Lammas

It’s been a happy weekend. Lammas, and the Bible reading set from the Gospel of John – “I am the bread of life.”

The Badger was preaching, speaking about motivation, what people hunger for, what makes them get up in the morning.

In my own study reading, the question ~ what do you long to see come to fruition in your own life ~ what is your soul’s harvest?

At chapel, the preacher asking ~ when you come to church, what feeds you? What are you looking for?

Such good questions all. Food for thought indeed!

And today, a tribal gathering at our Rosie’s. She and her partner Jon have lifted a huge old Victorian wreck of a house out of dark grubbiness into a glowing, comfortable home of generous hospitality. Children pottering about happily in the garden, Grandad wandering down with his stick to look at the vegetable patch, the next-door dog coming to the fence to have her ears rubbed. Twelve people sitting down to a glorious feast that included potatoes and onions from the garden – not bad seeing they only moved in just before Christmas!

And tomorrow is our Alice and Hebe’s birthday. Thirty-two! Glory! Where did that go? I sat in chapel this morning, watching them playing fiddle and flute, thinking about the first day they came to worship there – three days old, I think they were. The preacher welcomed them, said what their names were; then at the end of the service, an elderly and rather deaf saint from the formidable and decidedly senior choir, way-laying me to demand ~ “Dallas and Who?”

Church, eh?

It’s been a weekend of beautiful sunshine. Our neighbours over the road, devout Pagans, had their handfasting ceremony last year, then this weekend, a year-and-a-day on, after their tradition, their marriage. It was on the Friday, Lammas Eve, under a blue moon – very special! The Badger went to their huge and happy party on the Saturday afternoon; not being a throng type, I abstained, but they send across a little piece of the spicy cake they’d made together, symbol of the life they are making, full of kindness and hospitality. God bless them.

So, it’s really felt like Lammas – the first of the two harvest festivals, the one that opens the harvest, time to put the sickle in. The beginning of a season of fruition that ends with Michaelmas and the stories of the angels of the Last Judgement when all is safely gathered in, and St Michael points silently down the year to the coming days of darkness, reminding us to prepare.

But, for the meantime, after the wet and turbulent weather attending the blue moon, the land basks under the benevolent sun, the blackberries shine like jewels in the hedgerow, the apples are growing plump on the trees, and our greengage has a heavy crop again even though it managed loads of fruit last year.

Every night, the vixen comes for her supper, and leaves a little signature, a discreet pile of dung, alongside her dish to say “Was here. Got it. Thank you. Lula Fox. xx” In fact one day last week, the crows didn’t finish their breakfast, and so well have I managed to convince the gull families that it’s not theirs, it was still on the plate on the garden wall come evening. And Lula Fox – I wish I’d been there to see it – climbed up on the garden wall, ate the leftovers (Tasty fish heads. Yum!), and contrived to leave her small signature of dung in the centre of the licked-clean dish on top of the garden wall. That must have been a sight in the execution!