the feast of first fruits is sometimes called the forgotten festival, because of all the high holy days of the pagan year, few outside the neo-pagan community are aware it ever existed. and unlike samhain, with halloween, imbolc with ground's hog day, and beltane with may day, lughnasa has no fanciful counterpart in modern times.
last night laura and i did one of our group mediumship nights, the first we've done in a couple months. it felt good to work together, even though the energy felt rough, less channeled, less synchronized. the last few days have seemed especially chaotic - the electricians interrupted my morning meditation yesterday and today, and especially, i feel out of sync, strangely unbalanced.
but perhaps it is keeping with the season.
lughnasa is not a comfortable holy-day.
as much rejoicing as there is in the celebration of the first fruits of the harvest, it is also associated with death, and the coming winter. if imbolc is the bright light that shines in the winter, then lughnasa is the dark spot that blots the summer.
the motto of my mother's catholic boarding school was spes messis in semine... the hope of the harvest is in the seed. lughnasa is when we see if the hopes and dreams and desires sown previously are coming to any kind of fruition, the time to adjust expectations, face realities, prepare for what's to come.
as i bounced baby jake on my knee this afternoon, i reflected in this august of my fiftieth year, i have reached a kind of personal lughnasa. i have been aware of a particular richness this summer, a particular fullness. i feel settled and ripe in my bones, in my flesh, in the life i have created, in the work i think i do. and so, on this particularly golden afternoon, as the sun sinks and the heat rises from the wetly green land, i light a lughnasa candle, prepare my offering and dance.
i wish all my gentle readers a similiarly satisfying lughnasa. blessed be.
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