I recently met someone who had not encountered the Celtic festivals that fall between our more familiar ways of marking the year: summer, autumn, winter and spring.
For her, naming this in between season helped her to appreciate the changes that are happening both in the world and within us as the height of summer gives way to something new.
This is the season of Lammas, the time of the first harvest and the making of the first loaf with the new grain. A limbic time before the glory of autumn and the depth of winter.
This year we have had a spectacular summer, June has really blazed and the long days of sunshine have invited us to breath out into nature, to enjoy the warmth of the sun on our skin and to dream dreams. My heart goes out to the children, still incacerated in classrooms and facing exams at the time when they should have been out in the sun.
And now it is August. A little of the heat has gone out of the sun. The trees, having reached up towards the sky, lose some of their vibrant colour and pause before they drop their leaves. The bright green is slightly faded, the plants in the hedgerow are growing that white mildew, the nuts are nearly ripe and there are blackberries on the brambles.
So what is required of us as the season turns?
When I was a child, my mother used a phrase I hated; if I was upset she would say "pull yourself together". But I wonder if we can repurpose this phrase to express something of what is required of us now, a gathering in, acollecting of our summer dreams to forge into lasting creations.
To mark the change of season, a very simple thanksgiving with a loaf of new bread is all you need. Give thanks for the blazing june and welcome the harvest.
