PROTECTING SIMPLE AND BLESSED THINGS
Random Thoughts on Lammastide
Travel back with me to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. We are told
at the very beginning,
On Lammas-Eve at night shall she be fourteen.
Juliet, this image of youth and innocence was born just before
Lammastide, the festival of First-Fruits, but due to the violence
around her she was never to realize those fruits in her own life. I
believe that Shakespeare was quite conscious of the violence of his
own time. There is reason to also think of our own times.
July 31, 2015
* * *
Tomorrow, Lammas, is an important milestone for nature, and for
ourselves and our communities. For centuries this has been the day
on which the English-speaking countries of the Northern Hemisphere have celebrated the beginning of the grain harvest — the
first harvest of many to come in the year.
For weeks we just plant, plant, plant and now all at once, it seems,
comes a harvest. Here we have already been putting organic vegetables on tables — ours and neighbors who use our Food Pantry.
But now there comes a day when we realize that harvesting will become what we mainly do in late summer and early autumn. When
we harvest, it seems to me, we really feel the partnership between
ourselves and nature, but also the connection between the generations. When I pick apples it is easy to sense my grandfather as well
as my grandson as co-workers!
“Lammas” is an Anglo-Saxon term meaning “Loaf Mass.” Every family baked bread from the earliest grain and brought it to church
where it was blessed. I've always thought there is a very profound
lesson here. What we produce with our time ought to be something
that is capable of being blessed. And we ought to protect it from
being destroyed by the violence that so often surrounds us.
* * *
What is this common dream of a peaceful, happy, and
fruitful life for which we yearn after hard times? It is usually composed of very simple and basic elements. Following the great carnage of the Civil War Walt Whitman (1819-1892) wrote his “Carol
For Harvest” to commemorate Lammas Day. It explodes with the
beauty of nature, as in,
Ever upon this stage,
Is acted God’s calm, annual drama,
Gorgeous processions, songs of birds,
Sunrise, that fullest feeds and freshens most of the soul,
The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical,
strong waves,
The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees,
The flowers, the grass, the Lilliput, countless armies of the
grass,
The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages,
The scenery of the snows, the winds’ free orchestra,
The stretching, light-hung roof of clouds –
the clear cerulean, and the bulging silvery fringes,
The high dilating stars, the placid, beckoning stars,
The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows,
The shows of all the varied lands, and all the growths and
products.
“Upon this stage” we are not the actors but the audience. We don’t
have to do anything except refrain from destroying the theatre of
God and nature. Even the farmer, though he or she plants the seed,
is in awe of what that seed does by itself!
The picture Whitman paints is certainly something to be blessed
and is in stark contrast to what he saw working in a hospital caring
for the casualties of that bloody war.
* * *
But we don’t have to have those grand vistas of the poet with Whitman. Yesterday I was sitting on the steps outside my room watching a small lizard happily exploring his, or her, environment. Just
like me, the lizard has been blessed with a little patch of earth to
enjoy and protect.
How we do that begins with awareness and appreciation of what we
have. That may well be helped along by the smell of fresh baked
bread. It is just possible that smell will encourage us to forget our
to-do list of supposedly important things. In the process, the innocence of our times may, for a while, overshadow the violence.
* * *
And by the way, “Happy Birthday” to all the Juliets, known and unknown, living in our times!
Brother Toby