Today, August 1, 2020, is Lammas, the Celtic festival of late summer, the ‘feast of bread’, time of harvest and of golden grain. Here in the UK, Lammas arrives just as we are emerging from our coronavirus lockdown. It’s hard to feel a personal sense of ‘harvest’ when most people’s lives have been on hold since the spring.
Confined to our homes, many people could throw themselves into tending their own gardens (if they had one), but most of us could not cultivate the symbolic gardens of our lives and work in the way that we wanted. Many have faced deep loss, the withering of seeds planted in the past which could not now come to fruition.
Despite the tragic times, the earth continues to dance to the sacred rhythms of sun and moon. The trees are full of fruit, the fields are full of grain. Although I too have had my share of sorrow and grief in recent months, today I feel moved by the season to look at what we can harvest from our experience of the coronavirus pandemic.
The fierce light of the white star pierced her thick white fur as the mother froze. She was trying to imagine how her cubs could make the jump from one jagged ice flow to another in the cracked deep blue waters.
About six months ago I was hired to write a curriculum for a Jewish organization on biblical women in ancient and contemporary midrash. Midrash—the ancient process of creative interpretation of sacred text that began two thousand years ago and continues to this day—has been one of my fields of expertise, and women in midrash is a particular specialty. I knew the first lesson I wrote would be on Eve (Chava in Hebrew), the first woman of Genesis. Yet as I began to write lessons, I started with Sarah and Hagar, then proceeded to Rebekah and Lot’s wife, Rachel and Leah, even Asnat (Joseph’s wife) and Naamah (Noah’s wife). It became clear over the months that I was avoiding Eve. Whenever I began to think about beginning “her” lesson, I grew anxious and immediately began to think of something else. Only when I had already written six of my ten lessons did I finally, reluctantly, begin to research ancient legends and modern feminist poems on the first foremother of the Bible.
It’s July which means we have collectively endured 7 months of uncertainty, turmoil, darkness, and light. America, we are still battling all aspects of the virus: rising numbers of infected, those that deny its existence, those refusing to wear masks to help to stop the spread, and everyone else doing their duty by staying at home, washing their hands, and wearing masks. Yet, something else has added to the mix and the COVID19 pandemic; social media. Social media has taken on a whole new level for activism and resistance.
Hello FAR friends,
I hardly knew you.
Exactly a year ago on May 22th, I didn’t join the ancestors. I had a very close shave after an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy, and I was rushed into hospital for a life-saving operation. Ectopic pregnancy means that the foetus nested in my fallopian tube instead of my womb. This is a dangerous condition, and one of the leading causes for maternal death in the first three months. According to the doctors it had been a window of two hours. Any longer, and I would no longer be here.
This month more than most, I feel like I have so much to say that I don’t really know where to begin. It doesn’t help that next door they are remodelling
The Predator
Feminism and Religion 