A wise mentor once gently informed my (highly anxious) younger self that ministry is a lot like the parable of the sower and the seed in scripture. She reminded me that I can scatter seeds with wild abandon, but I should not expect to be any more successful than Farmer G-d. Some seeds will grow …
Someone I know is getting ready to leave her home of almost four decades. She knows that it is time to move into a new stage of life and the possibility that she will not be quite as independent as she has been until now. She is wrestling with grief and loss at the same …
Last week, I invited you to join me in pondering what it might mean to be a heroine or a hero for someone else. I asked how it feels to be intentional about living in a transparent way; about living willingly in bright summer light, where anything you do is visible to anyone watching. I …
In my first reflection for Beltane, I mentioned some of its characteristic foci, the aspects of the season that invite us to take note of particular areas of our own lives. I reminded us that it is a time of honoring earth and the fecundity of earth and the blessings she pours out abundantly …
As I keep reminding us both, Beltane is a time of creation and a time of re-creation. The word ‘recreation’ has become rather trite and superficial in common 21st century usage. We use it primarily to categorize non-work activities, but the attitude we bring to most recreational activities is so rigid and demanding that what …
Beltane is the season in which the Christian feast of Pentecost falls — a feast filled with tempestuous wind and sparkling fire. The Christian church inherited Pentecost (which simply means “the 50th day” ) from Judaism, where the 50th day after Passover is now more commonly called Shavu’ot (or the Feast of Weeks). In Judaism, …
I have been traveling through New Mexico and the edges of the Four Corners region with my husband and we were privileged to visit a kiva, discovered in the 1930s and rebuilt using the old techniques. We were allowed to descend into the kiva, but not to take photos — although it is no …
Beltane is not only about looking around us and honoring those persons and places and experiences that have shaped us; it is also about looking within and noting our limitations and our life-giving, expansive well of authentic energy. One of our on-going summer tasks is to notice and to weed the former (insuring that limitations …
Even though, chronologically, I am past the summer quarter of my life, each year continues to have its cycle of seasons. In his book, Naked Spirituality, Brian McLaren calls spiritual summer (the inward Beltane), The Season of Complexity. It is a season of mastering skills, achieving goals, and conquering challenges (maturing and ripening). As with …
Beltane begins with fire – specifically with the bonfires lit from the nine sacred woods (birch, oak, hazel, rowan (mountain ash), hawthorne, willow, fir, apple, and ivy). From that bonfire, the hearth fire in each home is renewed and rekindled. These woods symbolize the female and male energies, wisdom, birth and rebirth, life and death, …