I wonder how many people read blogs any more. I still have my RSS reader and each day I draw down the latest posts from the pages and sites I follow, but I've noticed quite a drop in the amount of articles being written and posted, and many of the blogs I've loved reading over the years have faded away. It's possible some of you thought this about my blog. For many years I regularly wrote down my thoughts here twice a week, but my writing too began to fall away. No surprise really to many of you that know what has been happening over the past 4 years or so. Sometimes other things in life can just take attention and priority, and that's ok.
But this morning I felt the need to just sit at my Mac and type some thoughts again. I hope you're still there - there are still plenty of subscribers to my blog, and I also now have a Patreon site. So here I am once more with you.
It feels like we've just sat beside a camp fire in a woodland to enjoy a wild-camping meal, and our attention is just caught in the moment - in the magic of the season of May Day, of Beltane. It seems like only yesterday that the trees were bare, the swifts, swallows and house martins were hundreds of miles away, that we just wouldn't even consider stepping outside the house without a coat. Yet look. Maybe it's different where you are, but here in Sussex the land has been suddenly filled with that sweet, fresh green that only happens between Beltane and the Summer Solstice. After the Solstice it darkens down as flowers grow fruit. But now! The flowers of the May tree are running in bright white rivers along the arms of the reaching branches as if shouting "YES!!!! IT'S SPRING!!! YAAAAAHHHOOOO". I feel like shouting that too.
OK. I just did.
To me Beltane has never been about purely human stuff. I remember hearing a young Pagan once saying that their path had nothing to do with fertility, and I remember thinking 'then how are you alive, and how do you stay alive?' I simply cannot look at the burgeoning life around me at this time of year and not understand that it is this life that sustains not just me, but all life on this planet. Beltane, in fact all of the festivals of the Wheel of the Year, are a never-ending wheel of thanksgiving, of gratefulness. They remind me about my reliance on other life, my interdependence. That the dance between the Earth and the Sun, of the seed and the Elements is a miracle. I think about the stretch of time behind me, millions of years that go back to the formation of the Earth. I think about all of the land on the planet, of all of the countless life-forms, from bacteria to the sea giants, and I just take a moment to think of the odds against me being born as a human being, here, right now, in the South of England, to live this short space of time and experience what it is to be alive.
The human world can be hard. It astounds me that after all of this time we still haven't worked out how to live in peace together. To imagine how existence could be if we just calmed the feck down, engaged some empathy and understanding, and really opened our eyes to the potential of what life would be like if we could work together. Looking at my social media feed that wish is a way off yet... So the human world can continue to do its thing. My Paganism is about my animal connection to the Natural Worlds, both seen and unseen. I celebrate it with other humans who also feel that connection. All of the noise and shouting can fade away, and I'm left with a silence where I watch the bee collecting pollen, the gull seemingly flying for nothing but sheer joy, of the tree in full fresh, green leaf, spreading out to feed upon the light of our star. And I celebrate too, as a human animal, that the dark and cold of Winter is behind me, and the long days of Spring and Summer have arrived.
However you celebrate this season may it bring you wonder, joy, and peace.
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