Bright Winter Blessings During the last week of January, while braving frigid temperatures for a late evening walk, I looked up at the full Wolf Moon at the zenith of the night sky. “Aha,” I thought, “the moon is a place holder for the summer sun which has been abducted into the Southern hemisphere.” Yet, […]
Now ‘tis Yuletide and people in northern latitudes shore up the weak December sun with merriment and communal good cheer and those in southern climes bask in the sun’s warmth. Winter solstice, or Midwinter to the ancient Celts, stays the march of darkness. At the solstices, the midpoints of the darkest and brightest times of […]
Happy Halloween! For ancient Celts, this day of Samhain (sow -en) marked a pause between the end of one year and the beginning of the next. It was a crack in time that allowed spirits of the departed and fairy folk to walk abroad freely. Ordinary humans huddled inside for safety. Such behavior has a […]
Welcome autumn! We gather in a harvest of pain; we gather in a harvest of hope; we bow to the winds of change. On the last Saturday of summer, two other crones and I gathered outdoors, masked, and socially distanced, for a fall equinox celebration in one woman’s community garden plot. Surrounded by pollinators nosing […]
Welcome First Fruits of the Harvest This is no ordinary August. As the Green Corn moon ripens in the sky and crops plump up in the fields, we vacation in quarantine, mask up, and socially distance in fear of covid virus spread. This season of abundance in the northern hemisphere is menaced with loss and […]
Welcome Summer’s Fire the Fuel for Justice Welcome June solstice! As the sun roars into the northern hemisphere drenching us in rose-perfumed, sea-side beckoning light, we the people, caught in an extraordinary moment of human history, roar back. The pent-up frustration dammed by a pall of contagion that has compelled social distancing and stay-at-home orders […]
Welcome bonny May! Beltane (May 1) blessings to all! Outside my window the trailing branches of two weeping cherry trees in full bloom sway in the breeze. On the radio, Edvard Grieg’s “Morning Mood” breaks like sunshine into the room to celebrate the day as the orchestra evokes the hum of growth and the cuckoo’s […]
Stirrings of Spring Welcome March equinox! Do you know where your balance is? It’s hard to maintain perspective in these harrowing times. The sun, a clarion call mobilizing the life force into action, shines equally now on north and south, a pause, as it slowly lengthens its reach northward. Let us all take a moment […]
First Stirrings of Spring — Welcome Imbolc With Imbolc (im – blk), or Candlemas, on February 2, we reach the mid-point between the December solstice and the March equinox. Life begins its slow, quivering rise north flowering in swathes of blue bonnets in the hills of Texas and shyly appearing in snow drops in Massachusetts. […]
Welcome Solstice Light At the December solstice, the sun is directly above the farthest point south of the equator it ever reaches, giving those of us in the northern hemisphere short days and those of us in the southern hemisphere long ones. The earth’s slow tilt from north to south and back again pauses at […]
 |
 |
 |