Your Therapist Needs Therapy 50 - Creating Meaning Through Seasonal Rituals with Special Guest Mark Green

Jeremy is joined this week by author, activist, and poet Mark Green to talk about his new book Round We Dance. Jeremy and Mark talk about the need for a book on how to do rituals, why ritual is so important to the human psyche, and how to approach ritual outside of an organized religious setting. It’s a wide-ranging chat that covers a lot, and the book is a wonderful resource on how to approach meaning-making rituals in a practical way.

To learn more about Mark, you can check out his blog about Atheopaganism, get his previous book Atheopaganism: An Earth Honoring Path Rooted in Science, or check out the Suntree Retreat coming up this fall (where Jeremy will also be a speaker). Mark is also a co-host of The Wonder podcast about science-based paganism.

Jeremy has all his practice info at Wellness with Jer, and you can find him on Instagram and YouTube.

Head over to Patreon to support the show, or you can pick up some merch! We appreciate support from likes, follows, and shares as well!

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Podcasts about therapy do not replace actual therapy, and listening to a podcast about therapy does not signify a therapeutic relationship.

If you or someone you know is in crisis please call or text the nationwide crisis line at 988, or text HELLO to 741741. The Trevor Project has a crisis line for LGBTQ+ young people that can be reached by texting 678678.

Transcript

Your Therapist Needs Therapy - Mark Green (2024-03-27 12:17 GMT-5) - Transcript
Attendees
Jeremy Schumacher, Mark Green
Transcript
This editable transcript was computer generated and might contain errors. People can also change the text after it was created.
Jeremy Schumacher: Hello and welcome to another edition of your therapist needs therapy podcast for mental health professionals talk about their own mental Journeys and how they navigate mental Wellness while working in the mental health field. I'm your host Jeremy Schumacher licensed marriage and…
Mark Green: What?
Jeremy Schumacher: family therapist the show head over to patreon drop down in the show notes. merch we got all sorts of stuff. So appreciate all the likes and follows reviews Etc super excited. I have another author on today. I love getting my professionals who are maybe adjacent not mental health professionals, but swim in the same Waters that I do as far as being a human being with mental Wellness challenges. And so another author today. I'm joined by Mark green whose new book is Round We Dance and it's about ritual and how to do ritual if you're unfamiliar and how that's Super stoked to have you on Thanks for joining me today.
Mark Green: You're very welcome. I'm glad to be here.
Jeremy Schumacher: This third book you've written Mark. You're a prolific author at this point.
Mark Green: I still can hardly believe it. I just got my author copies of this book a couple of days ago in the feeling of holding the new book in my hand and it's actually a physical book and it's got beautiful cover art and all that is really a great feeling. I still kind of find it hard to believe that I'm a person…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: who writes books. But yeah, this is the third one.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah in the forward to the book you give a little bit of your history and one of the things you write about is being in the Pagan spaces in the United States for decades, and I'm wondering if you can kind of talk a little bit about. That in your own personal life and then obviously getting into some of what the book talks about which is ritual. do you mind kind of given a Cliff Notes version of your introduction to paganism and kind of how you got in this space to be able to write a book.
Mark Green: Stir not at all. yeah, it's kind of an interesting story because I was raised in a scientific a very dysfunctional abusive scientific household, but a scientific household nonetheless. So the whole topic of religion and God never even came up it wasn't that we self-defined as atheist so much is that all of that was just kind of irrelevant to life experience. and so, I emerged into adulthood as an atheist and
Mark Green: In my early to mid 20s a friend of mine invited me to an autumnal equinox ritual that his Pagan coven was holding. And I still to this day don't know why I said yes, maybe it was curiosity. Maybe I knew there was something missing. But I went and I had this very mixed experience on the one hand. It was very awkward for me, standing in a circle holding hands and talking to Invisible presences and drumming and dancing and all this stuff. But on the other hand, it was really intriguing because it occurred to me, I'm a lifelong environmentalist really passionate about nature and about the ecological world.
Mark Green: I wouldn't have noticed that it was the autumnal equinox. it struck me that if I was really connected with the cycles of nature. I would know what time of year it was and I would be paying attention to those things. I'd be paying attention to the cycles of the Moon and I know what phase the moon was in it any given time. So I went to another thing and then I went to another thing and then I went to starhawks spiral dance ritual the great big spiral dance in San Francisco.
Mark Green: long story short 35 years later or 25 years later. I was a leader in the community. I led rituals. I was part of a long time ritual Circle that still going Called Dark Sun which has been around since 1991.
Mark Green: just a lot of wonderful experiences, really. Moving transformative wisdom fostering growth encouraging experiences in the ritual and Pagan world over time. So yeah, it's been a real augmentation to my life in many ways even though I'm Still don't believe in disembodied intelligences and all that magic and all that kind of stuff.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah, I love in the book as someone who's coming to paganism and Ritual from a much different background in perspective. I love how you start with it's awkward and that's okay and that sounds very much like it's based on your own experience of that initial. This is weird but also good I guess and trying it again and getting more comfortable with it.
00:05:00
Mark Green: That's exactly Yeah, and I wrote this book specifically for folks that are having that kind of experience where we've got this huge wave of the so-called nuns people that are self-identifying is no particular religion many of whom are atheists and agnostics, but many of whom are just People for whom the institutional religions don't work either because of their values or their behavior or their authoritarianism, whatever those things are. but they're still looking for something right. They want Community to plug into they want values to celebrate with their kids.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: They want a cycle of holidays. And this book was really written to help people create that stuff for themselves. without having to plug into any of those institutional traditions
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and I mean we can be some Cultural analysts here. what's your experience being in the Pagan Community for so long of this rise of the nuns of people seeking out something like naturalistic paganism who are looking for connection and meaning making and structure but don't want the organized religion attached to it.
Mark Green: it's an interesting thing because it's a little bit of a long story. but to compress it as much as I can when I came into the Pagan community in the late 80s. We didn't really talk about theology. We didn't talk about what we believed. It was kind of understood that we all believed different things. But that was okay. We were all pagans and we held hands and we celebrated our rituals together. And in the late 90s about 10 years later. A big wave of newcomers came into the American Pagan community and they were mostly refugees from Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism and Mormonism. the more kind of authoritarian Christian flavors and they brought their Frameworks with them.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: They weren't going to believe in that stuff anymore, but they still thought that Faith was really important. They thought that was a requirement in order to have a religion. And they started really kind of throwing their elbows around to be honest about how you can't be a real Pagan. If you are not a capital B believer in these disembodied powers. And part of…
Jeremy Schumacher: Sure.
Mark Green: what that did was it forced those of us that didn't believe that way to become visible and put our hands up and say wait a minute. We even knew this for a long time and we're here too. And so in the early 2000s, that's when naturalistic paganism first emerged which was called then humanistic paganism. when folks like
Mark Green: on your Orga and John Cleland host and John Halstead started writing about non-theist paganism and there was a big sort of conflict for a while mostly online because that's where you do conflict, right?
Jeremy Schumacher: right
Mark Green: About are those not real pagans blah. in the long run it turned out there's no Authority and it's not like we have a pope. They can't decide who's a pagan and…
Jeremy Schumacher: right
Mark Green: there's still people out there who think that non-theist pagans aren't pagans, but I've been practicing for 37 years now, and I think I qualify. so
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: That's kind of been my journey through this what happened to me was. I got to a point in about 2005 where I had some experiences in the Pagan Community where really unethical inappropriate behavior was justified as the will of the Gods. And I said I'm out.
Jeremy Schumacher: Sure.
Mark Green: This no, I'm not affiliating myself with this. you're gonna use your imaginary friends to justify really** wrong behavior, and I'm not about it. So I left.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: And let my altar gather dust and all that good kind of stuff. And within six months, I was really miserable. I missed the community gatherings. I missed celebrating the wheel of the year. I missed my community. I missed the rituals. I missed all that stuff. And that got me started thinking.
Mark Green: How can I have all that stuff without having to subscribe to things that I don't find credible to believe in? And that's what slowly started the ball rolling towards my writing first an essay and…
00:10:00
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: then a book about ethiopaganism and…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: and that's what brings me here today.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and that's how you and I connected in the first place. I found the athiopay again podcast the wonder that you and yucca host and then the Facebook group and then started dipping my toes into some of the zoom mixers and at the time during the pandemic nothing was open. I mean so everybody I think was Desperately Seeking Community. I had left the church and was trying to figure out where that Community might land for me and so
Jeremy Schumacher: I don't know. I think I'm the target audience for the new book because that these people and then the group of the nuns right like the Millennials and under that age range is my group people who are raised in religion and have left it. So I do think you sent me a fork a copy so I could review it for our chat today. But there are things about ritual words like spirituality for somebody who's coming out of a high control religion kind of raise your hackles. But these are not things that religion owns. These are things that religion used because the human psyche responds to these things. Naturally. It's how we're wired. And so I like that kind of an explainer. I'm like, hey how to do ritual doesn't need to be an organized religion. It can just be a thing for you and your friends for the passage of time for Life transitions then How do we actually do those things?
Mark Green: Right, right. Yeah, I one of
Jeremy Schumacher: So I think there's an audience here like those nuns and There's so many naturalistic wilds. There was the wild Church there's all these groups that I think are looking for this type of thing and introducing someone who's been in the Pagan spaces for a long time introducing ritual I think is really helpful.
Mark Green: Yeah, that was what I thought too because one of the things that I've seen as the ethiopagan community has evolved is that we've attracted a lot of people from both the Pagan side and the atheist side. And they have things to teach one another.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: The folks on the Pagan side could really learn about critical thinking and Oakland's razor and the scientific method. People on The Atheist side are at Sea when it comes to rituals. they don't know how it's done the modern Pagan community in the world since the 1950s 40s when modern paganism was invented. They've got a lot of experience in what works ritually. And why? That we've accumulated partly over the time that I've been involved.
Mark Green: and so Frost pollinating those things has been
Mark Green: has been an interesting approach in my mind and this book is definitely for folks who? they know they want something and they know what it isn't but they're not quite sure what it is and I hope that it's helpful to folks that are in that situation.
Jeremy Schumacher: And I think coming out of I was raised high control conservative Christianity, I think. There's a lot that there as far as ritual goes, but we're devoid of the meaning. you do it because it's tradition more than because it's meaningful. And so I like the book kind of laying out here's how you can do this. Here's how you can get into it. Here's some options like take it and make it your own which I think is new for a lot of people.
Mark Green: Yeah, and it's a little bewildering for some of them. it presents them with the blank page problem. Yeah, okay. I'm free. I can do whatever I want to do. But what should I do? So I go through a step-by-step process in the book. That lets people. Kind of start with their emotional idea and flavor and theme and then sort of crystallize that down into an actual ritual.
Mark Green: One of the slogans that I often say is that when people talk about religion being a bad thing. I think the problem is religion with crappy values.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah or…
Mark Green: And unfortunately the …
Jeremy Schumacher: As I say we talk about toxic theology in the religious trauma worlds,…
Mark Green: go ahead.
00:15:00
Jeremy Schumacher: religion itself isn't bad. But if you're religious teaching something bad that can be problematic and I would say what you talk about earlier with some of the fundamentalists thinking power structures that lack accountability. Also historically have been a problem for organized religion.
Mark Green: Yes, and I should say to be fair that the Pagan Community has not escaped that there have been Traditions that have been created in paganism where Certain people have lacked accountability and the structures that they've created have been designed to prevent them from being held accountable for their behavior. And There have been sexual abuse problems and harassment problems. There have been Financial Shenanigans of many kinds and so when I was envisioning ethiopaganism, really My rule of thumb for all of it was what if we did it? All right.
Mark Green: what if we weren't authoritarian what if everybody was What if everybody was equal and it was truly egalitarian and there wasn't like an elite clergy class. What if we were transparent about our finances? What if we embraced consent as a model for how we interact with all of those pieces and I wouldn't say we're doing it perfectly because nobody does anything perfectly but that's the vision that we're pursuing and I'm pretty amazed at the incredible people like yourself who have come into this community and helped make it real. just Stellar phenomenal people that it's really my pleasure to be friends with
Jeremy Schumacher: yeah, what's I think that Facebook group is around 5,000 members and the Wonder does well as far as podcasts go again.
Mark Green: yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: That's how I stumbled across it. And again, I think we can talk about problems in organized religion that paganism has an escaped. I would say as a newer atheist, leaving religion five six years ago, some of the history of new Atheism in the early 2000s and some of those big figures who had problematic issues later again, it's a human psyche thing like organized groups are tough because they're in group out group dynamics that are hardwired into our brain to have a group that's aware of those things and actively working against them is how we Safeguard it ignoring that that's a problem just leads to the problem being propagated.
Mark Green: Right, right. Yeah, But I think there's a lot that can be said for what? the new atheists the so-called Four Horsemen Did for Atheism in terms of elevating its profile and making it a legitimate stance? but that said you've got
Mark Green: four high status white guys with letters after their names who are accustomed to being thought of as very smart and really like to be thought of as very smart and there's an ego issue there. I think they did something good for us. And now I want them to shut up.
Jeremy Schumacher: he yeah and again I think when we start getting into the history organized religion Dogma When Things become dogmatic when it becomes fundamentalists, you're not a True Believer or you're not a true version of The Thing unless you do X Y or Z or you've read this book or you've seen this speaker like any of that stuff starts to get problematic because then we're starting to dictate for other people's lives. What should be meaningful for them?
Mark Green: right, right, and that's something that dovetails better with Neil paganism that it does with many of those more controlling religions because Paganism tends to be very inclusive and Overall, very large contingent of the lgbtq community for example, lots of trans folks.
Mark Green: less Presence of bypok folks and that's an ongoing challenge that the community works with because where it started was all about celebrating European traditions. that's not everybody's Legacy right or…
Jeremy Schumacher: right
Mark Green: ancestry. That's not where we all come from. But I would say that there is this tendency in paganism to look at you. You're a unique individual. as a unique individual whereas in Evangelical Christianity. It's like here is a square hole. We are going to pound you into the square hole until you become Square yourself.
00:20:00
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: It's just a very different approach.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: And for all of its foibles, I think that that's something that really speaks well to the modern Pagan Community by and large. I mean there's that whole racist Norse Paganism contingent, which is only a part of the Norse Pagan movement as a whole.
Jeremy Schumacher: right Yeah.
Mark Green: Let me say Which is problematic. But it's something we struggle with right? It's something we work on.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, I'm paganism I think is so hard to Define. Because of being inclusive casting a wide net it means different things to different people and…
Mark Green: mmm
Jeremy Schumacher: there is no Authority which is a good thing, but that also means the semantics and the words can get muddy because they mean different things to different people and celebrating different Heritage drawing different practices without appropriating. again, trying to I think land in a space that feels genuine and authentic to people is important and it can seem intimidating which is why again, I like the book and the idea behind the book because I think it's very gentle it's not prescriptive, but it's structured enough to say hey if this is new for you, here's How you can go about it?
Mark Green: Thank you.
Jeremy Schumacher: and again like you I think you're lived experience is really clutch because it is weird for me I'll talk about my own experience as an ex Evangelical super conservative upbringing. I don't want to do ritual there's a part of my brain. yuck that's religion. I don't want to do that. And then there's the part of me that's really hard to get out of that thinking about other people or feeling awkward. I can't carry a tune. I'm I'm not real on Beats, and so there's all this stuff that gets in your head as far as
Jeremy Schumacher: There's a right or proper way to do it. And I think I like the book you write about leaning into some of that letting it be messy and that's part of your experience it and that's how we talk about it in mental health too. humans are human experience is messy let's lean into some of the things going on in your brain and figure out what that feels like and hold some space for it and try and learn something and then we can respond then we can do something healthy. And so the book in the book you talk about learn some songs get comfortable singing those get comfortable drumming a certain beat you don't need to be an expert but
Jeremy Schumacher: There's some ways to get your competency up. But again, it's not you have to drum at your ritual or else it's if you want to do this,…
Mark Green: Good.
Jeremy Schumacher: and it's awkward, here's some options and I think that's very realistic to like what a lot of people are going to experience. They start to do some of these things as people move back into in real life meetups instead of just virtual. I think that's going to be really helpful for some of the learning curve
Mark Green: I certainly hope so and that was the intention behind writing book. mean my first book which is called athiopagantism and Earth honoring path rooted in science is a little bit more of a theory book. it's about my journey through all this discovery and all the research I did about religiosity and the brain and neurotransmitters and all that kind of stuff. To arrive at a conclusion that unlike what the new atheists were saying religiosity is something that's deeply human. And we are not just these rational actors and the idea that being right is what will make you happy. That may work for a bunch of High status academics, but it doesn't work for everybody, And the goal is happiness and…
Jeremy Schumacher: right
Mark Green: wisdom and kindness.
Mark Green: if we can live our lives that way the world gets to be better and we get to be happier people. So when I think about
Mark Green: when I think about one of the pieces of feedback that I got about that book. Is that even though it lays out? A theoretical structure for something called apaganism in the second part of the book.
Mark Green: it kind of assumes that you've got all of this ritual background and…
Jeremy Schumacher: right
Mark Green: stuff that you don't necessarily have. And this book was the needed companion. Because this is the one where if you read Sasha Sagan's book, for small creatures such as we which was a big bestseller and so forth. you might have some ideas about ritual being important and some examples. but You've still got that blank page problem, It's like I want to do a ritual that improves my level of confidence in Seeking a job. For example. What do I do? this book helps you with that it helps you to work through the process of…
00:25:00
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: what you do.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah and it's structured enough to give you outlines but not prescriptive so that you can get creative with it, which I think is Really where a lot of the meeting making comes from is what's meaningful to you? Mark's right in the book. This might be meaningful to him. But if you're not a white male something else might be meaningful to you or if you're not of European descent or If you grew up Pagan that might be one thing if you grew up atheist that maybe another thing if you're coming from Mormonism or xjw or X Evangelical like those are all different things that you might bring. something meaningful to you or you might want to avoid
Mark Green: Right, right. I mean one of the things that I have found repeatedly in the ethiopagan community is that one of the rituals that folks that are refugees from other religious Traditions, really? Seek after is a way to try to put that down a ritual way to try to really, kind of purge themselves of the legacy of that so that they can be free to move forward in a spirituality that makes sense to themselves.
Mark Green: This book will tell you how to do that. It won't say do this. It'll say here's how you build rituals that are meaningful for you. you plug in your meaning and we'll go through a process and you'll get a picture of do you need to hold a funeral for that? do you need to burn something in a fire or…
Jeremy Schumacher: right
Mark Green: disperse it into water or?
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. and…
Mark Green: There's lots of different ways.
Jeremy Schumacher: and humans again, we're wired for this stuff. how many students upon graduation from high school or college or whatever burned their books how many, people burn up their wedding vows after they could divorce or…
Mark Green: Mm-hmm
Jeremy Schumacher: burn up their wedding certificate. there are all these ways in which our brains creatively are trying to embody the emotion we're feeling and that's really what ritual is. I think just again this idea that it belongs to religion has gotten in the way of a lot of people coming up with creative rituals for our everyday life and for these seasonal or life transitional stages of being an adult Getting married getting divorced, like a loss or grief. I talk a lot about grief and therapy with people. We don't have a cultural grieving process and as an American funerals on Friday back to work on Monday, that's not healthy.
Mark Green: right
Jeremy Schumacher: and there's no sort of cultural support around what that feels like and so it's this weird space where historically there would be some ritual involved in that and in other cultures there still is ritual involved in that and we just don't have that anymore. And so I think the book does that well, too I know it's in the first book athiopagnism like the wheel of the Year super helpful, especially as a refugee from another religion to not have to celebrate religious holidays, but still have something to look forward to and celebrate but then, something like death or those a divorce like
Jeremy Schumacher: 65% of Americans who get married get divorced that's not a small percentage of the population and…
Mark Green: right right
Jeremy Schumacher: having some way to mark that and to celebrate that and to create space for it and hold space for it. those are trendy words in our modern times hold space, but how do you actually do it? and again I love the book. I think it's so helpful for somebody who's coming to it and seems overwhelmed it can be like you said blank page problem or sis paralysis. There's so many options. how do you pick one?
Mark Green: yeah, yeah, and thank you and that one of the things that really strikes me as I wrote this book and kind of thinking big picture about wanting to foster a movement right wanting to make change in the world by emulating different ways of living. Is that it is really a crime that we don't teach children these skills. Because Christianity's domination has made it that all the rituals are Witchcraft and you can't do them because that's offensive to God somehow.
00:30:00
Mark Green: But learning how to do ritual behavior that helps you to moderate your emotions to process your emotions to change your psychological State and mood. that's a very basic sort of emotional Swiss army knife that every kid should learn how to wheel. and it's really problematic to me that that's not the case and we see that in adults all the time. It's like you never learned to deal with your mood and now you're spreading it around everybody.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and a dated a basic example I use often is the ritual around bedtime so many adults have poor sleep hygiene when we're kids we brush our teeth. We maybe take a bath we read some stories we snuggle and then we go to sleep and we just stopped doing that at some point. And then expect I'm laying down so my body knows to go to sleep and…
Mark Green: Uh-huh.
Jeremy Schumacher: your body doesn't know that your brain can't just make that happen. All of that extra work that we do for children to teach them to rest still works for adults. We just stop doing it at some point. But that's ritual that's getting your brain and…
Mark Green: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: your body communicate into each other so that you can have an experience. that your body is experiencing. Not just your brains thinking about it.
Mark Green: Yeah, that's a great example The amount of ritualized behavior that we have in our lives is really pretty staggering when you actually start to look at it. And I differentiate between ritualized behavior and routines. Because brushing your teeth by itself. Yes, that's a routine, but it doesn't have meaning behind it necessarily accept as you suggest we're going to bed now,…
Jeremy Schumacher: right
Mark Green: right but you…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: we've got people who wear their lucky underwear and all the people, crossing your fingers and all the many ritualized behaviors that we have in our lives and We don't pay that much attention to it. I don't remember the name of the Anthropologist, but someone suggested that
Mark Green: humans should be thought of as the ritual making creatures even more so than language. That truly what we do is we make meaning through ritual.
Mark Green: I think that really turning around and taking a good hard look at that and really understanding it and then really getting Versant in the skill set that helps us to do that. Is a part of our Birthright as humans.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and I like the word skill set there because it's a thing you can get better at it's a thing you can get more comfortable with the thing that is open and ended enough that you can make it your own and if you are uncomfortable, there's options. There are things we can do to practice that and get better at that. and I think
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, so much of it is I talk about the brain in the body connecting. Like I will say my experience of Christianity. There's a huge disconnection of your body's bad. So you're not supposed to connect to it. It's not trustworthy and…
Mark Green: right
Jeremy Schumacher: so ritual in my Conservative Christian upbringing was not about an embodied experience. you didn't feel it in the body. I wasn't a mega church. We went to a small.
Jeremy Schumacher: Dull pipe organ only music type Church where nobody was getting up and celebrating. Nobody was feeling the spirit or speaking in tongues. And so again this idea of connecting to your body for some people is uncomfortable for a lot of our modern society. We don't connect to our bodies. And so that's where regulating your nervous system can come in. That's why there's drumming or chanting. Those are things that get your brain and your body connected in a way that doesn't involve your intellects mucking it all up. But just letting your brain and body do what they know how to do already and that helps regulate your system chanting a chance at a soccer game or a football game regulates everyone in the crowd your system gets regulated and…
Mark Green: Mm-hmm
Jeremy Schumacher: we just don't experience that a ton. I don't think sports are good example of ritual because so many athletes are superstitious so are the fans you put on your jersey and you make Are Preferred appetizers and you do a whole thing. that's ritual.
00:35:00
Mark Green: Uh-huh.
Jeremy Schumacher: That's what that is.
Mark Green: Yeah and those aspects of it tend to be the things that folks who come in from the atheist side are most uncomfortable with because they're used to living in intellect and having it all be about what you think. and what I find is that there's a phrase that came up with a few years ago that I really like which is suspension of disbelief. we talk about going into a theater or a movie or something like that and suspending belief. for a while
Jeremy Schumacher: Mm-hmm
Mark Green: so that we can experience the entertainment. suspension of disbelief is stopping with that mattering voice that says this is stupid. You shouldn't be doing this. This doesn't make any sense but settling into a brain state that allows you the freedom to do those behaviors that take you to a different place and that really is what ritual is about in many ways. I feel that as people get better at it. they're just more comfortable in their own skin, and I'm a hitty guy. I live in my head a lot. I wouldn't say I've got the greatest relationship with my body either but I understand how important that is and there's another piece beyond that which is that to the degree. We Embrace physicality the
Mark Green: Of our bodies all of it, the breathing eating the drinking the s** all of it.
Mark Green: that turns us towards the material. As sacred and valuable. Which naturally leads to a sense of the Earth as something to be revered the physical universe as something that's sacred and brings us joy puts every breath in our lungs puts every mouth of food in our mouths. And so there's a natural continuity between the development of that ritual practice and moving into a more embodied experience and a real sense of ownership and belonging and place in the universe and responsibility. To live in ways that are in accordance with its health.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and I think about other things our modern society misses the aging process. Instead of trying to stay young forever a ritual and…
Mark Green: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: a connection to your body for the aging process not being bad or wrong or whatever but like that. It's a natural course and there's wonder and there's lowercase and magic in that process and at least it's neutral. It doesn't necessarily have value until we ascribe value to it. And so I think it's one of those things that These are spaces where we're like, Society doesn't treat the Elder with a lot of respect and it's like There's no way to do that. We don't respect aging because we don't practice aging where trying to stay young all the time or live forever instead of leaning in and…
Mark Green: right
Jeremy Schumacher: experiencing it and having an outlet for that experience. That isn't just you work until you die.
Mark Green: Yeah and part of that. I mean this goes to my critique of capitalism and all this kind of stuff, the whole idea. I mean, it's all tied together, right? It really is when you start thinking outside the box of the Frameworks that Christianity has put around modern Western culture,…
Jeremy Schumacher: right
Mark Green: you really start questioning a lot of stuff and to me. Part of the deal with aging is that you accept that there are trade-offs. And capitalism tells you you can have everything if you can pay for it. but the reality is I mean we talk about youth being wasted on the young. Yeah, you've got this great hail healthy pain-free body that can do all us, of course.
Mark Green: but you're not necessarily very wise about what you do with that body, right because you don't have enough lived experience to become wise yet. As we get older things start to hurt things start to break down, but hopefully we've accumulated some wisdom. That's a trade-off for that. And so we're able to find more joy in stuff that isn't quite so extreme in Behavior. And to build happiness in the people around us and in our communities and Families. to me that the worthy deal. I think that's a perfectly acceptable. Framing for what life is and it's okay. I'm 62 years old. I am giving up some things that I had when I was younger.
00:40:00
Mark Green: And it's an ongoing struggle. With that because I'm still constantly being told by the overculture that I need to try to pretend to be young until I die. But I'm trying to get used to the idea that this time in life has some particular trade-offs and I value a lot of the things that I have arrived at through the process of living. And those are the payoffs, Yes things hurt and I'm not pretty anymore. I was when I was young. All that kind of stuff. I'm more invisible in Social spaces because our culture ignores older people. But on the whole would I trade it for being 25 again? I think it's okay.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: And this brings me actually to another big piece. Which is the Embrace of the fact of death? recognizing and really accepting that we're mortal and that this is a one-way trip and it's all that we get is a central tenant of ethiopaganism of naturalistic paganism in general and I think it goes a lot of good things for us. It sounds very scary for people who are accustomed to resisting even talking about death. but
Mark Green: I feel like my life is given so much meaning and so much urgency by the fact that it's not going to last forever.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and that's one thing that working in religious trauma that is hard to explain when someone's first coming out of religion because it is scary if you've been raised or you've believed in some version of the afterlife. That's very comforting because death is scary because it's unknown but get into that point where I feel much more. Connected and alive and aware of my life not being concerned about an afterlife just having right now helps be in the present moment so much more like there's so much good to it. And it's easy to just kind of summarize that for someone like yeah. I forgot how scary that was initially but that's one for me that process was really easy and for some of my clients it's not been so easy. But I letting go of either Eternal punishment or Eternal reward and just living for your life was so freeing
Jeremy Schumacher: And I guess it seems so much more grounded for. How I want to live my life and…
Mark Green: Yes.
Jeremy Schumacher: I think that allows for a lot more meaning-making for people.
Mark Green: yes, I absolutely agree with that and part of that meaning-making is in it because if this is it then how we conduct ourselves and the moments that we make become very important. And one of the things about rituals is that they are the creation of special moments. Right, so much of our Lives we have routines we go to work every day. It's easy not to remember exactly what last Tuesday was like but if last Tuesday had some kind of a ritual action in it that was unique. You will remember that. And I have confidence that presuming that I don't have dementia that when I'm on my deathbed I will be able to look back at very special moments in my life many of which I created with other people.
Mark Green: And I think that's a way of adding a lot of spice and seasoning to the ride.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and I mean even with dementia just the psychologists and me wants to say those are the things that still tend to survive our brain deteriorating those older events those events that we have.
Mark Green: 
Jeremy Schumacher: A lot of meaning around are the things that stick with us more than just our straight-up memory power of remembering things like meaning making and ritual helps us remember them more they get stored in a deeper part of our brain. And so those are the things that tend to be significant and stick with us.
Mark Green: Good point good point. Yeah. Yeah, so
00:45:00
Mark Green: a part of what all of this adds up to is a sense of life as an adventure.
Mark Green: it's looking at the outside from my life. I mean, I work in the nonprofit sector. I work for an environmental organization. Which is very meaningful work for me, but it's still like I get up in the morning and I work at home remotely. So my commute is two feet long. But in fact, I mean my office right now, but
Mark Green: So looking from the outside, you might think this guy's having this sort of an ordinary pedestrian life living in a rental townhouse in Suburbia, and there's nothing particularly unique about it. but to me I feel like I have deep friendships deep loving relationships. I have Community with people that I really admire and value. I have my intellectual life which expresses itself in books and in blog posts and in podcasts and all that kind of stuff. I feel like I'm really living. And I think that's…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: what people want. they really living. They don't want to feel like it's slipping away or they've lost their chance and Nobody's really lost their chance.
Mark Green: You might have to make some changes that might make people around you uncomfortable. But nobody's really lost their chance to live a life that really feels full.
Jeremy Schumacher: And I think it's one of those. I mean the pandemic changed a lot of things and I don't think it was a good thing but still very lining like I do think people are looking at meeting making and looking for that richness looking for that intentionality young folks Millennials and under and older folks too, but certainly there's a generation of Awareness that capitalism doesn't work. So what else are we going to do and looking for this meaning-making I think is yeah.
Mark Green: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: It's so needed. I see it so much from the mental health field obviously working with the clients that I work with. But also I love connecting with authors and Poets and people who work in Creative spaces writing about the same thing because It's needed we're all seeing it from these different Avenues from these different walks of life that having a rich intentionally live life is what people are looking for.
Mark Green: Yeah, for sure and I should say, because this is a mental health podcast. I mean, I've had my own Journey with relation to mental health. I've had major depressive disorders since I was seven.
Mark Green: refused to consider the possibility of medication until I was in my early late 40s early 50s, but I've now been in remission for 12 years with a good antidepressant cocktail and…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: In that time, I've written three books and helped build a community and all those kinds of things. So, I understand the struggle. That I've spent months at a time in bed unable to do anything.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: because of depression and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Not that I have any but if I did.
Jeremy Schumacher: but I appreciate you you're sharing that because I do think some of the black and white thinking that Permeates culture is if I have a meaningful life and I have good support. I don't have any problems and that's not the pitch again. I think it's different from organized religion in that it's not saying do these things in your life will be awesome. It's saying these things help life be good these things help life feel full.
Mark Green: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: But we're not trying to avoid We're not trying to avoid it. We're just trying to cultivate Joy. We're trying to be intentional to make sure we have good stuff for all the inevitable bad stuff that happens in a life. you're gonna have lost you're gonna have grief. Those things are normal. What do we do with them?
Mark Green: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: How do we kind of get through that? So I love the joy in the book though, the titles Round We Dance. the podcast you have is the Wonder I think just that joy and we can be depressed we can have anxiety we can go through breakups. We can have issues and we can still work to find that magic in our lives that Wonder of existing and I think that's a theme especially when I work with people who are struggling with their mental health, that's so hard to Grasp sometimes and so it's wonderful to have outlets and have places where you can find that.
00:50:00
Mark Green: Yes, and it's a learned skill. I mean you have to train yourself, especially because humans are hardwired to look for problems. on the Savannah it's like…
Jeremy Schumacher: right
Mark Green: if you didn't notice that there was a rustling in the grass. You might have been the one that got eaten by a lion. So paranoia tended to get built in. We're always looking for a problem to solve right?
Jeremy Schumacher: right
Mark Green: So training ourselves to look for a flower to admire and smell and a sunset to stop and to give those things an equal footing as much as possible with the problems. Is a learned skill.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: It's about learning to focus your attention and it makes all the difference in my experiencing in how to live a life.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, Mark, this has been awesome. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat if people want to pick up the book If people want to learn find your other books or follow you on online, where do they go? How can they find your work?
Mark Green: this book is called Round We Dance creating meaning through seasonal rituals and you can order it at any bookstore. It's out from Llewellyn on April 8th, but pre-orders are open on the Llewellyn book site website. my other books are ethiopaganism and Earth honoring path rooted in science, which you can also order from any bookstore. It's out from ingramspark. And then a red kiss which is a collection of poetry from the past 30 years or so, which also includes a section of poems for the wheel of the Year holidays. So really any bookstore there, you just have to know my name Mark Alexander green and go and look our podcast is the Wonder science-based paganism. And you can find that anywhere you get your podcasts Spotify or whatever that is.
Mark Green: My blog is that ethiopaganism.org. I And then there's the Ethiopian Society YouTube channel, and there's a lot of stuff Facebook group all that kind of thing.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Mark Green: But if you're looking for my stuff specifically those are the places to look
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and I mean I'll do a Shameless plug because atopaganism the community has been very helpful as I left religion and deconstructing and get into the pandemic. So I'll plug it for you. we did a web weaving which is an online conference. There's in person. Meetup that's planned every two years. So lots of great stuff for people who are looking for meaning making around these things or looking to connect there's community and making those connections I think are really helpful. finding people to practice Yeah,…
Mark Green: I should jump. you reminded me we're doing an in-person gathering over Labor Day weekend this year in Colorado Springs at the LA.
Jeremy Schumacher: go ahead.
Mark Green: Foray Retreat Center. We did one of these two years ago, and it was just a magical weekend. It was just really amazing. Wonderful people great rituals, great food. Everything was just fantastic. So I encourage you if you're interested in meeting other people of mind and exploring this Come on and join us. we'd love to see you all the registration information is available at the ethiopagan Society website, which is our nonprofit. and that website is the AP society.org
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and We'll have all these links in our show notes. I'm speaking at the person conference so I'll plug that as it gets closer.
Mark Green: Mm-hmm
Jeremy Schumacher: But yeah and again connecting with other people through ritual again, I think the desire and the growth for people who want to do the stuff in person is certainly kicking back up and so Yeah, Mark. Thanks so much again for taking the time really appreciate the book. We'll have all the links for people to find it.
Mark Green: Thank you so much for having me on I really had a good time. Thanks Jeremy.
Jeremy Schumacher: And to all our wonderful listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll be back next week with another new episode. Take care everyone.
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