Lughnasad: Reaping

We're observing Lughnasad tonight, me and my consort. In the place of its origin, it's a first harvest festival. The reaping of the first ripe grain, the earliest dug new potatoes; the foretelling of the winter to come. The clans would gather to trade and wed in the fullness of fine, hot summer. Lugh himself is only the most recent of warrior gods to lend his name to the occasion, and by his succession he presents the archetype of the new king, the new reaping; it's a time to say goodbye the old and welcome the new harvest, the new fruits of your year's work. It's said that the old king might be sacrificed, by token or effigy, and the new king crowned at Lughnasad.
Of course before Lugh came to the party, there was always the gratitude and joy of the first fresh grain of the year, the Goddess honored with dancing, loaves baked of new grain, feasting, and handfasting--a special kind of handfasting, a trial that could last a year and a day, then be dissolved by returning to the place together and agreeing to part. Deeper than that even, there is the Sun, the male principle, beginning too wane now, even in the fullness of the hottest season of the year, promising the return of coolness and long dark nights.

Here in Florida, it must be said, this is not exactly our best or most promising harvest time. Unless you are a very skilled and dedicated gardener, your tomatoes have long since burned to diseased twigs, and we dig our potatoes in spring. In fact, August is our time of dearth, when there is not much to harvest except a flourishing crop of weeds and mosquitoes. For us, the signs of coming autumn, such as the newly bronzed leaves of the sycamore, are welcome signs of relief from the heat and a new season of planting to come.
Personally, it's my own private New Year. I've just turned 45. This year I've had to come to terms with the unalterable fact that I will never bear my own child. That my family line ends with me and my sisters. There will be no more Whipples on our branch of the family tree. This is unexpectedly sad to me. I didn't see it coming, this grief. Lughnasad, with its overtones of out with the old and in with the new, seems particularly apt to my own journey this year. I'm at the full promise of my maturity, yet the end is in sight. Or so it feels to me today. I must turn my thoughts away from how I will raise my own family to how I might be a mother to my community. In token of this, I've tucked under the altar my childhood rocking chair, meant to be passed to my own daughter in her turn, now empty. With what shall I fill it?
For our Lughnasad altar, we'll have, on a green cloth, a corn cake drizzled with honey from our bees, and some seasonal selections from the yard: a head of wildflower seeds, a sprig of poke berries. We'll thank the Goddess for nourishing us, for the hot rainy summer, the cool springs, the blazing sun. Our feast will be necessarily simple, just a few things dredged from the pantry, lentils and cornmeal, supplemented with what little there is in the garden: basil, chilies, sweet potato greens, two fresh eggs. We'll share a cup of last summer's mead, and maybe talk about what we'd like to leave behind with this turn of seasons, and what we'd like to cultivate next.
Blessed be.