The Poignancy of Lammastide

Dear Ones,

It’s a time of dry heat around here, with brittle, dusty leaves languidly drifting their way to the ground. The garden soil soaks up every drop I pour out of my watering can. Smoke’s coming back in, after a few days of blue skies. The AQI is yellow — moderate. But for folks with damaged lungs like mine, perhaps it’s best to stay inside.

On the day of the New Moon / Solar Eclipse I found myself tending my prayer candle and unfurling prayers for friends with health crises as well as all the suffering going on in the world at large. My phone keeps lighting up with yet another update on the fire on Mt. Rainer and notifications of a Fire Watch closer to home.

I learned a teaching years ago, said to come from Tibetan monks, although my memory may be faulty. Apparently they believed that anything done on the day of an eclipse is multiplied many times over, so they spend the day in prayers for the planet. If this is true, I’m glad I spent the day focused on a friend coping with a sudden illness, then visiting another friend going through chemo. We sat in the sunshine in her gorgeous garden, nourished by an astonishing array of dahlias, bee balm, rudbeckia, tiger lilies, sweet alyssum, borage, and nasturtiums gone wild. She sent me home with a luscious bouquet.

A couple of weeks into Lammastide, I can feel the melancholy and wistfulness of the season taking root. Roses in full bloom and helicopter maple-leaf seeds co-exist together. The bones of summer are crackling a bit. My schoolteacher friends are no longer at ease in vacation mode but are thinking about lesson plans and prep work before they head back to school. Even though I’m self-employed and semi-retired, I also feel the pull to get back to work even as I indulge in sleeping late just one more morning.

Every holy-day on the Wheel of the Year is an invitation to pause and reflect, even if it takes a couple of weeks to get there. Lammas always reminds me of the Seven of Pentacles in the tarot.

The Rider/Waite/Smith card shows a young man leaning on a hoe, looking at seven pumpkins (depicted as pentacles) ripening on the vine. I imagine that he has worked hard through the spring and summer, tending his garden, feeding, watering, and weeding it. It’s near to harvest, but the pumpkins are not quite ripe. A drought or flood could still come in and wipe the plants out. Will he have a plentiful harvest? He waits patiently, assessing the garden’s slow progress. There’s nothing to do but tend the garden and wait. We’re on Mother Earth’s timeline, after all, not our own.