I (Hope) spent the fall of 2006 in Ireland learning about the landscape, the history, the sacred sites, and the seasons of the Celtic year.  The Celtic year has 8 seasons which include the four solstices and equinoxes and four crossquarter festivals which occur between the solstices and equinoxes.  The Celtic year begins with Samhain on October 31 and ends with the Fall Equinox.  Each season has its own character, quality, dimension and perspective that can inform our own.  I decided to make a commitment to experiencing and writing about these special passages and would like to share my essays with you.  The writings reflect my own particular interior and exterior journeys for 2006-2007.

Because of the design of this web site, all of the essays follow in one continuous page.  I recommend you read them sequentially, or you can scroll down and find the ones you want in this order (dates are approximate):

1. Samhain (October 31 to December 21)

2. Winter Solstice (December 21 to January 31)

3. Imbolc (February 1 to March 21)

4. Spring Equinox (March 21 to May 1)

5. Beltane (May 1 to June 21)

6. Summer Solstice (June 21 to July 31)

7. Lughnasa (August 1 to September 21)

8. Fall Equinox (September 21 to October 31)

All essays are copyrighted by Hope V. Horton, 2006 

1.  SAMHAIN -- INTO THE BODY OF THE GODDESS

For the 7,000 years that there have been people on this Emerald Isle, the undulating contours of Eire Land have conjured a woman’s body.  From the long-ago tales of the bards we learn that the land has been created by, embodied, and named after the Goddess in her many forms: The triple goddess Eire, Fotla, and Banba, Danu, Brigid, Anu, Cailleach, Grainne, Morrigan, Macha, Maeve, Shannon, and many others. 

There was a time when fertility and birth and abundant food from the land were the highest values and closely related.  All the cycles of life were named and honored, from the emergence of new life in spring to dormancy and death in winter.  The Wheel of Brittania* with its eight seasons recognizes this inevitable and enduring cycle. 

The new year begins with Samhain, celebrated on the 31^st of October.  Samhain is one of the crossquarter festivals that occurs between the Fall Equinox and the Winter Solstice.  It is a time of growing darkness and the thinning of the veils between this life and the afterlife,   It is a time to go within, to slow down, to honor our ancestors.  It is a time of enveloping darkness that invites the seamy side of life to slither out from under the rocks.  We are invited to go into the darker aspects of our own natures, and to empty and let go of all that clutters our lives to no good purpose. 

My journey with the Dark Goddess this Samhain has taken me many places, internally and externally.  Perhaps most memorably, it has taken me into the bowels of the earth.  Ireland is dotted with structures dating from as far back as 3700 B.C that look on the outside like mounds of rocks or grass.  Inside, they are magically made of huge slabs of stone, so perfectly placed as to created water-tight circular chambers of various sizes and configurations.  These inner refuges are reached by squeezing through low and narrow passages made of megalithic rocks.

No one really knows what these cairns were used for.  Some call them tombs while others call them temples.  Perhaps these places were like portals between the worlds, enabling ancient peoples to commune with their Gods, Goddesses, and ancestors.  There may be truth in all of this, but what is certainly true is that the long, narrow passages and round chambers evoke the birth canal and womb of a woman’s body.  Crawling into a passage cairn is like returning to the cauldron of creation, the bridge between death and life, and the seen and unseen. 

Passage cairns heaped with rock and covered with tons of earth crown hillsides from tip to toe on this mystical isle.  The views from the exterior are vast and stunning, providing a pronounced contrast to the intimacy and privacy of the interior.

One of the Dark Goddesses of Samhain is the Sheela na Gig.  Her provocative image is carved in stone and can be disturbing and shocking to behold.  She appears old with a hairless head and shrunken breasts, a face more like that of a skull than a woman.  But down below, she spreads her thighs to reveal a huge vulva for all to see, prying it open still wider with her gnarly hands.

Again, no one knows what this image really signifies and why she crops up everywhere the width and breadth of Ireland from churches and castles to caves.  Some see her as the guardian of the gateways to sex and ecstasy, and to life, death, and rebirth.  To me, she is the personification of the passage cairn, beckoning us to come in, come in to the darkness and mystery of her womb.  She is like the monster who guards the treasure.  But rather than slay her, we must enter her and ask her to restore us to wholeness.

If we take her invitation during this dark time of the year, what will happen?  Will she devour us, or will we emerge again, renewed and ready for the new cycle?  Only the Goddess knows.

*See Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess, by Kathy Jones

2. SOLSTICE CIRCLES

At a recent visit to the National Museum of History and Archeology in Dublin, a notice caught my eye.  It turns out a scientist would be demonstrating the patterns created by musical tones, inviting analogies to the intriguing designs found on everything from rocks to silver chalices to golden jewelry in Ireland.  I quickly changed the plans I had made for that drizzly November afternoon and decided to attend the session.

I came into a room and was greeted by Dr. Malin Starrett, a tall, spare young man from Northern Ireland who has a passion for drawing people into the experience of experimenting.  He wants to make science real.  On this day, he had carefully set up a couple of hand-made wooden platforms topped by square brass plates.   There was also something that looked like a small drum, connected to a wide plastic tube with a funnel on the end. 

He proceeded to spread sand on one of the metal plates, placed two finger tips strategically on the sides, and firmly stroked the edge of the plate with a violin bow.  A beautiful geometric sand pattern immediately appeared on the plate.  He continued to show us different patterns, varying according to where he placed his fingers.  Then he invited the mesmerized children in attendance to give it a try.

At first I was a bit disappointed.  After all, I am very familiar with these sound patterns from Hans Jenny’s Cymatics work.  But Dr. Starrett had gone back in time to the original 18^th-century work of Ernst Chladni which was the starting point for Jenny’s research.  I have seen pictures in books and on video screens, but never experienced the phenomenon directly.   It drew me in, and before long I was leaping in to try it myself. 

I especially enjoyed fooling with the Eidophone, or tonoscope – the funnel connected to the drum.  No one in the rapidly forming crowd was bold enough to sing into the instrument, so I volunteered.  I was fascinated to see the patterns shift in real time as the pitch and vowel sounds changed, concentric circles and ovals appearing and disappearing.  (This is the principal behind the telephone – our voice makes patterns on a membrane inside the mouthpiece which are then instantaneously translated into an electric current that somehow makes sense when it comes out the other end.)  Overall, I spent a couple hours with Malin Starrett and we made plans to talk over the phone in the coming days. 

Concerning the patterns themselves, their resemblance to ancient Irish artifacts seemed a bit of a stretch to me.  However, some of them resembled labyrinths in that it was possible to trace a path through the designs.  I didn’t think too much more about it at that point.

I walked into a dim and rainy late afternoon and was made aware again of the coming of winter, where the November darkness of Samhain eases us into the stark still point of the December solstice.  According to the Wheel of Britannia*, the solstice is a period of complete inwardness.  The Cailleach (hag) of winter absorbs all that has died and decayed into herself, where it undergoes the alchemical transformation into the new life of spring.  But that comes later.  In the meantime, we are called to pause, to go inside, to wait, to dream, and to join the Stone Woman as she strips clean all that has gone before with her cold wind and boney touch. 

This is also the time of Danu (also Dana, Ana, or Anu), the Mother Goddess of the legendary Tuatha de Danann, who dropped to earth out of the mist of the western Irish mountaintops.  It is thought that the Tuatha de Danann were the architects and builders of the great stone circles found throughout Brigid’s Isles.  These circles, yes, are made of stone, but they are embedded in great henges of earth that rise out of the surrounding landscape.  This marriage of earth and standing rock, with their precise alignments to the heavenly bodies, evokes a harmonious and potent union of the land and the sky. 

One of the first Neolithic structures I visited during my stay in Ireland was the Beaghmore stone circle complex near Omagh in Northern Ireland.  Originally constructed in a forest of hazel, birch, and oak trees, the smallish stones comprising approximately eight circles were buried in a peat bog some 3000 years ago and were only unearthed by turf cutters in the early 1900s.  I was fascinated by these circles, though I couldn’t tell you why.  “It’s just a bunch of rocks!” my inner skeptic growled.  “They’re not even that impressive.  What’s the big deal?”

Nevertheless, I continued to be drawn to stone circles, great and small, famous and obscure.  With the support and superior driving skills of my husband, Paul, we went to the great monuments of England’s Stonehenge and Avebury, the demure Merry Maidens of Cornwall, Dartmoor’s Scorehill Stone Circle, and the peaceful Piper’s stones of Ireland’s Wicklow County.  Perhaps the most intriguing find was Men an Tol at the tip of the Cornwall peninsula, which is actually a donut-shaped stone flanked by two standing stones – a very different and suggestive type of stone circle!   

Since winter is a special time to visit stone circles, and since I had seen very few in Ireland, I once again called on my Celtic Ways guide, John Willmott, to take me to the great circles of Carrowmore in County Sligo.  Located in the west of Ireland, they are believed to be the oldest of the country’s stone monuments, dating back to perhaps 4300 B.C. (about 1000 years before Newgrange).  These circles are actually the remains of passage cairns.  While the coverings are long gone, the kerb stones remain.  Be that as it may, I wanted to experience them.

Carrowmore contains dozens of mounds and circles, some intact and others nondescript, covering a large territory bisected by a busy road and sporting many houses and farm fields.   We approached the oldest stone circles which are just yards from the road.  It was a dim and cloudy day and I didn’t expect much to happen given the setting and the small size of the stones.  Perhaps it was because of the time of year, or perhaps because of my experiences with the Chladni soundscapes, but when I entered the circle, I felt riveted to the spot.  Then I began to sense energy patterns and felt moved to walk in slow circles, lines, and figure eights within the perimeter.  It felt so grounding and nourishing to be there that I didn’t want to leave. 

We next went to a circle with a dolmen in the center.  After not sensing much at all, I suddenly became aware of patterns of light swirling and darting around the circle.  The movement was palpable.  We then went to see if we could visit the sites on the other side of the road.  This, the main part, of the complex, was officially closed for the season.  Risking discovery and ignominious expulsion, we climbed over a fence and headed through the fields towards several more monuments, eventually making our way to a circle that John believes was originally the center of the entire compound. 

It was easier to see how this might have once been a passage cairn, since many of the interior stones were still in place.   I went into the center of the circle, standing in the middle of what was once the inner sanctum.  Soon, I felt a strong column of energy come from high in the sky and penetrate deep into the earth.  It was so strong that it was difficult to move.  After some time, I left the passage and started exploring the rest of the circle.  I found myself walking a pattern that resembled a 7-circuit labyrinth.   When we eventually returned to the car I felt expanded and nourished, but also quite tired due to the intensity of the experiences.  

As I reflected on these occurrences, I sensed a connection between the energy patterns in the circles and the Chladni figures created with sound on the brass plates and drum.  Though much of the literature tends to emphasize the astronomical aspects of the rock formations, others surmise that stone circles were designed as sound spaces where sound was used to alter states of consciousness.*   If so, it would seem that the imprint of these long-ago songs of our ancestors still remains.  We can tune into these patterns, allow them to re-form us, and add our own harmonies.  The key is to be still enough to hear them.

It is not necessary to visit a prehistoric stone circle to join in the song.  The earth is a treasury of sound; messages from the Goddess.  As we enter this season of frosty, frozen darkness, listen to the whistling of the wind, the clacking of bare tree branches, and the crunch of your footsteps on the snow with new ears.   The Stone Woman is singing to you.  Let her wisdom resonate within the circle of your heart.  Now is not the time for action, but for recognition of what has been there all along and what is waiting to be born.  Be still and listen. 

*see Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess, by Kathy Jones

3. THE QUICKENING OF IMBOLC

Winter is brewing at last.  Snow fell yesterday in fluffy heaps, laying its frozen cushion on a ground lying too-long exposed to the world above.  It is cold today – 5 degrees or so -- as it should be, but as it hasn’t been until now.  The light is brilliant, the sky a glowing blue, and the snow crunches and squeals under my moving feet. 

In the season of things, this is the dead of winter.  So it is odd that today is the day that I am first considering Imbolc,* the quickening to come, which arrives around February 1^st.  I don’t expect that things will look much different outside when that time approaches.  Not in Wisconsin.  The difference begins deep inside the earth where all that is set to emerge come spring begins to quiver.  The white rod of winter glows green, and the torch is passed from the death grip of the crone to the promise of the maiden.  Rebirth is nigh.

I have recently returned to Wisconsin from a 4-month sabbatical in Ireland.  The first thing that struck me was how light it is here.  Ireland is dark this time of year.  The sun does not come up until 8:30 a.m. and darkness falls at around 4:30 p.m.  There is no snow to amplify the meager sun, and days are cloudy, windy, and rainy more often than not.  This darkening helps to support the task of the time, which is to go deep inside and allow all that is no longer needed to fall away. 

I feared returning home.  I liked being held by the darkness and scoured by the wind.  I liked folding in upon myself and letting everything old roll off my back.   I liked not having to do anything or be anyone.  I liked forgetting about my old life and practicing trusting that something new would come of all of this, if I could simply be patient and willing.

Now that I am back, now that the cloud cover is gone, I feel the familiar pressures of being who I have always been.  But somehow, old ways have burned away and the paths that I once followed have been lifted and shifted in the night, perhaps by the fairy folk, perhaps by my own crafty, compassionate trickster.  This inner landscape is not familiar.   All is flattened ash, sooty and charred, vast and austere.  The clearing has been immense.  And like a prairie burned before spring, nothing seems alive, recognizable, or even possible.  

In Ireland, I lived in County Kildare.  Kildare comes from the Irish words, Cill Dara, meaning “church of the oak,” and was named in the 5^th century by St. Brigid who founded a formidable and forward-looking abbey next to a giant oak tree in Kildare town.  St. Brigid holds a special place in Ireland as one who “bridges” both native traditions and imported Christianity, which came to Ireland with St. Patrick in the 5^th century AD.  Those who remember the old ways remember Brigid, the Goddess, who sprang from the womb of Danu, the legendary mother of the gods of the ancient Tuatha de Danann peoples. She is embodied in the maiden spirit of Imbolc who initiates the process of incarnation and re-birth after the dying and purging of her chilling predecessor, the Crone of winter.   Brigid, the Saint, was a remarkable woman, establishing a double abbey for both men and women in 480 AD in Kildare.  Stories of her feats and miracles mingle with folklore from Goddess times.  St. Brigid’s feast day is February 1, and she is associated with inspiration and learning, smithcraft and fire, healing and fertility, and much more. 

One day last October, I got on the train from where I was living in Maynooth in the north of County Kildare and proceeded to travel to Solas Bhride in Kildare city. **   Solas Bhride, which means “Brigid’s Light” in Irish, is the home of the Sisters of St. Brigid, Mary Minehan and Phil O’Shea, who have created a living experience of the energy of St. Brigid through the landscape and structures of the past-made-present.  Her symbols include the well, the perpetual flame, and the oak, inviting us to drink deeply of our own essential being, connect with the source of our inspiration, and embody and express that here on earth. 

Sr. Mary greeting me at the door with hearty words of welcome and brought me immediately inside, where she was talking with other visitors from America newly arrived.  We sat and drank tea in a long living room, lined with chairs in preparation for that evening’s meditation.  In the corner was the autumn altar for St. Brigid.  In the middle of the altar was Brigid’s perpetual flame, re-kindled by the Solas Bhride community in 1993 and now kept burning by the Sisters.  Beautiful hangings depicting St. Brigid graced the walls.

When the visitors moved on, Sister Mary kindly left me to enter the quiet of my own heart and commune with St. Brigid.  I repeated my prayer to her, begun months earlier, to help me to connect with the source of my own sacred well, touch the center of my own eternal flame, and express these dimensions in my daily life. 

In due time, I was ready to tackle the Pilgrimage and walk in the footsteps of Brigid of Kildare.  It was a beautiful day, unusually warm for October, and glowing with late afternoon sun.  I made the long walk to both of Brigid’s beautiful wells, passing the Black Abbey ruins, where travelers in the time of The Knights of Malta in the 13^th century received much needed hospitality.   On the way back, I stopped to rest at St. Brigid’s Parish Church.  The altar table here is supported by eight granite stones cut to form a St. Brigid’s cross on all four sides. 

The next week I returned to attend another meditation on the festival of Samhain.  Again, the weather was perfect and I decided to go to Brigid’s labyrinth.  (Sister Mary also made it possible for me to visit Brigid’s Cathedral and Round Tower, which had been closed for the season for some weeks.)  The labyrinth was located in a covert of trees well off the road, across a dirt-paved ring made for the famous Kildare racing horses, and heralded by the Peace Pole planted in 1999.  This hand-crafted pole sports the words, May Peace Prevail on Earth in three different scripts: Ogham (the first Irish written language), Irish, and English.

The labyrinth is modeled after the 7-circuit design found, among other places, in the Holywood rock at St. Kevin’s Glendalough monastery.  As I approached the labyrinth, the sheep that had taken up residence slowly began to lumber away and leave it to me.  They also left generous quantities of fertilizer in their wake which I gingerly stepped over during my winding walk.   

Returning to Kildare along the highway, I could see Brigid’s Cathedral and Round Tower dominating the town.  The 13^th-century Cathedral, restored in 1871, chronicles the life of St. Brigid in stone and stained glass.  The Round Tower is a symbol of faith, determination, welcome, and safety, and those who climb its near-vertical ladders are rewarded with breathtaking views of Kildare’s flat territory, called the Curragh. 

But perhaps most moving for me was a small enclosure cut into the grounds of the church.   Here is the restored foundation of an ancient Fire Temple which has been in use since pre-Christian times to invoke Brigid’s protection and fertility.  From the founding of St. Brigid’s abbey to the Reformation in the 16^th century, a perpetual flame burned here, faithfully tended by the nuns.  (Legend has it that 19 nuns tended the fire every19 days, leaving St. Brigid to care for it on the 20^th day.  It never went out.)  This is the flame that was re-kindled in 1993 and is now kept alight at Solas Bhride.  

During that sun-filled October time in Kildare, I was yet aware that it seemed that my own flame had shrunk to pilot proportions.  The blaze of passion and purpose that had filled my life and my work had somehow gone to ground.  I was alternately filled with sadness and anger at this loss, the reasons for which remain a mystery to me.  I somehow felt that Brigid would understand, and that she would keep the flame burning for me when all appeared shrouded in smoke.

As the months wore on through December, the sadness of that time gradually yielded to acceptance and surrender.  I began to let go more fully of what had defined me in the past and open space for something new.  Returning to Solas Bhride for the winter Solstice, I was reminded that this is not a time for activity, but for dormancy.  In that warm and festive place, it seemed natural to let go even deeper into the cycles of creation and allow myself to simply relax and wait.     

Now as I survey the white Wisconsin ground, I realize that something has changed.  I am no longer just resting in the stillness of winter’s breast.  Little spikes of curiosity are pushing at the cold, hard ground.  The new life that I feared might never return is teasing me with a trailer of possibilities.  I feel as though I have moved into a new house without any notion of what has been planted in the yard, now deeply hidden, but waiting to arise in the spring.  I await with surprise and delight the emergence of my new garden. 

*St. Brigid’s day, called Imbolc, is a time of tending to the fires of our deepest desires, fanning them into the flame of spring.  The word means “in the belly”, referring to the pregnant ewes of February.  It is a time when we can ask ourselves what wishes to be born, or re-born, in us.  What that has been lying dormant awaits the germinating touch of Brigid’s fire?  What are we ready to become in the seasons ahead?

**For more information about Solas Bhride and to participate in a virtual St. Brigid’s Pilgrimage, contact www.solasbhride.ie.  Also see Patricia Monaghan’s chapter on Kildare in the excellent book, The Red Haired Girl from the Bog.

4. THE RITE OF SPRING

“In the Rite of Spring, I wished to express the bright reawakening of nature, which is restored to new life– a full, spontaneous reawakening, a reawakening of universal conception.”  Igor Stravinsky

Spring is coming.  For many, this is a good thing.  Flowers will sprout, trees will bud, birds will sing, and the sun will shine.  What’s not to like about that?  Others of us (okay, maybe just me) are sad to see the snow cover dwindle and feel the temperatures rise.   We aren’t happy that “springing forward” came early this year, reducing the cover of evening darkness and the star time that comes with it.  

This used to be my favorite season of the year.  I am an Aries baby and spring has always been my time.  The fire in my nature has been stoked by the bursting and exploding of life all around me, and I have felt rejuvenated by the early spring flowers.  Now I just wish everything would stop and let me rest and remain underground with the quietude of winter. 

So it’s interesting that I find myself performing Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring with the Madison Symphony Orchestra this weekend.  The Rite of Spring is anything but quiet.  It assaults the senses with ruthless rhythms, confounding harmonies, and scattered melodies.   The stage is stacked with extra players in every section, including an alto flute, bass trumpet, and not one, but two bass clarinets and contrabass bassoons.  The result of all of this has me sitting up and paying attention.

It’s been almost 100 years since this piece premiered causing riots in Paris, and there is nothing stale about it.  It still has the power to push limits in every way, musically and programmatically.  Originally a ballet, it’s about an ancient practice to sacrifice a young girl’s life for spring’s sake.   The music takes us through all the stages of this primal ritual, culminating in a wild dance of expiation unto death.   It’s not easy in any way.  And it wakes and shakes you up.

As I sit on stage, the music throbbing in my body down to the last molecule, I think about the energy it takes to bring back life.  The past couple of weeks I have been feeling a strong surge from the earth, pushing and pulsing up and out despite the packed snow and ice.  Rather than welcoming this with open arms, I have been hesitating.  Am I really ready to emerge from my cozy winter cocoon and fly?  And then I think about the dire steps our ancestors took to encourage rebirth and I realize how disconnected I have become, once again, from the natural cycles of life. 

It’s spring.  It’s time to come out of hiding now.  It’s time to grow, and thrive, and reach for the sun.  It’s time to go outside and see and feel and hear new life returning in the budding trees, singing birds, and dripping snow.   It’s time to be grateful that we came through the dark times and are coming back into the light.  Everything in nature supports this now.  If we don’t have it in us, we just need to look all around us and catch the wave. 

Spring is coming.  But I hear it is supposed to get cold again next week.  Do you think we might get more snow? 

5. THE MANDORLA OF BELTANE

“Finding what we already possess may seem like a strange goal for a spiritual path.  Yet the process of finding may provide us more joy than if the universe delivered all its secrets to us without any effort on our part.”   -- Neil Douglas Klotz, the Sufi Book of Life, p. 265

Since coming back from Ireland, I’ve been shopping locally.  We have a small grocery co-op on the street corner near my house.  The selection, which always seemed too limited before, mostly suits me now.  There is a wealth of specialty shops on Monroe Street within easy walking distance.  One of my favorite things to do is walk over and get a pound of coffee, or return a library book, or check out the sales at the boutiques.  These shops have been there for as long as I’ve lived in my house, but my habit has always been to get in my car and go somewhere else to find what I needed.  

In Ireland, we lived in a small town and we had no car.  When we needed something, we would walk a mile downtown and pick it up and carry it home.  If it wasn’t there, I would plan to take the train into Dublin and explore where, of all possible places, it might be.  If I couldn’t find it, I’d make do.  I’m still behaving this way.  Going to “the mall” seems like an expedition to me, and I’d much rather putter around in my own back yard than go to the park on the other side of town.  It doesn’t seem possible that a few months could change the habits of 25 years, but there it is.

As I was walking in my neighborhood today, I started thinking about the Celtic festival of Beltane, which is celebrated around the 1^st of May.  This year, the full moon will shine down on us on the 2^nd, adding richness and flavor to the already heady Beltane brew.  This is the height of springtime, and we can finally see flowers blooming, trees leafing, and grass greening everywhere.   Even frostbitten magnolias and traumatized tulips are opening wide, fearless, embracing the sun and warmth like there’s no tomorrow. 

Beltane is a time of celebrating life, love, and re-creation.  In the olden days, it was a time when the summer queen and king came together to ensure the ripening of the harvest.  Bonfires burned through the night, houses were festooned with garlands of flowers, maypoles were wrapped with colored ribbons, and young couples stole away to discover each other in the dark of the fallow fields.

Beltane, with its emphasis on lovers, brings to mind one of the Hermetic Principles of the universe that Everything is Gender or Generation.   This principle states that nothing new is created without the union of opposites, without the fertilizing seed and nurturing vessel of male and female, without the reconciliation of polar forces.  And this reminds me of the geometry of the vesica picses, made from two overlapping circles that form and cradle an almond-shape mandorla in the center.   This symbol teaches us that when we fully embrace the polarities of existence – spirit and matter, male and female, mind and body, above and below – we can transcend that which separates us.   The mandorla in the center becomes a portal where duality dissolves and the impossible becomes possible.  

We don’t need to look very far to find these raw materials for creation.  Everything is already inside of us – male and female, light and dark, death and rebirth, and on and on.  Each of us is a universe entire.  We have it all, right under our noses.  The closer we look at what we already possess, what is blooming in our own environs, the more fertile our lives become and the more we have to share with others. The more we revel in the beauty within us, around us, and between us, the more we raise the tone of the neighborhood. 

This coming Beltane, stay close to home.  Allow the miraculous alchemical fires of this time to burn brightly inside of you.  And may the richness and blessings you discover in your own garden flow from  you freely in joy, vitality, and delight. 

6. UNDER THE SOLSTICE SUN

The summer solstice this year is on Thursday, June 21, at 12:06 pm, Central Daylight Time (18:06 Greenwich Mean Time).

These days, despite opaque window shades and dark curtains, I wake up at first light.  The initial creeping glow comes around 4:30 in the morning and I sleep fitfully after that, often staying in bed longer than I would like to try to make up for lost sleep.  Which doesn’t work.  Sunrise slightly alarms me.  It’s too early!  I’ll be tired all day if I get up now!  So I toss and turn and lightly dream and wait for the snooze alarm to go off yet again.

When there is light, some part of us wants to be awake.  If you have ever traveled to countries even slightly more northern than ours during this time, where it stays light until 10:00 or 11:00 or even midnight, you know that a curious energy in your body persists and there is a reluctance to close your eyes while the world is still lit up with natural light.  Wait, you might miss something!  There are more places to see and things to do!  Don’t bring on the dark too soon -- it’s like throwing away good food!

With more light comes more heat, which can be both a blessing and a curse.  Too much sunlight and heat drains me and I much prefer coolness and shade.  You may be just the opposite, peeling off layers of clothing and sprawling on the ground, soaking up the rays every chance you get, covered in brightness and sweat.  In either case it is the sun that sets the tone, whether we rush into or away from its embrace.

As the sun nears its highest point in the sky bringing with it the most daylight, there is almost an urgent and primal need not to waste time.  We want to squeeze every drop from each day when the sun is around.  Soon enough we will be cloaked once again in darkness and cold.  Don’t sit inside and watch TV.  Now is not the time to rest, but to work and to play and to party!

The cycles of the sun have been recorded, mapped, and celebrated for thousands of years by cultures who knew this far better than we do.  Great cave-like passage cairns and stone circles abound that channel and honor the light of the sun during a particular solstice or equinox.  These are the magic sunrises whose tendrils pierce the dark enclosures with their golden knives or  illuminate special circle stones with glowing fire.  In these moments, the ancients knew what time it was, and we can imagine that these times were anticipated and celebrated with care.  Another tick off the earth’s precious revolutionary clock.  Another season past and a new one ahead.  Another measure of the miracle of life.

Lately, I’ve been wondering of what use it is to be especially aware of these solar moments.  I don’t think people in this day and age can possibly even begin to appreciate the impulses that moved people to move impossible weights of stones improbable distances to record and revere the movements of the sun, moon, and earth.  What’s the big deal?  What difference does it make if some god or goddess is invoked, some ritual performed, or some rite enacted?  It’s just another day. 

Reflecting on the modern pantheon of holidays in the U.S., it strikes me that all of them celebrate a person, like Martin Luther King Jr., a social event, like Independence Day, or a holy being, like Jesus.  Of course, all of these holidays occur during a particular season, and who can think of the 4^th of July without cookouts and fireworks or Christmas without cold and snow, if only vicariously?  None of these public festivities, however, honor the very source of our lives explicitly.  It’s as though we take it completely for granted that the sun and moon will continue to rise and set and the earth will continue to support and nourish us with beauty and bounty.  Many of us, so caught up in the grind of our daily lives, barely even notice what’s happening outside let alone stop to appreciate it.  Observing the solstices and equinoxes is considered a “pagan” practice, which is often either ridiculed or worse, deemed heretical. 

In the days of heightened consciousness of global climate change, however, there is growing uncertainty that all will be well for much longer.  We are starting to become more aware of the fragile balance of temperature and moisture that is necessary for survival.  Weather is becoming more extreme with cataclysmic storms, devastating floods, and blistering droughts.  People in low-lying countries worry about rising sea levels and those in northern climes are concerned about the viability – and the environmental impact – of staying warm with oil and natural gas.  And all of us bemoan rising gas prices.  Change is in the wind, and it threatens to blow us away.

Perhaps now more than ever it is time to look to and be grateful for the forces that create and sustain life as we know it.  Not in some superstitious way to propitiate the gods, but in a realistic, down-to-earth, gut level knowing that nothing is possible in our physical lives without the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars.  These contain and govern all that we are and can become here on earth. 

On the high noon of the Summer Solstice this season, return to that most ancient of activities and look to the sun.  Take a moment to appreciate the blessings of this time of year.  And do what we as human beings can best do -- marvel and give thanks for all that is and for all that we have.  Let the sun fill you with joy, and celebrate the miracle of being alive whatever your circumstances may be.  As the old Les Brown song goes,

   Got no silver, got no gold;

   What I’ve got can’t be bought or sold. 

   I’ve got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.  

   I’ve got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.   

And may sweet, moon-tinged and sun-dappled dreams be yours.

7. CHINESE LUGHNASA

Yesterday I was in Shanghai.  Today I am in Madison.  The Celtic festival of Lughnasa, beginning August 1, celebrates abundance.  Certainly I have been blessed by exotic experiences abroad and by a verdant home to return to.  Lughnasa is the time where we celebrate the bounty of nature, harvesting fruit, vegetables, and foods of all kinds to eat fresh and to preserve for the long winter.  As I reflect on this time, the phrase, we reap what we sow persistently comes to mind.  

China is a country with a long, long history.  But in one short century, it witnessed the fall of the 2000-year-old system of dynasties, the revolution led by Sun Yat-sen, the Japanese takeover of large portions of China in the 1930s and 40s, the civil war between the Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and Mao’s Communists, the emergence of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and the eventual experiments mixing capitalism with a strong central government.  It’s been a doozy of a century.

Many of the physical remnants of China’s glorious past have been destroyed in the growing pains.  Countless books, artifacts, palaces and pavilions disappeared.  Art, music, education, and culture went through correction after correction, purge after purge.  Millions of people died.  Millions more suffered terribly.  None of that is apparent now, especially not to foreigners.  Foreigners see what the Chinese want them to see, by and large.  Besides, priorities are different now.  The Chinese are focused on creating prosperity for their nearly billion-and-a-half people (compared to the U.S.’s scant 303 million in about the same land mass).  Surely it’s about time.

We reap what we sow.  Much of the chaos in China's 20th century was a result of the imperialist policies of Europe and North America in the 19th century.  Now it appears that China is poised to either take over the world economically or decimate it through the pollution and plunder of prosperity in the 21st century.  Or maybe both.

Our trip to China, sponsored by Edgewood College, centered upon an opportunity to teach English at Bei Hua University in the city of Jilin located in the eponymous northeast province.  Jilin province borders North Korea, Russia, and Inner Mongolia and is part of what used to be known as Manchuria.  Eight of us marched into classrooms to convey as much about language and culture as we could in two short weeks.  We taught high school and college students, professional teachers of English, and kids from 8-12 years old.  This effort was sandwiched in by brief tours of Beijing (including the Great Wall) and Shanghai.  It was an extremely rich experience through and through.  Our students were thirsty for learning and we were thirsty to get to know them, their culture, and their lifestyles.   

Our generosity with our time and money (we paid for the trip) was repaid many times over by our students.  Virtually every night different people took us into the city for massages and saunas, dinners and strolls by the river, and some even took us into their homes.  We saw what was pretty and what was not.  We learned what is important to them, what they like to eat, and what their aspirations are.  They shared their hopes and dreams with us and we shared our language and our hearts with them.   It was a fabulous exchange.

I am facing over 1000 digital photographs and countless more memories to process and integrate into my life from here on in.  Certainly my life’s harvest has been immeasurably enriched by this journey.  What I value most is the relationships we created.   A new piece of the globe has become real to me and I have the images and email addresses to prove it. 

Over time, I will share more of my experiences and yes, photographs.  For now, it is enough to reflect on the meaning of the Lughnasa season.  Every day we sow something with our words, actions and decisions.  Every day we reap what we have sown at some time in the past.  Take time to enjoy the fruits of those exchanges in your own life and put something away for the barren times to come.  Clear new fields to cultivate and allow others to rest. 

We reap what we sow.   Make it tasty!

8. ALL THINGS BEING EQUINOX

The Autumnal Equinox is scheduled to occur on September 23 at 4:52 a.m., Central Time. This essay acknowledges the 8th and final festival of the Wheel of Brittania.

It’s autumn and things are either winding up or winding down, depending upon your focus. September is a time of new beginnings as summer ends and school starts, vacations recede into the past, and we hunker down for the long haul until next summer. September is also a time of endings as the crops are harvested, the leaves turn color and flutter down, and the animals migrate or prepare to hibernate.

“In my end is my beginning,” a saying traceable to either T.S. Elliot or Mary Queen of Scots, best captures the perspective of this final festival in the Wheel of Britannia. In this tradition, the cycle of the year officially begins again with Samhain (pron. SOW-wan or so-WAIN) on October 31. The only thing is, if you look around you it doesn’t look like a beginning. Days are shorter than nights now. Green slides into golds and browns, which in turn are bleached by the whites of ice and snow.

The spring equinox comes with a thrill of anticipation in the air. But it’s hard to be excited about the fall equinox in the same way. It can be associated more with loss than gain; loss of light, loss of warmth, loss of summer fun and frolic. And if you suffer mightily from the winter reduction of daylight, this might even be a period of dread. As the sun bestows its favors on the southern hemisphere, we in the north can lapse into depression. Winter becomes something to be endured.

Such is the nature of cycles. The wheel turns. Change comes as surely as night and day. Beginnings and endings fuse like the proverbial half-full or half-empty glass. Perspective is everything.

When a cycle is ending, it is important to take in inventory before moving into the next stage. As I did this for myself, I was very surprised to notice that this has been a particularly fruitful year for me. I have been conditioned to view the value of my life through the lens of paid, professional achievement, and by that standard I have not distinguished myself. But curiously, I feel satisfied. It’s been an amazing year. I spent over 4 months in Ireland and taught English in China. I re-imagined my role in Sound Accord and brought my teaching to a higher level. But by far the most fulfilling thing I have done is write down my experiences, collect my photos, and share them with you.

I want to thank you for being a witness through this Celtic year to that which has taken my fancy. I am, at root, a performer and I need an audience, even if it’s a virtual one. I have at times felt sheepish when pushing the “send” button, wondering if I’m simply bothering you with a bunch of drivel. But I know if that’s the case, you have only to push the “trash” button and the problem is solved.

All things being equal, this has been a good year. I don’t know what to want or expect in the new cycle, and that’s okay for this time of year. Now is not the time to set goals but to simply to notice and rest in what we have wrought. It’s a good time to resolve unfinished business, to tie up loose ends, and to clear the decks for a whole new revolution of the Wheel. And that’s exciting, even if we must be plunged into darkness and cold along the way.

Soon the season to sleep and to dream will be upon us. But first comes the season of harvest and of reckoning. Wherever you are in your life, take time to acknowledge and honor the lessons of this waning cycle. Throw your own personal harvest festival. And may you be richly and pleasantly surprised.