The Unitarian Fellowship of Peterborough

 

When I was a little girl, my mother encouraged the making and giving of May baskets...usually baskets made out of brightly-coloured construction paper and filled with paper flowers and candies. The idea was to leave this little gift on someone’s doorstep or school desk, without being seen, so that it would surprise them and tickle their imagination with the mystery of who might have given it. My mother was Swedish, and I expect this was a family tradition. (Mayday is a big thing in Scandinavia.) I don’t suppose, however, that anyone in her family thought of it as a pagan practice, nor did they in any way associate it with the celebrating of sexuality and fertility. Even then, WAY BACK when I was a little girl, such practices were far removed from their original contexts and meanings. I thought, and I believe my mother thought, that it was just a sweet thing to do at the time of year when flowers are beginning to bloom.

 

Even today, Mayday is not forgotten. In my circle of Facebook friends, several sent wishes for a happy Mayday, one spoke of the small Beltane fire that she had lit, and another said she had plans to go out into the woods for most of the night. Remnants and revivals of ancient practices exist. 

 

Beltane, or Mayday, is, among other things, a celebration of fertility. The first bushes and trees to blossom and bud were decorated...and this practice eventually evolved into the custom of dancing around a maypole, weaving together ribbons of many colours.   Folks washed their faces with morning dew in a kind of baptism with spring. Young people were sent out into the woods to gather the first signs of summer, and homes were draped with May boughs. Often the young and unwed spent the whole night ‘playing’ in the woods; accounts from these times suggest that there was a lot of nakedness and that few returned, shall we say, ‘unsullied.’ 

 

I don’t expect any of you will argue with me when I say that I’m a pretty reserved person. You probably can’t imagine me, nor can I imagine myself, frolicking lasciviously in the forest all through the night, and coming home wearing little more than hawthorn boughs. But as I researched Beltane, this old Celtic festival, I found myself lamenting the great distance that exists between us and such a raw, experiential relationship with the earth and the cycles of seasons.   It is of course true, that we as humans have also evolved away from such a magical view of the world, and in that process, our relationship with its mysteries and wonders has also in some ways suffered. 

 

Now because of my reserved nature, and since woodland frolicking is not my style, I find myself more drawn to another aspect of the Mayday celebrations...the perhaps more ancient practice of the lighting of the Beltane fires. What they represented, and the practices around them, fascinates me, so let me tell you just a little more about that.

 

Beltane falls on a cross-quarter...that is, midway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, and therefore is not necessarily on May 1^st. Directly opposite on the wheel of the year from Halloween, which is an honouring of death, Beltane is a full out celebration of life, falling in love, and fertility. For the Celts, it marked the time when summer had truly arrived, when windows could be opened wide, when winter bedding could be burned, and when the cattle and sheep would be moved to fresh grass in the higher summer pastures. For some, this meant moving the entire village higher in the hills. For others, it meant that young boys were sent off for the summer to tend to the livestock far from home. 

 

Huge bonfires were built on beacon hills from the wood of the trees that were first to blossom, as a sacrifice to, and perhaps in gratitude for, the sun. It would have been common practice that home fires were kept burning constantly...but on the night before Beltane, those fires were allowed to go out, and families ate a cold meal in recognition of the gift of fire. 

 

Fire has perhaps forever been associated with purification, cleansing and renewal. At Beltane, often two large bonfires were built close together and the livestock were driven between the fires in a ritual act of blessing...in order to protect them throughout the summer.    At the end of the festivities, families would return to their homes with an ember from the communal bonfire to relight their home fires, and in the morning, the journeys to higher pastures would begin. So, a big transition in the circle of the year was rightfully marked with an equally big festival.  

 

My exploration today begins with the question, ‘what is it that we must drive out into summer pastures?’   It occurs to me that as far removed as most of us are from caring for sheep , cattle, and goats, that in order to answer this question, we have to look at how it can possibly apply to us today. 

 

We may not have a flock of sheep, but all of us still tend to something in our lives. Livestock are kept in order to provide a livelihood and food; those of us who are not farmers or ranchers still tend that which feeds us, be that our household gardens, our work, our investments, our support systems. And, summer pastures represent those opportune times when we can make full use of our resources and gifts.   Going out into summer pasture might be seen as the way we stretch ourselves beyond the known and the comfortable, the ways in which we expand our boundaries and take some risks that are too risky during the winter. Going out into summer pasture is an acknowledgement of those times when our opportunities are expanded, when windows of possibility open. 

 

I have to admit that I have ‘long range plan’ on the brain. We have been sitting at tables and working on this plan as if around our winter fires, dreaming of the time when windows can be opened and we can move beyond the known into a more expansive experience...one closer to our dreams and visions. One of the children’s books I considered for today is titled “Star Grazers” and tells the story of a young shepherd dozing off surrounded by his sheep, and dreaming of leaping into the starry sky with them, to wander amidst the constellations... Lupus the wolf and Sirius the dog star...his sheep’s wool drifting off like clouds. There is a bit of this dreaminess in crafting a long range plan...imagining something that is not yet, and which can even feel other-worldly. 

 

On the other hand, there is something completely down to earth about dreaming, something that is inherently part of the natural cycle. Sometimes we are in the winter homes of our lives, and other times we are in our summer ones. In our winter homes, we hunker down and dole out our provisions sparingly, knowing that they must last until the earth turns a bit more on its axis. We are all about being practical and thrifty. But even in this time, perhaps especially in this climate, we also know that the earth will turn, that the seasons will shift, and that a time of openness and freedom will come to us, when the air is fresh and light, the dew clear and pure.  

 

Our dreams and visions help us to survive the winter, and they also help us to navigate the freedom of the summer. When the opportunity finally comes to be driven to pasture, we have a better idea of where we’re headed, who will go us, and what we want to accomplish. 

 

The dream of this Fellowship, the proposed long range plan, has six goals...and if we were to think of them as summer pastures or winter pastures, I would say that three or four of them fall into the summer pastures category. That is, three or four of them are goals that speak to who we want to be in the world, ideals that are captured in our visions of our best selves. 

 

The goals that are more like winter pastures have no less significance; don’t misunderstand me. Winter is just as necessary as summer, and has equal value and beauty. But what we do in our winter pastures is more about putting up store, and building foundations, and the two goals in the draft long range plan that seem more wintry are those related to our finances and our space needs. 

 

The three goals then, that for me, are clearly beyond our current existence and can be seen as summer pastures, are (and I’m paraphrasing them here):

Now, while today is not part of the stewardship series that we’ve been exploring this year, I just can’t help mentioning this. There is probably no better image for ‘stewardship’ than that of the shepherd. Here is someone who takes the job of tending to the flock very seriously, knowing that his life and the lives of his family and community depend on the wool and the milk and the meat that the sheep offer. And, the shepherd doesn’t just care for the sheep that are living now; taking care of a flock also means caring for all the sheep that are to come in the future. Part of taking care of the sheep is to ensure that they stay healthy and that they mate, and that when lambing time comes, that things go smoothly. 

 

Perhaps more importantly, beyond this caring for such utilitarian purposes, for a shepherd there is also a more relational caring that comes from getting to know each sheep by name, getting to know their unique personalities, watching out for their perhaps predictable behaviours. And through these relationships, the shepherd’s own quality of life is enriched and deepened. A shepherd finds meaning in the work of protecting and tending, and also in the reality of knowing the sheep so intimately. 

 

If we, institutionally, are to be able to drive these goals, these dreams and visions, out into the summer pastures where they can grow strong and healthy, then we are going to need lots of shepherds... it takes the whole village to care for the village, and so as you review the long range plan, I would encourage you, even urge you, to think about what part of this flock, what part of this vision, tugs at the shepherd strings of your heart. Where will you serve?

 

But before I close, I also want to offer you this metaphor to use personally.   As we enter this season of summer, also look to your own heart and your own life. What is it that you care for? Where do you pasture it? How do you purify it and ensure that it remains healthy? What in you is about to lamb...about to be born?   I believe that we each tend to a small flock of concerns and relationships and personal projects that regularly need airing out in new pastures.  

 

In my work with the Canadian Unitarian Council’s National Identity project, it is clear that over and over, all across the country, Unitarians are committed to their congregations in part because of the support and encouragement that they receive there. So, given the work that lies ahead of you, also ask who will help you with this? If you don’t want to, or can’t, drive the sheep out to pasture by yourself, reach out. Come talk me. Let others here know that you need support.   As I told the kids, I can easily imagine a lonely young shepherd far from home. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Yesterday I re-read the chapter from Heidi where her grandfather sends her off to spend the day with Peter the goatherd...and I saw another vision of the life of a shepherd...one where there is someone to accompany you, one where there is someone at home who packs you a lunch, one where there is a great sense of meaning in doing what one is called to do. 

 

I have to admit that when first using the words “driving the livestock out into summer pastures” I had an impression of this action as being one of pushing away, of getting rid of something. But I have come now to see it, to think of it of this ‘driving’, as a very intentional, powerful action in movement toward that which calls to us...wisdom, joy, hope, reality, possibility, desire, courage, humility, love, truth... Driving the cattle off into summer pastures requires a burst of energy and a sense of purpose. Even when the ‘summer’ has arrived, we still need to act in order to move toward the dreams, the freedom, the open air. And we still need each other to accompany us, to support us, and to bless our progress. 

 

I believe that although we may be much removed from a direct experience of the earth and from such earth-centred rituals as Beltane, we are still subject to the same forces that reawaken plants, that make young lambs frisky, and that open our hearts wide again. May all the blessings of this moment in time be yours. Happy Mayday. 

 

Amen. 

 

The 7^th verse of the 1^st chapter of Song of Solomon begins, “Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you pasture your flock, where you make it lie down at noon;

...if you do not know, follow the tracks of the flock, and pasture your kids beside the shepherds’ tents.” 

Your dreams know the way. Follow them. Nurture them. Bring someone along. And may our time together in summer pastures, in this circle of community, bring us health and abundance and strength for the journey. 

 

Amen.