Stirring, stirring, stirring from your stillness.
Rumbling, quivering, vibration forming new life.
Waxing season of sun.
Our senses recognize you.
Though we live in postmodern productivity,
And pretend that one season is the same as another.
You paint new colors upon the horizon.
You quake and tap and push.
Agave, aloe, century plant
Burst forth your stem
Call to us and send us flowers.
Make promises of things to come.
Death makes way as new life emerges.
Celebrate this season of change.
When I was a child, there was a tv commercial for Mapo breakfast cereal that featured various adults who would each sound off like a siren, “I WANT MY MAYPO!” One of the actors was baseball’s favorite Yogi Bera.
That doesn’t really have anything to do with today’s topic, except that the phrase “I want my May Pole” sprang into my consciousness, and I felt it needed explanation. “I want my May Pole” was a playful creative expression of my passion. I’m dreaming of a multicolored May Pole party hosted by this congregation. Our congregation is growing. Why not celebrate spring fertility?!
Paganism, sometimes referred to as the “Old Religion”, actually pre-dates Christianity by thousands of years. Nearly all of Western religious holidays have pagan roots. The root of the word Pagan is “country dwellers” or people of the land. I use the word pagan to refer to a variety of forms of Earth based religion and spirituality.
I’ve watched UU interest in Paganism grow over the years. When I was in seminary, an adult RE curricula called “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” was a big hit and part of the Women & Spirituality movement sweeping our denomination. Women tired of “Father God” were pleased to discover Goddess spirituality and the ancient Mother. Since then chapters of CUUP (Covenant of UU Pagans) have formed throughout the country.
Deep Ecology gave another stream swelling the popularity of Earth based spirituality. Deep Ecology philosophy and movement affirm the inherent worth of all species regardless of their perceived value to the human race. Growing awareness of pollution and the effect of toxins upon ecosystems have sent UUs searching for liturgical support for environmental activism.
Of course, not all who embrace Earth based spirituality have affinity or interest in the old religion.
I accept that Wiccan, Pagan and Earth based rituals are not every UU’s cup of tea. I am also aware that UUs aren’t immune to the effects of a cultural contempt toward Pagans that has been thousands of years in the making.
Hebrews wrote it into their scriptures. Christendom carried it to wars, witch burnings and genocide of indigenous people. Attitudes continue to this day: many believe slurs that say pagan as synonymous with evil.
Even if you have consistently loved what you have experienced in UU land, you wouldn’t be the first to want to make sure there isn’t any goat sacrifice here. This might be a good time to remind us that the right of conscience is a pillar of our faith. All relations shall be consensual here. On any given Sunday, you are free to simply observe respectfully. No problem.
What UU tradition does ask of us is to accept one another and encourage spirituality. The prophetic voice of UU tradition calls us to dismantle systems of oppression, including examining our prejudices and removing our support from traditions that oppress.
These lead us to seek and find wisdom from sources of ancient and modern modern religion and spirituality that respects nature.
Who will lead the way to challenge any and all institutions bent upon using power to continue exploitation of Earth and its creatures? Who will challenge those who assert that God gave “man” dominion over the Earth? Who will lead to a way of life in right relationship with nature?
Challenging and changing our ways doesn’t always come easily. A colleague told a story of a time he planned and led a Beltane service. It had some spontaneous drumming, chanting, and toning. He wanted to encourage a bit of wildness. He wasn’t too surprised that some people began howling like wolves. Another expression of his creativity, he dressed up as the mythological “green man” for the service. He told me that his only regret was that it turned out to be the week that a lot of visitors showed up including a Presbyterian Sunday school class that was exploring other religions. He said “if they came almost any week of the year they wouldn’t have seen anything terribly different than what they do in their church.” Oh well!
Beltane celebrates the planting and fertility associated with this time of year. Perhaps the most controversial tradition had lads and lasses going out into the fields to participate in fecund union. Christian dominated societies have judged this as immoral. I have come to question the superiority of western industrial world view over ancient indigenous culture. Pagan rituals foster a reverence and healthy appreciation of nature and the life force. What became the dominant and dominating culture has seen Earth as a resource to be exploited. This culture has sought to dominate nature. It forgot the miraculous nature of nature, the awesomeness of the interconnected web.
James Taylor wrote about this in his song Gaia.
Turn away from your animal kind
Try to leave your body just to live in your mind
Leave your cold cruel mother earth behind
Gaia
As if you were your own creation
As if you were the chosen nation
And the world around you just a rude and
Dangerous invasion
Beltane and other nature rites can awaken us and keep us grounded in the mystery of life. In spring, life is emerging. It is good and wise to celebrate creatively, to rejoice in the abundance that Earth bestows upon us. It is also realistic and humble to acknowledge our vulnerability, our powerlessness and dependence upon the fortune provided by nature.
Agricultural societies were keenly tuned to nature’s providence. A drought or harsh winter might have meant death or hardship. By May 1st, Spring’s presence is clear. Earth’s bursting forth with new life tends to give rise to an optimistic spirit in people. Spring is a time of hope.
It is also natural to think of fertility during spring. Agricultural societies knew that their existence was dependent on spring’s abundance continuing. Fertility rites reflect and celebrate the fertilization that is occurring everywhere. Moderns have looked upon Pagan rites as mere superstition, as attempts by primitives to appease or win the favor of the gods. Such reductionism misses the value of nature rites. Rites are vehicles to express and experience the mystery, the wonder, the divinity of nature. They help us to gain awareness of being engaged in an intimate dance with the creative forces of life.
Beltane is a time of making decisions about planting. How much corn? How many tomatoes? How many greens? What needs to be repotted or replanted?
It can also be a time to reflect on what we are growing on a psychic level. How shall we prepare the soil of our life to ensure spiritual growth? Which areas of our life need appreciation and a little maintenance? What needs more tending? Perhaps some areas of our life need to be dug up & replanted? Which of our fields need to rest now?
Beltane is a time to reach down to our roots and bring the energy upward and outward. What do we want to harvest in the seasons ahead? Have we planted so that we will grow toward fulfillment of what is important? Have we seeded from the truth of our being? Are we allowing weeds of fear, greed, or distraction to take over? What will be our creative gift to our family, our village, our world?
May 1st is exactly halfway between the start of spring and summer. The next Pagan holiday or Sabbat is Summer Solstice, when the Earth ripens to Motherhood. In the Wiccan calendar, Beltane is the time that Earth Goddess has reached menarche. Spring is the adolescent period of Earth. Beltane is a celebration of adolescence.
Have you ever noticed our cultural discomfort with adolescence? Perhaps our discomfort about this stage of development is one of many ways that our society is at odds with nature.
In our society, adolescence can be a brutal, dangerous passage. It can be difficult to watch teenagers explore new-found freedoms and powers as they seek to find a place in society. Adolescents often act out and draw attention to things we might rather ignore. They sometimes make us think about the inconsistencies and injustices in our society. They may cause us to look at ourselves and remember how we gave up our idealism to fit in and get ahead.
Perhaps we are uncomfortable with teens because we are collectively still in the adolescence of humanity. We carry tremendous powers, and lack the wisdom to use them for our benefit. We are wild with newfound freedoms. We split atoms. We do microsurgery. We cook with microwave technology. We have lasers and laptops and cell phones, and each attractive gain made of technological advancement, seems to bring a new cost in human suffering.
We are excited by discoveries of vast interconnections at every level from subatomic to celestial, and yet our social institutions are based in a mechanistic worldview. We focus on material and forget the soul. We imagine that people are machines. We are trying to force our brave new world to fit into an old and faulty operating system. Now we have AI, artificial intelligence. We are as gods in our ability to create, but we have not yet developed divine wisdom.
Evolution has given us a complex central nervous system capable of consciousness. Theologian Tehard DeJardin suggested that we are the divine process of life becoming conscious of itself. Our consciousness has, perhaps necessarily, been self-centered. We are struggling like adolescents to integrate new information and powers. We are struggling because we have only the beginnings of awareness of our interconnectedness. Will we learn to cooperate and coexist? Will we learn to co-create from a consciousness of our shared humanity and our shared web?
What do we want to create in our lives and in our world? Can we seize our power to create consciously? Can we awaken a consciousness that appreciates the web of life and considers seven generations forward?
Perhaps the old religion still has wisdom and usefulness for us. Beltane can teach us to celebrate new life emerging. It is time to revere the Great Mystery and dynamic flow of life. It is time to stop the mad war against nature, to come home to our bodies and to our Earth.
Maybe if we began to celebrate and honor the cycles of life, we could allow ourselves to be human. Maybe if we understood ourselves as being kin to all life, if we could approach with humility what we might call the Great Mystery or God or Nature. Maybe then we would be blessed with mature fertility that would sustain us to live and die in peace and harmony.
Next year we could dance around a May Pole, celebrating the cycles and the continuation of life.
May it be so. Blessed be.
Benediction
As nature springs forth new leaves, shoots and flowers
Be ye blessed by the life force moving from your roots to flow upward, and outward.
Be ye blessed to awaken to majesty and mystery
Be ye blessed to create a new world that reflects the truth and beauty of humanity.
Blessed Be.
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