Year of Spiritual Thinking 5.2 (Month 5, Week 2)

May Day/Beltane and Rewiring

A bouquet of Beltane wildflowers from my walk this morning. Top left: golden-smoke (Corydalis aurea); top right: pallid evening-primrose (Oenothera pallida); bottom left: Davis Mountain verbena (Glandularia wrightii); bottom right: perky sue (Tetraneuris argentea)

golden-smoke 
evening primrose, verbena, perky sue— 
May Day blooms

There’s a story in each name, in each wildflower’s life and relationships. These blooms from my dawn walk speak of today’s meaning: in Celtic spirituality, May Day or Beltane, for the Celtic Sun God Belenus, marks the height of spring and the transition to summer, when life flowers in abundance. May this day open a time of flowering for us all—all peoples, all species—everywhere.

Beltane

Hello Friends! It’s May Day, Beltane (behel-tin-eh) in the Celtic calendar, a day that marks the height of spring and the transition to summer. I’ve always felt May Day as an opening of sorts because, no matter the weather, the days are long at this time of year and so full of swelling green and possibilities. Just as Winter Solstice has always seemed like the end of winter to me, not the beginning, because it is when the daylight begins return.

Beltane is often translated as “bright fire” and probably comes from the Celtic Sun God, Belenus, and the word for fire. It falls between Ostara, the holiday that became Easter in the Christian calendar, and summer solstice, and was traditionally the time cattle and sheep moved from winter enclosures to summer grazing. Ritual fires were (and are still) lit to purify the season, and livestock were often herded one by one between two fires so they too, would be purified before being let out to roam free.

As you might expect from a holiday that celebrates the lengthening days and flowering of plants, Beltane is also associated with fertility.

One of the most colorful and still-practiced rituals associated with Beltane is dancing around the maypole, where dancers each take a different color ribbon and hold it overhead to weave patterns as they dance in and out around each other. If you’ve ever tried dancing around a maypole, you know it takes practice and focus to create something beautiful and not just a tangle!

Celebrating Beltane as a time of opening and renewed light and life seems awfully necessary now as inspiration for living in and through these tumultuous times. I am captured by the image of the maypole with its long ribbons in different colors and the dancers—each holding their own ribbon—interweaving as they circle the pole and each other. Dancing the maypole requires awareness of self and others, a focus on creating harmony within and without so as not to obstruct the flow and tangle the pattern, all the while having fun.

That’s good practice for life in general, it seems to me.

Santa Fe phlox near my front gate

Rewiring and Spirituality

In my last reflection, I wrote about discovering the word “rewirement” and how evocative the metaphor of rewiring is for me right now. I started this Year of Spiritual Thinking Project as a way to explore and deepen my spirituality, and more closely integrate my belief in terraphilia into those everyday habits of working and living that we rely on to carry us through our days.

The more I read and walk and write and think, the more time I spend searching for meaning in the natural world around and within me, the more I realize how much my heart and spirit crave a rewiring, a realignment with spirituality in every facet of my days.

Part of being me, now, is recognizing myself as a deeply spiritual being, one who has always created her own rituals, walked to her own rhythms and danced to her own beat. But who has never talked much publicly about any of it. Now, as the year turns toward summer’s long, light-filled days, I am bringing that inner spiritual self out into the light and honoring the sustenance and sacredness I have always felt from the web of Earth’s life.

As someone raised in cultures that reward reason and intellect over intuition and spirit, and trained as a scientist, I felt awkward and unqualified to talk about spiritual matters, even though I had a rich inner spiritual life. That was the private me, not the public one. The amateur, not the expert.

Now I am honoring and acknowledging that inner lover of life and spirit who finds inspiration and joy and nourishment in a sunrise walk in search of wildflowers or a sunset serenaded by song dogs (coyotes). (Note the lovely sibilance of all of those S-sounds! Unintentional but poetic.)

I am like the Santa Fe phlox bud in the photo above, a bit dusty and disheveled, but readying myself to burst into starry bloom. That shy budded self is emerging into the light to speak or not, as she wishes, to weave herself through my work and public self, and to dance around the maypole and celebrate the numinous quality of this Earth and each day. To help me bring my whole self to this life.

Simplifying the Schedule

As part of my thinking about rewiring, I am simplifying my offerings here. After this newsletter, I’ll publish on Thursdays instead of alternating Wednesdays and Sundays.

Each month, subscribers will receive three posts: a longer reflection like this one, a Gratitude practice reminding us of ways we can appreciate our lives in the midst of everyday hustle and bustle, and “potluck” post, which might include a brief “Weekly Wildflower” video introducing some of my favorite native plants and their lives, or audio essays from my long-running “Wildlives” series on Southern New Mexico public radio, or snippets from my current writing projects.

Happy May Day and Beltane! May this time of flowering be felt all around this planet, bringing us a new appreciation of each and every dancer in the patterns we are co-weaving around the maypole of life.

Blessings!