Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast.

I'm Martha Beck.

Hi everybody, this is the Gathering Room and I'm Martha Beck and you are all here with me in

this virtual space on this virtual day.

I just read an article that said there entire, there's good evidence and mounting scientific

evidence that the entire universe, as we know it, is a simulation.

I can't get into the details here.

I will just say that I agree with it.

And it begs the question, if it's a simulation, who's simulating? Because really, why would the whole

universe be a simulation with no reason? If it's a simulation, it kind of, it kind of insists that

there be a simulator. Anyway, in this gorgeous simulated world, we call Earth. It is the 21st day of March,

which is the first day of spring here in the northern hemisphere or in the U.S. I'm not sure what it

is in different parts of the globe. I don't know what it is in China, for instance. But also, it's very close to the spring

equinox. The spring equinox was last night, and that is when the day and the night are of equal

length. So the solstices happen. The winter solstice is when the night is longest. The summer

solstice is when the day is longest. And the vernal equinox, the spring equinox,

is when they're equal. And then we get an autumnal equinox as well. So for me, I mean, I love, I love the

like full on display of winter, the cold, the snow, the everything in the place where we are now,

I love even more the total green blast of summer. But to me, the times there are, the equinoxes

are the interesting times because they're the times of transformation and transition.

And my whole life has been about transformation and transition. And in our

culture, we don't really see the equinoxes the same way that they do in, say, non-Western, pre-modern

...