Category Archives: Great Wheel

Waiting for the Green (Enjoying the Snow)

March 1, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

As the sun climbs the sky, the days take on that remembered glint, the one that comes with green and growing things; yet, because this is halfway to the northpole, it does so glancing off snow cover and enlightening cold air. It feeds no flowers, no leaves on trees, no viny processes. Even its warming leaks away as it bounces off the high albedo white. No season gives way in straight sets. Well, not usually. Though here in Minnesota it does sometimes seem that we skip that warm and scented time plunging instead into the heat and insects of summer.

Still the heart knows and so might that tiny organ located somewhere inside our enlarged brains; you know, the one that would help us navigate by the northstar if only we stopped thinking so damn much, the one that says, oh, this is the time to pick up our family and move to the valley where the warmth will have broken free the streams and perhaps some edible grasses have begun to grow. Let’s go. Let’s go.

But no. We no longer listen to that impulse. Instead we investigate the numbered calendar, read thermometers, measure the angle of sun. Wait anxiously for the whirring and blinking of large machines eating those numbers and so many more, past numbers and ideas of how one effects the other. Then, the model speaks. But, like early man who built his tower toward the sky hoping to join the Gods, these machines cannot speak in one voice. This means we wait. Watching the sun climb, the ice melt. Waiting for the green.

Great Wheel

February

February 27, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

February has come down to this, 2 days. This short month, even at its most expansive still the shortest, ends on the 28th. Then March. The spring equinox, another magnet for the human urge to celebrate astronomical events, coming up.

We still have some weeks of winter yet, maybe as many as 4, since we have a deep snow cover, though not as deep as many years. The deeper the snow cover, the more muted the temperature changes even though the sun climbs higher and higher in the sky as we put a lot of space between us and the orbital moment of the winter solstice.

I’m glad the change will come slowly since I’m still in winter mode, not ready yet to shed the coats and the cozy feeling of the cave. That will come.

Today I’m happy to have snow outside the window, cool air and a long poem to translate.

Great Wheel, Myth and Story

Imbolc: 2013

February 1, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Cold Moon

In the early Celtic faith this day was a holy day and a market day, a cross quarter holiday that celebrated the freshening of the ewes. When the ewes became pregnant–lamb in the belly, in the belly=imbolc, they would once again have milk, adding some variety to a food supply that had been stable since Samhain or so, the last harvest.

Brigid, the Celtic triple-goddess of hearth, smithy and inspiration, all fire related–is the goddess honored on this holiday. She was, like so much of the old religions, hoovered up into Catholicism as St. Bridget, reportedly born of a good Christian woman and a Druid, thus straddling the transition from the old faith to the new.

She had a center at Kildare in Ireland, where the Catholics built cell dara, or cell/church of the oak. A great oak was there. This Cathedral of St. Bridget went up in 480 ad. That is very early, the Roman Empire was not quite dead. Even so, the followers of the Goddess had been there much longer, with 19 priestesses who kept lit an eternal flame. Catholic nuns dedicated to St. Bridget kept up this practice until the Reformation era.

“On February 1, 1807 Daniel Delany, Bishop of Kildare, began the restoration of the Sisterhood of St. Brigid. Their mission was to restore the ancient order and bring back the legacy and spirit of this amazing figure. In 1993, Brighid’s perpetual flame was finally re-kindled in Kildare’s Market Square by Mary Teresa Cullen, who at that time was the leader of the Brigidine Sisters. The sacred flame was kept by the Brigidine Sisters in their home and on February 1, 2006, the flame was brought back to the center of the Market Square where it has been permanently housed in a large glass enclosed vessel.” see website sourced above.

(Brigid’s fire temple)

There was, too, a holy well dedicated to Brigid, also in this same location. There are holy wells all over the Celtic lands, many dedicated to gods or goddesses, others revered as places for certain kinds of prayers, both blessings and curses. These wells have since ancient times been considered portals to Faery or to the Otherworld, thus offerings left by the wells honor those of Faery as well as those who have died. Dressing the well makes an offering at a holy well, i.e. surrounding it with flowers, plants, homemade things. The Celts also use strips of cloth tied onto tree or shrub branches as offerings in a fashion very similar to certain native american traditions.

Given Brigit’s triple orientation–hearth, smithy and creative inspiration–today is a day to celebrate domestic life where the fire of the kitchen activates the home, and the fire of the smithy where the tools and weapons of a life lived close to the land are shaped, and, finally, the inspiration which comes to each of us from the holy wells deep within our own being.

This is a time to stop, take a look at the home fires. How are they? It is also a time to think about the tools for gardening. Are they sharp and oiled, ready for the spring. Then, too, especially for those of us who rely on the mystery of creative inspiration, are you being careful to tend your inner well? Keeping it dressed and well-maintained?

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Wheel, Poetry, Writing

First First

January 27, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Cold Moon

Kate premiered as both lyricist/poet and sung song writer. She wrote the following to the words of the passover song, Dayenu. We sang it today during the service at Groveland.

Refrain: Di-di-urnal di-di-urnal

di-di-urnal, di-di-urnal, di-urnal, di-urnal:[[ di-urnal, time has come

Circles come and circles go round

Life eternal, everlasting

Everlasting, life eternal

Diurnal (refrain)

Season come and seasons go round

Spring and summer, fall and winter

Winter, autumn, summer and spring.

Diurnal

Spring has come and life awakens

Time to get the garden ready

The ground is turned, seeds are planted

Diurnal

Summer comes and brings warm weather

Flowers bloom and insects hover

The crops grow big and bear their fruit.

Diurnal

Autumn comes and brings the ripening

Apples are crisp, berries are sweet

Harvest starts with food preserving.

Diurnal

Winter comes, the earth goes to sleep

Time for reflecting, memories sweet

The cycle ends, new one begins.

Diurnal

Circles come and circles go round

Life eternal, everlasting

Everlasting, life eternal

Diurnal

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Humanities, Myth and Story, Writing

Living in Season

January 13, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Cold Moon

Winter is upon us. Beginning to give more thought time to my Living in Season presentation for Groveland on the 27th. The short version is this: learning to adapt your life to the season, rather than the seasons to your life. I mean this on at least two levels: the literal and the metaphorical.

(A seasonal round. This is a new idea to me, but I like it a lot.)

The literal can include such things as caring for plants outside during the growing season. Maybe in a container, a window box. Maybe in a flower bed or a vegetable garden. Could be an orchard or a woods. Maybe a community garden. Something to synch up at least part of your daily life with the emergence of plants from winter’s fallow time.

It can also include intentionally leaving time in your winter schedule for retreats, inside projects like crafts or writing or visiting friends.

Perhaps in all the seasons hiking might be part of your plan, a liturgical response similar in all seasons but changed by them in profound ways. If you can’t hike, get someone to help you be outside some amount of time each week. Yes, even in the dreaded middle weeks of January.

Metaphorical: first, know which season of your life you are in. Are you college age, in the still vigorous growth years? Or, are you in the mature years, the years of the late growing season, the early harvest days? Or, like me, are you in the days of the late harvest, headed toward the long, eternal fallow time?

Here, too, we can find analogical help from living in season. When sun and rain and warm temperatures push a plant up, up, up, perhaps that time right around flowering, then it must attend as well to its roots, not forgetting the stabilizing and nutrient gathering powers of those underneath surface parts. So, for example, when college and the world of work begins to beckon, as graduation nears and your own unique bloom begins to present itself to the universe at large, this may be a time to recall hometown, old friends, family. Favorite hobbies and pets and places. It may seem that these people and places hold you back, hold you down, are heavy anchors weighted to yesterday. But, no. Instead these are the anchors in the deep subsoil of your life that hold you up, feed those parts of you that remember the child you once were, remind you of the long strengths that balance the new, shiny ones obtained through education.

Anyhow, stuff like that. More by the 27th.

Art and Culture, Great Wheel, Great Work, Writing

A Sabbatical

January 9, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Moon of the Winter Solstice

Winding down. Last two days of tours. A vast stretch of mornings between next Monday and July 1st. I’m excited. Rewriting. Writing. Marketing. Lots to do.

One outdoor to do over the next few months. Get out in Anoka county. Hike. Take pictures. Make some phenological observation. Maybe take a week plus somewhere, hiking from a cabin or perhaps, if I can find one, a trail going from inn to inn. I’m feeling the need for some natural rejuvenation. Not cities. Not books. Not movies. Not art.

Mostly though I want to lean into the writing. Make it as full time as I can.

Bees, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Our Land and Home, permaculture

Considering the Lilies of Our Fields

January 5, 2013 Charles 1 Comment

Winter Moon of the Winter Solstice

Greens. Peppers, especially those sweet hot peppers. Leeks. Garlic. Onions. Shallots. Beets. Collard greens. Tomatoes. Carrots. Herbs. Then, we’ll have the apples, plums, cherries, pears, raspberries, strawberries, goose berries, currants, wild grapes. And honey. That’s our plan for next year. Most of it anyhow. We’ll probably sneak a few things in just to see what happens.

Three or four years ago we began a gradual winding down of the flower beds as annual events, turning them gradually toward perennials following one another, growing on their own. We have to do some major work this spring along those lines, especially the garden bed on the house side of our front path. That one I’ll dig out, amend the soil, and replant altogether. Gonna take out the Viburnum. It’s never done well.

We have pruning to do yet this winter. And I still have more trees to fell. Winter’s a good time for both.

There is, too, the fire pit and its immediate surround. Mark helped us on the fire pit when he was here. This year it will become functional.

Indulging the mid-winter sport of garden planning. An indoor prelude to the outdoor music of the growing season.

Great Wheel, Holidays, Myth and Story

The New Year? Says Who?

January 1, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Moon of the Winter Solstice

The new year. An interesting idea, if you to stop to consider it. In those parts of the world like ours, the temperate zone that runs in the middle latitudes between the poles (generally), we have more or less four seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter. Even those distinctions are arbitrary, a fact proved by the concept of meteorological spring, summer, autumn and winter which divide the year in four parts by average temperature. They do not coincide with customary dates like May, September, December, March.

Instead, even in the temperate zones, the earth’s position relative to the sun changes gradually, modulating the amount of solar energy any given square meter of surface receives and thereby modulating heat and cold. This gradual change has its peaks and valleys and because plants have adapted their life cycles to this gradual change we celebrate, with plant life as a proxy for the astronomical, seasons.

The seasons relate to the status of the plant world. Right now, plant life is in a fallow time, made necessary by limited sun light and rapidly varying temperatures very often below the freezing point of water. So we turn away from the agricultural and the horticultural to our life inside our dens. Later, as the solar energy available increases, the plants will begin to appear from their winter safety and we will engage them again.

When in this cycle does the new year begin? Take your pick. The Celts, somewhat counter-intuitively for us today, said the New Year began at the growing season’s final moment, Summer’s End or Samhain. Many cultures, the Chinese still and European culture until the 18th century, saw the beginning of a new year in the quickening of the plant world or the signs that it would happen soon.

Whatever cues you take from the plant world, January 1st is an outlier. It has no obvious astronomical or horticultural logic, no roots in culture other than, it appears, the Roman pantheon of Julius Caesar’s day. He was, you might recall, the one who created the modern calender now in use globally. The Gregorian modification to the Julian calendar made the calendar work with the slightly more than 365 day year we get from our journey around the sun.

But it was Caesar who decreed that January, named after the god Janus who famously looked backwards and forwards, was the logical time for the change of a year. Logical only in Caesar’s mind, but even today the Roman dictator still has his way with the world.

As this article in Wikipedia shows, you can celebrate New Year’s at several points throughout the year, so, I guess, today’s as good any of those. Happy New Year! For now.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays, Third Phase

13 Baktun

December 26, 2012 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Moon of the Winter Solstice

Another take on the end of the world. Embrace it. A website I saw suggested that the world did end on the 22nd. The Mayan long count, 12 Baktun*, did roll round and stop.

But. Only to start over again. 13 Baktun started on the Winter Solstice according to the article cited below.

So, we have just begun a new cycle of 394.26 tropical years. This Winter Solstice was closer to the millennial transition than either New Year’s or even the turn of a century.

How will your life be different in the 13th Baktun? Like me, you’ve lived all of yours in the 12th. Those of born before 2000 are in a unique position in that we have lived through a centennial transition, a millennial transition and now a Baktunal transition.

Of course, if you’re a die hard rationalist you’ll note that one Baktun is like any other. Well, maybe so, but they do give us, these chronological inflection points, opportunities to look back and assess and to look forward and hope. Not a bad thing.

Why not give it a shot? In my case I can look back over the 65 years spent in this last Baktun, my whole life, and consider its arc. I can look forward to spending all the remaining years of my life in the 13th Baktun. That means my aging will occur in a brand new chunk of time. A chunk of time that I can influence as an elder, perhaps give it a positive shove before I return my atoms to the universe.

And, yes, I also embrace the circular, never-ending, achronological great wheel in which the seasons come and go talking of Michelangelo. On the great wheel of my life I have just passed Summer’s End this year, moving into the great fallow season. There too my task is to prepare the ground for the next spring, that spring when I am a memory.

What will you do with your next Baktun?

*Wikipedia. A baktun (properly b’ak’tun, English pronunciation: /ˈbɑk ˌtun/^[1], Mayan pronunciation: [ɓakʼ ˈtun]) is 20 katun cycles of the ancient Maya Long Count Calendar. It contains 144,000 days, equal to 394.26 tropical years. The Classic period of Maya civilization occurred during the 8th and 9th baktuns of the current calendrical cycle. The current baktun started on 13.0.0.0.0 — December 21, 2012 using the GMT correlation.

Family, Feelings, Great Wheel, Weather +Climate, Writing

Saturday

December 22, 2012 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Moon of the Winter Solstice

The long night has come and gone. The days have begun to grow longer, even if only by seconds. I’ll be happy to see the first flowers of spring, the bees coming and going again, the garlic pushing its way through the mulch; of course I will, but that is in its season. The season now is one of cold and darkness and I like it, too.

I have done my first compilation of Missing. It’s 110,000 words. A 320 page paperback, roughly. Using Scrivener makes the process of creating a manuscript from many different documents pretty easy. That’s not to say the first compilation is what I want. It’s not. Not quite. So, I’ll have to spend some time fussing with it tomorrow, but I don’t think it will too long to get one that pleases me.

On the downside I got so into this task and my workout that followed that I missed signals from Kate that she was locked out. Our garage door opener had quit working; she left it here and went out to do her nails. When she came back, I was already working out and she couldn’t get in. She was pretty steamed when she did. She slogged through the snow in her clogs. Not a happy camper at all.