LEAFING INTO THE FUTURE
We're celebrating our 20th Anniversary! ! Celebrate with us as we honor our roots and envision the future. Be part of our future, together in the Goddess. Our day will feature afternoon workshops, a lite supper, opportunities to walk a Labyrinth path, spend time in the meditation tent, tie a wish on our "Wish Tree", and help create a Retrospective Art Offering that will be part of the altar in our evening ritual. We will also have "BunniHotep" storytelling time. This event is open to all.
Saturday, August 25 2007 1pm to 7pm
Unitarian Universalist Church
5450 Atherton, Long Beach
$15-$20 donation requested
Please preregister; email bansagart@gmail.com for a registration form.
www.toila.org
www.longbeachwomanspirit.org
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Lammas
"Warmed and watered by the heavens, Earth has set its harvest table before us."
If we take a moment to pause from the craziness and stress of our lives and open our senses to the world around us, even in the city we can see the seasons change. Now, halfway through the summer, the grapes are heavy on the vines. The grasses have become a golden brown, waving on the hillsides. The stores are full of the fruits of summer: melons, berries, peaches, corn, plums. The harvest is beginning to come in.
In agricultural societies, this is a time to celebrate the first fruits with bread-making and brewing of grain beverages. The communal sharing of a meal - breaking bread together - is a symbol of unity and peace. It is a time of celebrating the gifts of the earth, the fruits of hard labor,and the interdependence of all members of the community.
This is the First Harvest, dedicated to different Deities in different parts of the world throughout history:
Cotton Mother in India
Lugh and Tailltu in Ireland
Green Corn Mother in the Native American Southwest
Ceres in Rome
Dagon in Phoenicia
Demeter in Greece
Chicomecoatl in southern Mexico
Pachamama in the Andes
This harvest festival is not like Thanksgiving as we celebrate it in the United States - it is not the time to store up food; winter is still far-off. It is not the time to bake elaborate meals, for there is still much work to be done. The first fruits have been harvested, yet the fields are still full, still ripening. The fields must be watched very carefully, so that the harvest is not lost. Heat, thunderstorms and insects could destroy the harvest and jeapordize the people's survival. An abundant fall harvest (at Mabon) means that the community will survive the coming winter. And so people still tend the fields, carefully encouraging Mother Earth to continue providing an abundant harvest.
Many of us today have lived our lives in the city. US culture doesn't celebrate the summer harvest, unless you go to the county fair. It is easy for us to become disconnected from the earth and the cycles of nature.
So what can we learn from this season? What does Lammas (or Lughnassad as the Celts called it) have to do with us?
As I have learned to live in harmony with the cycles of the Earth, I have found that my life reflects the seasons, and at this time of the year, I tend instinctively to evaluate my life.
Who am I now?
What have I accomplished?
What do I still want to do with my life?
What are my hopes and dreams?
What do I fear will prevent me from attaining them?
In effect, I gather the first fruits and take them to the threshing floor, separating the grain from the chaff of my life, milling it and baking it into whatever will sustain me while I tend the other crops of my life that have yet to ripen.
What do you hope to harvest in your life this year?
What seeds did you plant?
Did you sow them on fertile soil?
Did you tend them? water them? pull the weeds that threatened them?
Did they get enough sun? or too much?
What has grown?
Was it what you thought you had planted?
Will it nourish your body and your spirit?
Is it something you are proud of?
Is there enough to share with your community?
If not - this is the harvest time, the time to sacrifice some of the crops and make room for others to grow. It is not too late to plant for the fall harvest.
If you are satisfied with what has grown, this is the time to nurture it. Make the commitment to see it to fruition, whatever weather may come. Make the commitment to share your crops, your fruits, your gifts with the members of your community. Save enough of your harvest to have seeds for next year's planting, enough to exchange for seeds that others may offer you.
Our lives follow the cycle of seasons: our lives and our dreams are born, grow into maturity, and are harvested, to return again in a new way and a new form with the next turn around the wheel. May our hopes and dreams be a bountiful harvest, laying the ground for the next crop.
c. Bansagart 2003
If we take a moment to pause from the craziness and stress of our lives and open our senses to the world around us, even in the city we can see the seasons change. Now, halfway through the summer, the grapes are heavy on the vines. The grasses have become a golden brown, waving on the hillsides. The stores are full of the fruits of summer: melons, berries, peaches, corn, plums. The harvest is beginning to come in.
In agricultural societies, this is a time to celebrate the first fruits with bread-making and brewing of grain beverages. The communal sharing of a meal - breaking bread together - is a symbol of unity and peace. It is a time of celebrating the gifts of the earth, the fruits of hard labor,and the interdependence of all members of the community.
This is the First Harvest, dedicated to different Deities in different parts of the world throughout history:
Cotton Mother in India
Lugh and Tailltu in Ireland
Green Corn Mother in the Native American Southwest
Ceres in Rome
Dagon in Phoenicia
Demeter in Greece
Chicomecoatl in southern Mexico
Pachamama in the Andes
This harvest festival is not like Thanksgiving as we celebrate it in the United States - it is not the time to store up food; winter is still far-off. It is not the time to bake elaborate meals, for there is still much work to be done. The first fruits have been harvested, yet the fields are still full, still ripening. The fields must be watched very carefully, so that the harvest is not lost. Heat, thunderstorms and insects could destroy the harvest and jeapordize the people's survival. An abundant fall harvest (at Mabon) means that the community will survive the coming winter. And so people still tend the fields, carefully encouraging Mother Earth to continue providing an abundant harvest.
Many of us today have lived our lives in the city. US culture doesn't celebrate the summer harvest, unless you go to the county fair. It is easy for us to become disconnected from the earth and the cycles of nature.
So what can we learn from this season? What does Lammas (or Lughnassad as the Celts called it) have to do with us?
As I have learned to live in harmony with the cycles of the Earth, I have found that my life reflects the seasons, and at this time of the year, I tend instinctively to evaluate my life.
Who am I now?
What have I accomplished?
What do I still want to do with my life?
What are my hopes and dreams?
What do I fear will prevent me from attaining them?
In effect, I gather the first fruits and take them to the threshing floor, separating the grain from the chaff of my life, milling it and baking it into whatever will sustain me while I tend the other crops of my life that have yet to ripen.
What do you hope to harvest in your life this year?
What seeds did you plant?
Did you sow them on fertile soil?
Did you tend them? water them? pull the weeds that threatened them?
Did they get enough sun? or too much?
What has grown?
Was it what you thought you had planted?
Will it nourish your body and your spirit?
Is it something you are proud of?
Is there enough to share with your community?
If not - this is the harvest time, the time to sacrifice some of the crops and make room for others to grow. It is not too late to plant for the fall harvest.
If you are satisfied with what has grown, this is the time to nurture it. Make the commitment to see it to fruition, whatever weather may come. Make the commitment to share your crops, your fruits, your gifts with the members of your community. Save enough of your harvest to have seeds for next year's planting, enough to exchange for seeds that others may offer you.
Our lives follow the cycle of seasons: our lives and our dreams are born, grow into maturity, and are harvested, to return again in a new way and a new form with the next turn around the wheel. May our hopes and dreams be a bountiful harvest, laying the ground for the next crop.
c. Bansagart 2003
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