Lammas? No.

Blessings Darlings!

Oh, goody - it's "Lammas".  Lammas it the neopagan holiday that demonstrates exactly how EXTREMELY cut off from earth/agricultural reality so very many American neopagans are.  (I can't speak for neopagans in other countries - my expertise (I was an agriculture major) is in US agriculture.) 

The winter wheat harvest ended at least a month ago.  It's WAY too late to be celebrating that.  Spare me the "Loafmas" references thinking that they mean  loaves of wheat bread.  They don't mean loaves of ANY bread - the root of Lammas isn't 'loaf' of bread, it relates more to "Lord" as in "Lord of the manor' that the serfs worked on.  It's about the 1%, darlings.

Barley harvest?  Nope.  That's just underway.  It won't end for a couple more weeks.  And no farmer is stupid enough to leave the fields during the harvest to have a harvest celebration.  So spare me the singing of "John Barleycorn". 

Spring wheat?  The harvest for that doesn't start for a few more weeks.

If you want to say that you are following a 'nature based religion', wouldn't it be nice to ... actually pay attention to nature?  Especially nature in, like, your local area?  Find out when your closest few county fairs are, or 4-H fairs.  THEY will be timed for between the local harvests.  They MAY feature newly harvested local foods = or not.  But at least you'll get the timing better.  

Me - I'm going to the racetrack and participating in politics for Lughnasadh.  Some of you know why this is way the heck more traditional than baking a loaf of bread.  Especially from store bought flour that is undoubtedly over a year old.

Frondly, Fern

Let There Be Quiet

Blessings Darlings!

I love music ... tho' I cannot carry a tune in a bucket and have failed at every instrument I've tried.  But, as I try to search for Twitter posts with "Pagan" in them (and try to ignore all the @#$%%~@~! sales posts there) it makes it seem as if a lot of folks have music playing all the time.  And when I was in college one of my roommates had music or TV going pretty much constantly.  Later I had neighbors who .... uh .... liked to share all their music with me.  Then there were the many, many times I've been driving and I've not be able to hear anything except the music from another car at the stop light. 

Which is not to say that my world is silent.  Right now the loudest sound is the neighbor using a power edge trimmer around his fence. and probably another neighbor will mow their lawn and I'll hear that later.  Not my favorite sounds, but .... really, my dishwashers noises bother me more when it runs. 

Even with those outside man-made sounds, tho, I can still hear birds, and the wind, and my husband, and the creak of the window (I don't know WHY it creaked, tho), the hum of my computer fan, etc. 

Even with THOSE sounds .... I can still hear myself think.  And at times, I can hear the soft voices of the God/dess/es.  I don't recall any time when I've heard the voices of the God/dess/es in music or TV, altho' I've certainly heard them in the quiet times of some guided meditations.

I've never understood the impulse to always have music/TV/etc sounds going on all the time.  It's just not ME.  I'm not going to claim that it's because I am doing Deep Thinking or anything - more likely it's because I'm too easily distracted and that would put me over the edge on being able to concentrate be so irritating that I'd get a headache. 

Is it because I'm an only child of older parents? Probably part of it is from that.  My suburban upbringing, without the constant pressing noises of urban life? I'm sure that's part of it .... tho' my neighborhood had so many toxins on the lawns that we didn't have crickets at all, and not a ton of birds.

But I DO value quiet.  Intensely.  I don't travel without ear plugs, and the discomfort of those have always been far FAR outweighed by the quiet they provide. If I had to make a binary choice between music and silence .... okay, I'd opt out, because I don't accept that paradigm. 

Frondly, Fern