• Tag Archives Yuletide

  • And then I knew: earth is the “Blessed Sacrament,” and always has been.

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    28 93% 25% 0mph ESE bar 29.66 steady  windchill27  Yuletide

                Waning Crescent of the Cold Moon

    We have come to the Twelfth night of Yuletide.  Epiphany is tomorrow and tonight is the end of the Yuletide season.  Our neighbors, the Perlicks, are Orthodox Christians.  They celebrate Christmas according to the old liturgical calendar which put the nativity on the same day as the Epiphany.  We bought cheese, bread and wine for their Christmas gift today at the grocery store.

    Tips for the day

    Preparing for Twelfth Night: For generations, at least since medieval times, Epiphany has been the day the season of Christmas traditionally comes to an end. A final night of feasting and merriment, gift-giving in some cultures to echo the gift-giving of the Three Kings, plays and mummery that echoed ancient ways. Then the decorations come down and we set forth into the new year.

    And in a custom dating back to at least to the 12th century, and possibly as far back as Saturnalia, a King Cake is baked, containing a pea or a bean. This traditional continues in New Orleans with King Cakes baked from now through Mardi Gras (February 5 this year). Candlegrove contains one such recipe, here are others.

    Next year I want to be more intentional about two seasonal things:  celebrating Yule and sending holiday gifts in time for New Years.  Both will reduce stress and deepen the occasion for me.

    Here is an interesting paragraph from MythingLinks, by Kathleen Jenks.  It tells of her spiritual journey, which feels, and has felt for some time, a lot like my own.  The whole essay gives the context:  

    And then I knew: earth is the “Blessed Sacrament,” and always has been. When Jesus, born in Bethlehem (bet lehem, “house of bread”), later took bread from earth’s threshed grain and wine from earth’s fermented grapes, and said, “This is my body which will be broken for you…this is my blood which will be shed for you,” there was no transubstantiation after all. That would have been an unecessary extra step. I think he meant it literally. Like the ancient Egyptian male earth-god, Nun, I think Jesus was saying that he is earth, and all that comes from it — thus, the wheat, the grapes, the olives, the maples, the sparrows, the fishes are literally his body and blood. They are, and always have been, of the substance of the divine, manifesting some 2000 years ago on the temporal plane as a specific male, Jesus, who was Earth’s emanation, avatar, deva, or emissary, for only a few decades, but now, since he has been “transubstantiated” back into the earth which birthed him, earth has grown as anguished as he once was — torn, abused, polluted, ravaged, broken and bleeding-out at a perilous rate.


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  • Are You a Green Knight?

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    22  86% 27% 0mph S  bar 29.72 falls windchill 22 Yuletide

                Waning Crescent of the Cold Moon

    This day has been a slow one for AncienTrails.  In the morning I’ve begun writing first, that is, working in this case on a short story, Faeries on the Gunflint Trail.   If I start here first, I waste some of my writing energy and I’m trying to steer the force of that back into the creative end of things.  So, I wrote until 10:30, then had to get ready to go into the museum.  Wore my blue corduroys, pants I haven’t been able to wear for at least 2 years.  Felt good.

    I also didn’t put out my Yuletide lore, so I’m going to continue a bit with the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  The more I think about it, the more SGGK, as the folks who write about it abbreviate it, seems central for our time.  This happens with old texts because the rhythms and oscillations of the human community repeat themselves over time.

    In this case it may that our time is in the reverse situation from the SGGK.  In SGGK Christian civilization had begun to make inroads in European society, but a strong pagan faith lived on, especially in the rural areas.  Pagan=rural.  Today we have a post-Christian society, a world in which the Christian church, once dominant and interlaced with political power, has begun to weaken.  Thus, today the Green Knight might ride into a corporate boardroom, or up the Capital steps and into Congress.  The natural world has begun to move its tendrils into the corridors of power all around the world:  governments, corporations, political parties.  It will be difficult to find the Gawains, those willing to literally put their heads on the chopping block for Mother Earth, but they exist; they may display the same reluctance and fear. 

    Maybe, just maybe, we no longer have to rely on Morgan La Fey at Hautdesert’s castle.  The pagan spirit that loves the land first and places that loyalty above all others appears from time to time all over the globe.  We need not one Green Knight, but many, many willing to take the challenge to those who must take the primacy of Mother Earth as a serious, even deadly duty. 

    This is not as clear as I want it, but it’s late and I’m a bit fuzzy.  Still, it’s in the right area. 


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  • One Day Down, 364 To Go

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    0  72% 23% 0mph WNW bar 30.64 steep rise  windchill -2  Yuletide  New Year’s Day

                                  Waning Crescent of the Cold Moon 

    A day almost gone in the New Year. 

    Kate and I now have a weekly Skype call with Jon and Jen and Ruth+.  + being the one who comes.  This is weird because it means we have a video phone call, our picture and voice shows up there and their picture and voice shows up here, all in real time…well, almost real time.  Ruth says, “All Right.”  “Ma.” (grandma)  No. (snow) Bye. and so on.  All delightful and all wonderful, as if done for the very first time ever in the history of child development.  She’s a cutie, a blond Jewish Norwegian who lives in Colorado.  The mixing pot stirs on.

    Worked out, watched a Japanese movie and an Arctic Tale and the Descent.  Three movies.  A holiday.  All pretty different.  Samurai and Shogun, sword and kimono.  A poignant tale of Arctic babies:  a walrus and two polar bears affected by the warming of the Arctic Ocean.  The Descent is a horror movie and a good one.  It left me squirming and wincing.   Made by the director of Dog Soldiers.

    The morning I spent exegeting, then interpreting Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  What a tale.  Important for our time, yet hundreds of years old.  

    Happy New Year.


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