Lughnasa: A Celebration

Dear Companions If you would like to celebrate this at the same time as I and others, for I think there is a certain powerful energy in that, then prepare a quiet space in your home or outside, and have a central candle ready, and a tea light, and maybe flowers, or fruit and vegetables perhaps from your own garden, or at least locally grown, and bread to break within the ceremony.

Apologies for the early time of 5 pm but I find myself so joyfully busy with Life at the moment that for me it works - and I hope for you too. Sorry for the quality of the audio version but I don’t have the heart to throw my cat off my lap, or dislodge my dog from his place on the rug .

Introduction:

Welcome, on this Harvest Festival of Lughnasa, or Lammas, 2026, a time of gratitude, particularly for the fruits of the earth. The point at which summer’s lush growth begins to overwhelm itself and starts to tumble into the decay of autumn, especially this year in Western Europe where we have ben suffering extreme heat for many weeks now.

Please remember to turn off your mobile phone before you begin, and make yourself comfortable.

This is an opportunity to leave the concerns of life behind for a little while, to pause and rest; to deepen your relationship with the Divine, with the Earth, with others, and with yourself.

Pause

And so now let us light our central candles, as a symbol of light, of the Source of all Truth, all Beauty,and all Harmony which people seek through many different traditions.

Pause

Let us stand up and bring ourselves to this moment.                                         Close your eyes if you will .                                                                                   Open yourself to the sounds of life happening around you.                                       Let go of all that is happening in your life outside of this space.                          Let go of all the fears, and anxieties.                                                                   When a thought arises, just gently let it go again, and allow your mind to relax.  Sink into the space that lies behind thought.

Let there be a pause of 2 or 3 minutes

Invocation :

O Hidden Life, vibrant in every atom,                                                                      O Hidden Light, shining in every creature,                                                              O Hidden Love, embracing all in Oneness,                                                               May we feel ourselves as one with Thee                                                                    Knowing we are therefore one with each other.”
Annie Besant

On this day, the first of August the harvest is celebrated in at least four different traditions: the Anglo-Saxon Lammas Day, the Celtic festival of Lughnasa, in Greek tradition it is the feast day of Demeter, the goddess of fertility and the harvest, and the Romans commemorated this day in honour of her Roman equivalent, Ceres.

For centuries this day has been a reminder of the deep and interdependent relationship between human beings and the natural world, a day to give thanks for the gifts of nature and celebrate her bounty.

However this year in Europe we are seeing the results of the distortion of that deep and interdependent relationship; in the droughts, caused mainly by our civilisation’s escalating use of fossil fuels and the resulting damage to our ecosystems; and the wild fires which are wreaking so much havoc on our precious non human relations which inhabit the remaining wild places in our lands. This needs to give us pause; perhaps to reconsider the choices we make in our individual lives; to live as lightly as we can on the earth, and to ask forgiveness of the Divine for our abuse of her gifts .

Yet we can give thanks for the fruitfulness of harvest.In the fields the hay has been brought in, in my garden I have been picking the runner beans already for a couple of weeks; I have made a system to run the bath water down into a water barrel to use to water at least these, and any other plants that look particularly in need. It always amazes me how lush everything is in my garden at this time, how the bracken grows so rampantly and the brambles too, the thistles are enormous and full of butterflies, the bindweed runs riot over the roses, and I just let it all go in glorious chaos.. Every year I forget the exuberance and the vigour of the growth everywhere around us at this time of year; out of control, just a mad abundance.

Yet everything left to itself finds its place, lives or dies in season, so that it is actually all in a balance in a bigger picture than I can conceive. I would impose some order, would tear some plants out to allow others to flourish…and I do so, for my own need of some control, and of nurturing the more delicate…… but less and less, as I see it is a lesson in trust and in humility, and in letting be. Allowing the thistles to grow to their full glory in my garden this year made me uneasy - they are untidy giants, and the thistledown blows everywhere, yet now they are full of butterflies and bees and flying insects of all descriptions.

There has now been a film released, based on the book which I read a couple of years ago; An Irish Rain Forest which affirms me in that urgency to allow earth to regenerate, to trust that web of life to know what it’s doing, just as maybe we need to rewild our hearts, to activate our capacities for truth telling, for living in integrity.

And it feels important to include here Sinead O Connor’s stand for truth all those years ago in Madison Square Gardens .

So now you can read out loud this call to live life abundantly ….

“We were not meant to live shallow lives, pocked by meaningless routines and the secondary satisfactions of happy hour. We are the inheritors of an amazing lineage, rippling with memories of life lived intimately with bison and gazelle, raven and the night sky. We are designed to encounter this life with amazement and wonder, not resignation and endurance. This is at the very heart of our grief and sorrow. The dream of full-throated living, woven into our very being, has often been forgotten and neglected, replaced by a societal fiction of productivity and material gain. No wonder we seek distractions. Every sorrow we carry extends from the absence of what we require to stay engaged in this one wild and precious life”. Francis Welle

I want to talk about what I understand by One Spirit Interfaith . We are all influenced by our cultural and religious or non religious backgrounds….

But we live in a time where it is important to grow beyond the limitations of seeing one way as the only way. It is possible to truly believe in a particular faith path while at the same time to be open to the wisdom expressed by other faiths and traditions.

The ideals of Truth Beauty Harmony and Unity are taught by all spiritual paths. The concept of loving others as we love ourselves , the ideal of the Golden Rule is present in every tradition.

Perhaps the only way towards a world in which we can live in peace with each other and with all other beings is to understand the universality of these ideals, expressed in different traditions, in different cultures, and seek to live them out in our lives. For we are all connected to each other at some deep level, just as we are also connected to all the other forms of life in the cosmos, and to the Ultimate reality, however we understand that.

It is only when we see ourselves as separate from each other, separate from the world we live in, separate from the ultimate source of all, that we do harm, that there is conflict.

If we see ourselves as one with all of life, one with each other then we are kin, . How can we fear or hate each other, how can we disrespect the earth, and all that lives on the earth if we are kin.

So let us now affirm that connection with each other by breaking bread together, in this harvest season of Lughnasa.

Maybe begin by playing this mantra from the Sikh tradition

Snatam Kaur –Gobinda Gobinda Hari Hari

This translates as

‘God the sustainer and supporter of all                                                                         God the beautiful, absolutely present healing energy                                            that inherently exists within each one of us’

As the mantra plays you may read these words:

To break bread together is probably one of the oldest human traditions going back into prehistory. When we share our food with someone, with a stranger, by partaking of the same loaf we become related in a sense. We affirm friendship and kinship by sharing this bread.

So now please take a piece of bread and symbolically lay it on the altar on the opposite side to you , as if giving it to someone else and as you offer it , say: “ I bless you with this bread. May you never hunger.” As you do this let your heart and mind be aware of others making this gesture during this ceremony, and feel your kinship with them

When you have held those people in your heart for a little while take the bread again and tear off a piece for yourself and eat it mindfully,

And now as the mantra continues let us remember those in the world who have no bread and all those who are troubled in any way. When you are ready light a tealight and place it in the centre as we send blessings both universally and also to any particular person who you wish to remember.

I would ask you to remember my friend Father Kidus in Ethiopia and his family members, and also my friend Mubingwa in Uganda and his family: they need our prayers and blessings.

Pause

The essence of Lughnasa is holding that joy in life, in the light of summer days, while also holding the knowledge that the darkness is returning. When we celebrate the next festival, the autumn equinox, the warm days of this summer will already be a memory.

This is also a time to look back and review our own journey through the year from the darkness of winter, to the exuberance of Lughnasa and celebrate with gratitude for all that we have harvested in our lives.

Lughnasa marks the beginning of the noticeable descent of the Sun into the darkness of winter. It is a time of tension, because the dark days of winter are coming closer. There is sadness as well as joy. All that flowers must fade; all that bears fruit must die. All things must pass and human kind itself is mortal. This is the deep truth of impermanence which lies at the heart of all great religions.

Yet, in the depths of the human heart, in that place where ‘deep calls to deep,’ there is a desire that cannot be satisfied by the things of this world, a desire that can be met only by the Divine Reality, God, Goddess, the Infinite Oneness who is in the world and yet transcends it.

Let us sit quietly and let ourselves be immersed in this piece of music – Benedictus by Karl Jenkins.

2 CELLOS - Benedictus (by Karl Jenkins)

Pause

Now let us practice gratitude with this meditation by Jack Kornfield.

Let yourself sit quietly and at ease. Allow your body to be relaxed and open, your breath natural, your heart easy. Begin the practice of gratitude by feeling how year after year you have cared for your own life.

Now let us begin to acknowledge all that has supported us in this care:

With gratitude I remember the people, animals, plants, insects, creatures of the sky and sea, air and water, fire and earth, all whose joyful exertion blesses my life every day.

With gratitude I remember the care and labour of a thousand generations of elders and ancestors who came before me.

I offer my gratitude for the safety and well-being I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for the blessing of this earth I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for the measure of health I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for the family and friends I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for the community I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for the teachings and lessons I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for the life I have been given.

Just as we are grateful for our blessings, so we can be grateful for the blessings of others.

Continue to breathe gently. Bring to mind someone you care about, someone it is easy to rejoice for. Picture them and feel the natural joy you have for their well-being, for their happiness and success. With each breath, offer them your grateful, heartfelt wishes:

May you be joyful.                                                                                                        May your happiness increase.                                                                                 May you not be separated from great happiness.                                                 May your good fortune and the causes for your joy and happiness increase.

Sense the sympathetic joy and caring in each phrase. When you feel some degree of natural gratitude for the happiness of this loved one, extend this practice to another person you care about. Recite the same simple phrases that express your heart’s intention.

Then gradually open the meditation to include neutral people, difficult people, and even enemies until you extend sympathetic joy to all beings everywhere, young and old, near and far.

Practice dwelling in joy until the deliberate effort of practice drops away and the intentions of joy blend into the natural joy of your own wise heart.

Now let us listen to Albatross composed by Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac who was a deeply reflective musician of great integrity.

And now let us read this beautiful Blessing for the Earth

written by John O Donohue, slowly and reflectively, leaving a pause between each verse

Let us bless
The imagination of the Earth.
That knew early the patience
To harness the mind of time,
Waited for the seas to warm,
Ready to welcome the emergence
Of things dreaming of voyaging
Among the stillness of land.

And how light knew to nurse
The growth until the face of the Earth
Brightened beneath a vision of color.

When the ages of ice came
And sealed the Earth inside
An endless coma of cold,
The heart of the Earth held hope,
Storing fragments of memory,
Ready for the return of the sun.

Let us thank the Earth
That offers ground for home
And holds our feet firm
To walk in space open
To infinite galaxies.

Let us salute the silence
And certainty of mountains:
Their sublime stillness,
Their dream-filled hearts.

The wonder of a garden
Trusting the first warmth of spring
Until its black infinity of cells
Becomes charged with dream;
Then the silent, slow nurture
Of the seed’s self, coaxing it
To trust the act of death.

The humility of the Earth
That transfigures all
That has fallen
Of outlived growth.

The kindness of the Earth,
Opening to receive
Our worn forms
Into the final stillness.

Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth
For all our sins against her:
For our violence and poisonings
Of her beauty.

Let us remember within us
The ancient clay,
Holding the memory of seasons,
The passion of the wind,
The fluency of water,
The warmth of fire,
The quiver-touch of the sun
And shadowed sureness of the moon.

That we may awaken,
To live to the full
The dream of the Earth
Who chose us to emerge
And incarnate its hidden night
In mind, spirit, and light.

Pause

And now listen and maybe join in with this beautiful paeon to the world

The Strawbs - Benedictus

The wanderer has far to go
Humble must he constant be
Where the paths of wisdom
Distant is the shadow of the setting sun
Bless the daytime, bless the night
Bless the sun which gives us light
Bless the thunder, bless the rain
Bless all those who cause us pain
Yellow stars may lead the way
All diversions lead astray
While his resolution holds
Fortune and good will surely follow him
Bless the free man, bless the slave
Bless the hero in his grave
Bless the soldier, bless the saint
Bless all those whose hearts grow faint

Please turn and stand and face West for the blessing.

To the Buddha of Infinite Light

Who is meditated upon when facing the setting sun, when the day’s work is accomplished and the mind is at peace.

AMITABHA!

Thou who liveth within my heart

Awaken me to the immensity of thy spirit,

To the experience of Thy living presence!

Deliver me from the bonds of desire,

From the slavery of small aims,

From the delusion of narrow egohood!

Enlighten me with the light of Thy wisdom,

Suffuse me with the incandescence of Thy love,

Which includes and embraces the darkness,

Like the light that surrounds the dark core of the flame,

Like the love of a mother that surrounds

The growing life in the darkness of her womb,

Like the earth protecting the tender germ of the seed.

Let me be the seed of Thy living light!

Give me the strength to burst the sheath of selfhood,

And like the seed that dies in order to be reborn,

Let me fearlessly go through the portals of death,

So that I may awaken to the greater life:

The all-embracing life of Thy love,

The all-embracing love of Thy wisdom.

From The Way of the White Clouds – Lama Govinda

It is ended in joy!

May we all be blessed with Grace and Courage in these precarious times.

Jane xx