22/08/2025
Some belated Lammas reflections from last month!
"So we're meeting today at the very beginning of August. Lammas was on Fri - the ancient Celtic festival when people celebrated the grain harvest as they began to harvest wheat, barley, rye and oats. Lammas is an old Saxon name meaning loaf mass because the celebrations included baking communion bread using wheat from the first sheaf that was cut.
So it's a time to give thanks, to notice the abundance around us, to turn our faces towards the sun and to drink in all the green everywhere.
It's also a time to acknowledge that the season is beginning to turn. I've seen August described as the border between summer and autumn. So it's also the time of year when we can think about what we can harvest now to keep us going through the autumn and winter which are coming. What can we gather up now to feed us through the darker months? Or what can we store up to plant when we're ready?
Paying attention to the seasons in this way, allows us to notice and accept the different weather in our physical world but also the different experiences and feelings in our lives too. A friend made me a bracelet with a line from a Mary Oliver poem in it this week and it fits well with this thought...
“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.”
So perhaps this poem is an invitation to remember to notice the small moments of joy.
Embrace them. Savour them.
Find the kernel of joy, whatever the circumstance.
And perhaps it links to this Lammas time, because if joy isn't a crumb, can we think of it as a whole loaf? That can be broken and shared amongst us and even wider?
And of course this year, while we are thankful for all the good things that we have and we enjoy the bread from this year's harvest, our thoughts turn to the people starving in Gaza. It is difficult to know how to hold both the joy of summertime and the despair of the images that we are seeing of Palestine. There are poems on the theme of lament for the prayer station in the tent that we can use. And we can say together this prayer from the charities Christian Aid and Embrace the middle east:
Pray not for Arab or Jew,
For Palestinian or Israeli,
But pray rather for ourselves
That we might not divide them in our prayers
But keep them together in our hearts.
When races fight:
Peace be amongst us.
When neighbours argue:
Peace be amongst us.
When nations disagree:
Peace be amongst us.
Where people struggle for justice:
Let justice prevail.
Where Christ's disciples follow:
Let peace be our way
Amen.
