All posts filed under: Holidays

Bread is Life

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Today is Lughnasadh, the ancient Celtic celebration honoring the first harvest. One of the 8 holy days in the Wheel of the Year. Today my loaves and bagels came out beautiful, despite my worries about my dough yesterday. For this harvest and the “dough” it will bring me, I give thanks.  I’ve been participating in the process of wheat harvest and bread making my entire existence. Picking the rocks from the fields, watching the soil being tilled, tasting the gritty dust between my teeth, witnessing the wheat quietly grow under its blanket of snow on my winding path to the school bus on frosty  winter mornings. Sensing the energy of earthly excitement as the stalks shot up when the earth sprang forth from the deep sleep of winter and spring brought the warmth of the hot Okanogan Valley sun. The wind rustling through the golden shafts and the smell of desert rain as it fell in the dusty August days. Visions of my dad, kerchief tied around his face, while driving the combine harvester. Diving …

Happy Halloween, Blessed Samhain!

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Today is one of the oldest and holiest holidays in the Celtic tradition. Halloween or Samhain (sah-ween) is the time when we honor the harvest, the end of summer. It is this time when the veils between the spirit world and the physical world are thinnest. We decorate our homes with symbols of the harvest, carve faces into pumpkins, inviting in their lively spirits; and don costumes of ghoulish beasts to remind ourselves of death and to make it seem just a little less scary. We remember our dead and give thanks to be alive.                   Some seek communion with loved ones, others guidance from the ancient ones, and many quietly memorialize their dead with small remembrances and prayers. We are our great grandmothers and great grandfathers, they are in our bones, our eyes, our DNA. To honour them is to honour our bodies and our lives, to remember that from which we came and to give thanks for the bounty we are blessed with. This is the night when the gateway between  our world and the spirit world is thinnest.  Tonight is a night to call out those who came before. Tonight I honor my ancestors. Spirits of my fathers and mothers, I call to you, and welcome you to join me for this night. You watch over me always, protecting and guiding me, and tonight …