All Things Green - Honoring the Spirit of Beltane
A Sermon
By Rev. Daniel Gregoire
Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton and Upton
Sunday, May 5, 2024
Reading:
There Was A Child Went Forth Every Day
By Walt Whitman
(19th century American poet)
There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love or dread,
that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day . . . . or for many years or stretching cycles of years.
The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning glories,
and white and red clover,
and the song of the phœbe-bird,
And the March-born lambs,
and the sow's pink-faint litter,
and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf,
and the noisy brood of the barn-yard or by the mire of the pond-side . . and the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there . . . and the beautiful curious liquid . . and the water-plants with their graceful flat heads . . all became part of him.
And the field-sprouts of April and May became part of him . . . . winter grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and of the esculent roots of the garden,
And the apple trees covered with blossoms, and the fruit afterward . . . . and woodberries . . and the commonest weeds by the road…
Sermon:
What is Beltane?
It is a holiday that originated in the British Isles, and it is also a constellation of ancient and modern customs and traditions from farming and pastoral communities marking the start of the summer season.
It is the “Bringing in of the May”, decorating doorposts and altar tables with flowering branches,
Beltane is May Poles, celebrating fertility and rejuvenation. It is the twin bonfires, spring fairs, festivals and competitions, even High Schools field days, proms and graduations are festive transitions that mark what is a gentler part of the year.
And, for our children and grandchildren, these May festivals signal the start of their growing into adulthood, fertility, creativity, wholeness and endless possibilities.
For me, Beltane is an opportunity, shared with us by Neo Pagan and Wiccan communities, to notice and celebrate the relentless greening of the world.
This greening of the world occurs whether I am ready for it or not. This greening of the world happens in wartime and in peace times; it occurs for villains and for victims, for the heroes and the helpless, and it is entirely beyond anyone’s ability to control or resist.
Right now there seems to be a march of green and other vibrant colors, yellows, buttercreams, pinks, reds and violets afoot, it is spilling out of the river banks and streams, and flooding our senses with a more hopeful and healing vibration if we are attuned to it.
We are all witness to the restoration of the world, with nature, reenacting the wonderful drama of blooming into wholeness.
In honoring the spirit of Beltane we are all given another chance to pay attention to what is happening just beyond the narrow confines of our day to day lives, our struggles and our disappointments.
This is a paying attention to and reverence for the larger life that all of our lives participate in, a life that is green and immortal.
We do this by entering into cycles and rhythms of this season, however reluctantly. Each season of life has something to teach us, if we remember that we are inextricably woven into the fabric of the world.
If we can in fact, love the world!
We can all connect with the May as the true start of something new and different in our lives by connecting with the pagan heart of May Day Celebrations.
You see, May is so much more than a month. It is an experience that we are summoned into.
One of the Beltane customs that has taken root in my heart and become a family tradition is a May Day walk in a place where we can connect with the silent power of the land.
(Which is not to say, our house, on busy Worcester Road in North Grafton. At Agoueh Place we are likely to connect with the power of police sirens, ambulances, semis, delivery trucks and loud motorcycles. So you can see why escapes into wilderness are so important to us)
This year May Day was marked by cold and damp. It was not necessarily a pleasant start to summer, but it was the kind of day where everything is fully saturated with color and life energy. It was a day where you can almost feel the trees and turf grasses growing around you.
Everything is strangely alive and possible on those days, where we are somehow on the cusp of rain forever.
So my family decided to walk in the Tufts farm field pasture off of route 30. Actually we were in search of an ancient tree that I had befriended when I first moved to the area, on one of of many solitary walks in the fields there.
On May Day Kate, baby and I walked through the grasses that was in some places about a foot high. And, as we made our way over hill and dale it felt like we were being cleansed by the chorus of Red winged blackbirds flying overhead and perched in the trees, just out of sight.
Those black birds with the red and yellow shoulder pads that love to live in open and marshy places, have become a totem animal for me, in my menagerie of spiritual animals and mythical beasts.
The haunting trill of blackbirds is somehow ever present in the field. I'm sure their calls were as much a warning to trespassers as they were an invitation to commune in the green saturated landscape.
Kate, Baby and I took an unexpected path and were greeted by a cascade of white apple blossoms on a ridge. It was, in a word, magical. I felt very fortunate to have a magical hour just before a meeting with Church leaders to discuss the hard and important work of being a congregation in the 21st century!
The May Day walk on Beltane was another chance to encounter the world so that I could love it once more.
For me, loving the world, becomes the invitation that we hear in the Buddhist, eco-feminist writings of activist Joanna Macy. It is something that we cannot do from any great distance. We can't do it from our armchairs or on television screens, or by liking social media videos of far away places.
To love the world we must place ourselves in the power of wild and natural spaces.
We must willingly place ourselves under the spell of the sensual world, a place of extraordinary color, vibration and intensity!
We never did find that tree that I was looking for. It was an old tree and it probably came down during the pandemic and has been lost to the unending cycle of decay and renewal.
But we are very glad for the search.
We entered the field to see something green and in the end we became what we saw.
In our reading this morning the great 19th century American poet, a native of Brooklyn, New York, like me, Walt Whitman, invites us to see and to become what we see.
There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love or dread,
that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day . . . . or for many years or stretching cycles of years.
The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning glories,
and white and red clover,
and the song of the phœbe-bird…
For Whitman and for me, we are that child who goes forth everyday seeing and becoming. Taking the world into ourselves, with its color and vitality, or its doom and gloom and becoming that thing!
Everyday, and every moment gives us a choice as to what we can become!
As we move towards embodying the spirit of Beltane, we become more and more aware that we can choose to bring into our homes and into ourselves the green color of the world, with budding and blossoming branches and in so doing we become once more verdant, vital, and whole.
Walt Whitman again summons us to the gathering place of the spirit, under the great big sky, the chapel of the open fields, bordered by woodland green, and mountains in the distance, to encounter the grasses and the dandelion and clover, the meadowlarks, the newborn lamb and the calf, and the random apple tree covered in an cascade of blossoms
We do this when we take on the vision of a child.
It was remarkable to see Grace in the field, we carried her the whole time, her eyes were three times their normal size taking the green world in wide eyed wonder.
We let her smell the blossoms, and touch the wet grass.
I hope that these imprints of the green and the beautiful world, might be held deep in the recesses of her subconscious mind and be used for some good purpose at some future and needful time.
To encounter the greening of the world, as something other than background noise, is to access an ancient and primordial energy source, fuel for the survival of the spirit.
(The spirit of the world seems to be in great distress at the moment, but it still might be the case that that is because something new and vital is being born into the world at this desperate hour.)
I invite us to practice breathing in the color green, connecting with our hearts, dwelling in the infinite possible.
This is an encounter that is necessary for us to live into our 7th Unitarian Universalist principle. Respect for the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.
So let us engage in all the rituals acts large and small, in groups or solitary practice, with colors, smells and bells that excite our imaginations, and cast a spell of the sensual, so that we might connect more fully with our earth home.
All things green are a summons to return to health, healing, and vitality.
To return again to the sources of power and energy, to save the world and to love the world, breathe in the healing power of all things green.
Blessed Be and Amen
Happy Beltane!
A Sermon
By Rev. Daniel Gregoire
Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton and Upton
Sunday, May 5, 2024
Reading:
There Was A Child Went Forth Every Day
By Walt Whitman
(19th century American poet)
There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love or dread,
that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day . . . . or for many years or stretching cycles of years.
The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning glories,
and white and red clover,
and the song of the phœbe-bird,
And the March-born lambs,
and the sow's pink-faint litter,
and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf,
and the noisy brood of the barn-yard or by the mire of the pond-side . . and the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there . . . and the beautiful curious liquid . . and the water-plants with their graceful flat heads . . all became part of him.
And the field-sprouts of April and May became part of him . . . . winter grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and of the esculent roots of the garden,
And the apple trees covered with blossoms, and the fruit afterward . . . . and woodberries . . and the commonest weeds by the road…
Sermon:
What is Beltane?
It is a holiday that originated in the British Isles, and it is also a constellation of ancient and modern customs and traditions from farming and pastoral communities marking the start of the summer season.
It is the “Bringing in of the May”, decorating doorposts and altar tables with flowering branches,
Beltane is May Poles, celebrating fertility and rejuvenation. It is the twin bonfires, spring fairs, festivals and competitions, even High Schools field days, proms and graduations are festive transitions that mark what is a gentler part of the year.
And, for our children and grandchildren, these May festivals signal the start of their growing into adulthood, fertility, creativity, wholeness and endless possibilities.
For me, Beltane is an opportunity, shared with us by Neo Pagan and Wiccan communities, to notice and celebrate the relentless greening of the world.
This greening of the world occurs whether I am ready for it or not. This greening of the world happens in wartime and in peace times; it occurs for villains and for victims, for the heroes and the helpless, and it is entirely beyond anyone’s ability to control or resist.
Right now there seems to be a march of green and other vibrant colors, yellows, buttercreams, pinks, reds and violets afoot, it is spilling out of the river banks and streams, and flooding our senses with a more hopeful and healing vibration if we are attuned to it.
We are all witness to the restoration of the world, with nature, reenacting the wonderful drama of blooming into wholeness.
In honoring the spirit of Beltane we are all given another chance to pay attention to what is happening just beyond the narrow confines of our day to day lives, our struggles and our disappointments.
This is a paying attention to and reverence for the larger life that all of our lives participate in, a life that is green and immortal.
We do this by entering into cycles and rhythms of this season, however reluctantly. Each season of life has something to teach us, if we remember that we are inextricably woven into the fabric of the world.
If we can in fact, love the world!
We can all connect with the May as the true start of something new and different in our lives by connecting with the pagan heart of May Day Celebrations.
You see, May is so much more than a month. It is an experience that we are summoned into.
One of the Beltane customs that has taken root in my heart and become a family tradition is a May Day walk in a place where we can connect with the silent power of the land.
(Which is not to say, our house, on busy Worcester Road in North Grafton. At Agoueh Place we are likely to connect with the power of police sirens, ambulances, semis, delivery trucks and loud motorcycles. So you can see why escapes into wilderness are so important to us)
This year May Day was marked by cold and damp. It was not necessarily a pleasant start to summer, but it was the kind of day where everything is fully saturated with color and life energy. It was a day where you can almost feel the trees and turf grasses growing around you.
Everything is strangely alive and possible on those days, where we are somehow on the cusp of rain forever.
So my family decided to walk in the Tufts farm field pasture off of route 30. Actually we were in search of an ancient tree that I had befriended when I first moved to the area, on one of of many solitary walks in the fields there.
On May Day Kate, baby and I walked through the grasses that was in some places about a foot high. And, as we made our way over hill and dale it felt like we were being cleansed by the chorus of Red winged blackbirds flying overhead and perched in the trees, just out of sight.
Those black birds with the red and yellow shoulder pads that love to live in open and marshy places, have become a totem animal for me, in my menagerie of spiritual animals and mythical beasts.
The haunting trill of blackbirds is somehow ever present in the field. I'm sure their calls were as much a warning to trespassers as they were an invitation to commune in the green saturated landscape.
Kate, Baby and I took an unexpected path and were greeted by a cascade of white apple blossoms on a ridge. It was, in a word, magical. I felt very fortunate to have a magical hour just before a meeting with Church leaders to discuss the hard and important work of being a congregation in the 21st century!
The May Day walk on Beltane was another chance to encounter the world so that I could love it once more.
For me, loving the world, becomes the invitation that we hear in the Buddhist, eco-feminist writings of activist Joanna Macy. It is something that we cannot do from any great distance. We can't do it from our armchairs or on television screens, or by liking social media videos of far away places.
To love the world we must place ourselves in the power of wild and natural spaces.
We must willingly place ourselves under the spell of the sensual world, a place of extraordinary color, vibration and intensity!
We never did find that tree that I was looking for. It was an old tree and it probably came down during the pandemic and has been lost to the unending cycle of decay and renewal.
But we are very glad for the search.
We entered the field to see something green and in the end we became what we saw.
In our reading this morning the great 19th century American poet, a native of Brooklyn, New York, like me, Walt Whitman, invites us to see and to become what we see.
There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love or dread,
that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day . . . . or for many years or stretching cycles of years.
The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning glories,
and white and red clover,
and the song of the phœbe-bird…
For Whitman and for me, we are that child who goes forth everyday seeing and becoming. Taking the world into ourselves, with its color and vitality, or its doom and gloom and becoming that thing!
Everyday, and every moment gives us a choice as to what we can become!
As we move towards embodying the spirit of Beltane, we become more and more aware that we can choose to bring into our homes and into ourselves the green color of the world, with budding and blossoming branches and in so doing we become once more verdant, vital, and whole.
Walt Whitman again summons us to the gathering place of the spirit, under the great big sky, the chapel of the open fields, bordered by woodland green, and mountains in the distance, to encounter the grasses and the dandelion and clover, the meadowlarks, the newborn lamb and the calf, and the random apple tree covered in an cascade of blossoms
We do this when we take on the vision of a child.
It was remarkable to see Grace in the field, we carried her the whole time, her eyes were three times their normal size taking the green world in wide eyed wonder.
We let her smell the blossoms, and touch the wet grass.
I hope that these imprints of the green and the beautiful world, might be held deep in the recesses of her subconscious mind and be used for some good purpose at some future and needful time.
To encounter the greening of the world, as something other than background noise, is to access an ancient and primordial energy source, fuel for the survival of the spirit.
(The spirit of the world seems to be in great distress at the moment, but it still might be the case that that is because something new and vital is being born into the world at this desperate hour.)
I invite us to practice breathing in the color green, connecting with our hearts, dwelling in the infinite possible.
This is an encounter that is necessary for us to live into our 7th Unitarian Universalist principle. Respect for the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.
So let us engage in all the rituals acts large and small, in groups or solitary practice, with colors, smells and bells that excite our imaginations, and cast a spell of the sensual, so that we might connect more fully with our earth home.
All things green are a summons to return to health, healing, and vitality.
To return again to the sources of power and energy, to save the world and to love the world, breathe in the healing power of all things green.
Blessed Be and Amen
Happy Beltane!
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