I know nothing about helicopters, but I once heard, in a lecture by a man who does, that there is a nut on a helicopter, situated I think above the bit you ride in and under the propeller, that holds the whole thing together; it’s called the ‘Jesus nut’.
As Grace said when we were talking about this at housegroup, ‘That’s because it’s the crux of the machine’.
‘Crux’, that we use in common speech as we say ‘the crux of the matter’ – the real heart of a thing – is the latin word for ‘cross’.
I think in that usage in common speech, ‘cross/crux’ is referencing not the cross of Jesus, but a place where things intersect, the place where everything holds together. And that’s what the cross of Jesus is. It is literally ‘the crux of the matter’. God was in Christ reconciling all things to himself (see Colossians 1:15-20). The cross of Jesus sits at the heart of creation, holding everything together, reconciling all things to God and to each other: it is the place of integration/integrity, where all things are made whole/holy.
It is no accident that Jesus died on a cross of wood, and that the cross is therefore often referred to as the ‘tree’, because trees are also crossing-places.
If you imagine in your mind a winter tree – the trunk and branches and twigs standing against the sky – then add to the picture the part you know is there but cannot see, the branching rootball going down into the earth, then you have a
picture of something that is in both form and function similar to a pair of lungs. Trees are the lungs of the earth. Our words for breathing are inspiration and expiration – and the ‘spir’ part of the word comes from the latin word ‘spiritus’ (spirit). When we say someone expires, we mean they die. When we say someone is inspired, we mean they are illumined in a visionary way. The Hebrew word ‘ruach’ from the Old Testament means equally spirit,wind/breath, and that comes through to the way we use the latin root counterpart, spirit. We say someone is ‘spirited away’ when it is as though the wind snatched them.
A tree, however, does not inspire or expire, it transpires. The breathing of a tree creates chemical stability as it shuttles water, oxygen and carbon between the two different worlds in which it lives – the dark world of the earth where its roots are, and the light world of air where its branches are. To us, creatures of light and air, the dark earthy world means death, the light airy world means life.
Trees create stability, slowing down the movement of water through landscape to prevent drought and flood, drawing water from the earth and evaporating it into the sky; and holding the rain, as it falls from the sky, in the earth by its root system.
So a tree both creates stability and security, and also facilitates exchange between the worlds of darkness and light, death and life, earth and air. A tree is a cross, a crossing-place, holding things together as the Jesus nut does. And Jesus died on a tree, won life for us on a tree.
In his dying he entered the dark world and opened a way back to the light. He entered death and opened a way back to life. So in the cross we find a place of exchange or interchange, an alchemical place of transformation, where a way through is made between death and life. The cross, tree of death and tree of life, becomes the instrument of resurrection. It is the place of transpiration of the breathing of Holy Spirit.
When Christianity came to the ancient Celtic world of these isles, the spirituality in place followed the rhythm of the seasons in the agricultural year. Very wisely those early missionaries – Ced, Chad, Columba etc – did not attempt to sweep away the devotional observance of the Celtic people, but instead they enlarged the meaning of holy days already in place to embrace the new understanding that came with the Gospel.
The Christian Celtic year went in a circle that followed the rising and falling of darkness and light.
Imagine a circle (like a clock) subdivided into 4. At 12 o’clock is high summer, the zenith of the year, the summer solstice when day is longest and night is shortest. At six o’clock is the deep dark of the winter solstice. At three and nine o’clock are the spring and autumn equinoxes, when the length of day and night balance equally. Holding that picture in your mind, let’s go round the clock, starting at the bottom at 6 o’clock.
In the depths of the winter, at the time of the longest night of the year, when all is cold and dark and dead, the ancient Celts celebrated Yul, a Nordic word that means ‘the Turn’. They called it that because from that day onward the light would begin to grow as the days lengthened. So they saw it as a time of the coming of the Infant Light – when the light was at its smallest and weakest but would begin now to grow. So it was that the Christian Church settled at Yul the Feast Of The Incarnation, Christmas, when we celebrate the coming of the Infant Light to a dark world as Jesus is born. The year turns, ie begins again, at this point. Everything turns on the coming of Christ.
Halfway between six oclock (the winter solstice) and nine o’clock (the spring equinox) comes Imbolc, at the beginning of February. This was a time for spring-cleaning, getting rid of clutter, sweeping through the house and shaking everything out. Upon this festival the early Christians settled the feast of Candlemas, the time of the purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary after childbirth – so focussing on the same theme of ritual purification.
At nine o’clock, the spring equinox is Easter – which actually historically happened around then. The spring equinox used to be the festival of the goddess Oestre (hence the name Easter), where we also get the word ‘oestrogen’. She was the personification of feminine being, and was represented as a pregnant woman giving birth. The ancient Celts saw the earth as like a fertile woman – wells and water sources were seen as the openings of her womb, from which the water of birth heralded the coming of life, so that places that grew up around wells were called names like ‘Marywell’, ‘Osmotherly’, ‘Ladywell’, ‘Motherwell’ etc – expressing both the ancient traditional belief and the Christian Gospel it embraced. Jesus, son of Mary, burst forth from the dark tomb into the light at Easter; he is the risen light bringing the hope of new life, and this observance harmonises with the coming forth of new life from the wombs of the farm animals at this season of the year.
Halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice comes the Celtic festival of Beltaine, the Mayday festival of the return of the sun – the releasing of the spirit of the summer. This was a time for blessing flocks and fields as the days lengthened, the warmth returned, and everything began to grow and strengthen. ‘Beltaine’ meant something like ‘bright fire’, and it was upon this festival that the early Christians settled the festival of Pentecost (it also fitted here historically with Easter), when the Spirit came in tongues of fire to rest on the heads of the faithful and inspire them with new life and energy and hope.
Moving on up to twelve o’clock and the summer solstice, we come to the feast of St John the Baptist. This festival sits at the crown of the year when the days are longest and the sun is at its height and the light is greatest. John the Baptist is the herald. He points down the year to the coming of Christ at Yul, in the darkest deepest time, and thus connects and balances the darkness and the light.
Halfway between the summer solstice at twelve o’clock and the autumn equinox at three o’clock comes the Celtic festival of Lughnasadh, harvest-time, which the early Christians re-designated as Loaf-mass, that came to be called Lammas. This was a time of hand-fasting (betrothal) and all the obvious harvest celebrations.
At three o’clock, the autumn equinox, the Church placed the feast of St Michael and all angels. Michael is a warrior and the protector of the people, and as part of his protection of us he brings a reminder and a warning. He stands at the gateway between summer and winter, reminding the faithful that dark days are coming and that they must make ready. This has a simple agricultural application but also a spiritual application: that for each of us death is coming, and in the summer of life we must make our souls ready, so that when death comes it does not find us unprepared.
Halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice comes the Celtic feast of Samhain, the Celtic Day of the Dead, upon which the Church settled the feast of All Saints (All Hallows), when we remember the whole great cloud of witnesses including those who have passed on to greater life.
The Day of the Dead was the last festival of the dying year, when the Old Year was laid to rest with thanksgiving for all that was past, and it also had a function similar to the Jewish Yom Kippur, of laying to rest any old feuds or grudges, and getting rid of the spiritual baggage that holds us back – relinquishing that which is spiritually dead and no longer serves us. It balances against the spring-cleaning purification of Candlemas, when the house was swept clean. At All Hallows the house of the spirit is swept clean.
The Day of the Dead was also a time of giving thanks for those who have added joy and meaning to our lives, who have now passed on: a time of Remembrance and gratitude. It is interesting that we have (UK) Remembrance Day at this time of year because it ‘coincidentally happens to be’ the time of D-Day, the ending of the War.
Samhain was thought to be a dangerous time spiritually as people’s minds turned to consider the dead and the veil between the worlds of death and life grew thin. All Hallows affirms the strength, unity, security and safety we have in Christ our salvation.
For the early Celts, the day did not start at sunrise as it does for most us, but at sunset – which is also when the Jewish day stars, hence lighting the Sabbath candles on Friday evening. The ancient Celts therefore believed that dreams were not the processing of the old day, but visions for the new day.
Because the day began at sunrise, Halloe’en is the starting of the Feast of All Hallows – it is the beginning of the Day of the Dead.
Samhain, like all these Celtic fire festivals, was not one day only but spread over about three days. Samhain was the last festival of the year, so in most traditions it was considered that the new year began at the close of Samhain.
However, in some traditions, a period called No-Time passed before the new year began. The length of No-Time varied between one tradition and another. For some, No-Time lasted only a few days: but others believed we were in No-Time right the way through until Yul, the turn, when the seed of the light arrived and the year began again.
I believe that the early Church were working with the concept of No-Time in establishing at that point in the year the season of Advent, a time for inward reflection and preparation for judgement.
Advent was not, in the early church, a time to prepare for Christmas; it was a time to think about the second coming of Christ, an austere period of self-examination balancing the Lenten fast of early spring. It was also a time of longing for the return of Christ. This fits well with No-Time, the season of inwardness and reflection at the deepest darkest point of the year, the time of cold waiting before the seeds could germinate, when the next season’s lambs and calves were hidden deep in the bellies of their mothers.
So it is that Hallowe’en is not at all ‘Satan’s Day’ as many Christians say. It is not a time to be wary and suspicious of – it is a Christian feast and is also a part of the Celtic observance of the spiritual heartbeat that underlies the rhythm of life in the agricultural year.
There is no need to be afraid of Hallowe’en, or anti-Hallowe’en. We are numbered among the saints: let us not be afraid of our own shadows! Of course as Christians we don’t want to be pursuing silly nonsense of skeletons, or dressing as witches or ghosts. And absolutely we do not want to tangle with Ouija boards or any other foolish dabbling in and among forces we cannot see and do not fully understand. But Hallowe’en itself is a good thing.
It is the time for us to look back over the year that has gone, embrace its lessons and release its dross. It’s an opportunity to hold in remembrance those we have loved and have with us no longer, and a time to review our own practice and habits of life, resolving that the ‘evil be weakened in me and the good raised up’.
Hallowe’en is a quiet time, quite introspective, for considering what we need to let go of, what no longer works for us now. And then we enter No-Time, going down into the still and silent weeks of the year, experiencing a micro-version of the watching and waiting to which Christ called all of us.
'The world turns but the cross stands' is the motto of the Carthusian order. So in this rhythm of darkness and light in the turning of the year, the darkness and light wax and wane, ebb and flow, the seasons change and we reflect those changes in our fasts and feasts by which we enter and explore meaning in the seasons of the year and the seasons of our lives. Meanwhile, like the Jesus nut holding everything together, the cross stands at the heart of all creation, drawing all things into one and reconciling all things to God, holding open the way through between death and life, darkness and light, maintaining the spiritual realm of teh Making in a condition of stability, balance and peace.
