of
course, some went on and on explaining what they were doing, and that had to be
checked so there was time for everyone else to speak. I said I was from Covenant of the
Goddess and Cherry
Hill Seminary, indicating that
CHS was the first and only Pagan seminary and that it operated in cyberspace
(green, ya know), and that I lived in a county in a metropolitan area that,
thanks to some far-seeing wealthy environmental activists and not to me, is
zoned 70 percent open space.
I wasn’t able to stick
around for very long because I left for a tête-à-tête
with a Pagan pal from Colorado before the conference got too crazy.
Here are examples of a
few of Friday’s sessions that intrigued me but that I couldn’t attend.
★ Religion and Media Workshop, “The History and Materiality of Religious Circulations,” a day-long
seminar “designed to foster collaborative conversation at the cutting edge of
the study of religion, media, and culture…[exploring] the history and
materiality of religious circulations.”
★ Dharma Academy
of North America (DANAM), “Polytheology: The Vision of Plural
Divinities,” featuring, among others, papers on “Conceptualizing Divinity:
One, None, or Many”; “Conceptualizing the Divine: How Hindu Deities Are Presented
in High School World Religions Courses in Canada”; “Devotions of Attachment and
Detachment & the Myriad Divinities of Jainism”; ”When Hanuman Became a
Jain: The Miraculous Story of Babosa”; “Deities, Bodhisattvas, and Buddhas:
Nontheism in a Theocratic Universe.”
For
so many reasons these kinds of discussions interest me. My fascination with Hinduism relates to my
interest in having Pagans define who we are, as different religious paths and
as a movement, which to my mind is similar to the diversity of people who fall
under the general term “Hindu.” Also
because I have been devoted to Kali Ma for all of my Pagan life. Further, because concepts of polytheism and
monotheism (as in “we all come from the one” or “after all, we all worship the
one god” – well, no, we don’t).
★ International Society for Science and
Religion: “Emergence and Complexity in Science and Religion.”… “current
research on the religious and philosophical significance of scientific work on
questions of emergence and complexity in cosmic and biological evolution.” As one of those kinds of Pagans who holds
scientific inquiry in high regard, mainly because scientific facts are more
easily defended, can be replicated, are less likely to be colored by our
personal filters, I’m constantly pondering the concordance of scientific fact
with religious proclamations.
★ Psychology, Culture, and Religion Group: “Panel Discussion of Lucy Bregman’s The Ecology of Spirituality: Practice and Virtues
in a Post-Religious Age.” I have no idea who Lucy Bregman is, and I suspect she’s coming from an Abrahamic perspective;
nonetheless, the topic of ecology and spirituality in an age of secularity
interests me. Now that I’ve looked her
up, I can see that I’d be interested in her perspectives on death and dying and
on mysticism. I’m a bit familiar with
one speaker, Kelly Bulkley, have heard him speak at a local independent bookstore, and because
he does dream research and is also a homie (GTU in Berkeley), and Dr. Bregman
was there to respond.
★ Women’s Caucus Brown Bag Luncheon: Ecofeminism and Earth Healing, which
included, among others, “What Is Ecofeminism? Memorable Ideas in an Ongoing Conversation
(1972-present)”; “Indian Women and Jainism: Toward an Ecofeminist Perspective”;
and “Spiritual and Transformative Connections: Women’s Stories of Ecofeminist
Activism and Artistic Expression.” I’ve
been working on a 90-minute presentation on “Mother Nature Speaks” for a
webinar on ecofeminism for the Emergent Studies Institute.
★ Religion and Ecology Workshop: “Religious
Environmentalism and Environmental Activism.” This was an afternoon-long workshop, at an
extra charge, examining the fusion of religion and politics and politics in
religious environmentalism,” considering people of “established faiths and of
eclectic spirituality … engaged in environmental activism for explicitly
religious or spiritual reasons.” Well,
this is many of us Pagans, isn’t it? The
workshop claimed to look at case studies, such as “civil disobedience by religious
leaders over Keystone XL, interfaith reforestation efforts in Southern Africa, indigenous
resistance to fracking,” progressive movements for democracy, racial and gender
equality, workers’ rights, et al.
Obviously this session was one where I could have learned and shared.
Alas, I was wiped and
didn’t feel really settled because I’d be changing my lodging on Saturday, so Megory
and I arranged to rendezvous at our room and find a place to get a light
meal. As I was trekking my way back to
our hotel, I encountered a man waving to me across the plaza. It turned out to be Steve Wehmeyer, who’d only just arrived. Proceeding
from a big hug, we started an animated conversation. I told him I was on my way to meet with
Megory, so he walked me back to the hotel and we sat in the lobby for quite a
while having a great talk. He said some
things to me that caused me to reflect upon my identity and place in the world
of Pagandom. I’m grateful for that.
Chas Clifton had told me earlier in the day that the likely gathering spot for us
Pagan scholars – presuming to apply this term to myself merely because of the
nature of the gathering – would be in the New Religious Movements (NRM) suite. We referred to it as “The Pomegranate party” because so many connected with The Pom were likely to attend. I told Steve when and where and off he went
to enjoy the party, while Megory and I sought a restaurant and retired
early. Well, not too early, since this
was also an opportunity for Megory and I to visit, which we did.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
[1] In the intervening 15 years, it
seems that The Biodiversity Project in Madison has changed its name to Bluestem
Communications.
very interesting, hope for more info like this
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