28 93% 25% 0mph ESE bar 29.66 steady\u00a0 windchill27\u00a0 Yuletide<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Crescent of the Cold Moon<\/p>\n
We have come to the Twelfth night of Yuletide.\u00a0 Epiphany is tomorrow and tonight is the end of the Yuletide season.\u00a0 Our neighbors, the Perlicks, are Orthodox Christians.\u00a0 They celebrate Christmas according to the old liturgical calendar which put the nativity on the same day as the Epiphany.\u00a0 We bought cheese, bread and wine for their Christmas gift today at the grocery store.<\/p>\n
Preparing for Twelfth Night:<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> (February 5 this year). Candlegrove<\/a> contains one such recipe, here are others<\/a>.<\/p>\n Next year I want to be more intentional about two seasonal things:\u00a0 celebrating Yule and sending holiday gifts in time for New Years.\u00a0\u00a0Both will reduce stress and deepen the occasion for me.<\/p>\n Here is an interesting paragraph from MythingLinks, by Kathleen Jenks.\u00a0 It tells of her spiritual journey, which feels, and has felt for some time, a lot like my own.\u00a0 The whole essay\u00a0<\/a>gives the context: \u00a0<\/p>\n And then I knew: earth is the<\/em> “Blessed Sacrament,” and always has been. When Jesus, born in Bethlehem (bet lehem, <\/em>“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 <\/em>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<\/em> 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 28 93% 25% 0mph ESE bar 29.66 steady\u00a0 windchill27\u00a0 Yuletide \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Crescent of the Cold Moon We have come to the Twelfth night of Yuletide.\u00a0 Epiphany is tomorrow and tonight is the end of the Yuletide season.\u00a0 Our neighbors, the Perlicks, are Orthodox Christians.\u00a0 They celebrate Christmas according to the old liturgical calendar which … Continue reading And then I knew: earth is the “Blessed Sacrament,” and always has been.<\/span>