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| Image by Tony Armstrong-Sly |
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Celtic Wheel of the Year
A GREETING
My God, what is there to wait for?
You are everything I hope for.
(Psalm 39:7)
A READING
There is a time for everything,
a season for every purpose under heaven: a season to be born and a season to die;
a season to plant and a season to harvest; a season to hurt and a season to heal;
a season to tear down and a season to build up; a season to cry and a season to laugh;
a season to mourn and a season to dance;
a season to scatter stones and a season gather them;
a season for holding close and a season for holding back;
a season to seek and a season to lose;
a season to keep and a season to throw away; a season to tear and a season to mend;
a season to be silent and a season to speak; a season to love and a season to hate;
a season for hostilities and a season for peace.
(Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)
MUSIC
A MEDITATIVE VERSE
You have made the moon to mark the seasons;
the sun knows its time for setting.
(Psalm 104:19)
A POEM
Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal [everlasting] though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier.
- from "Little Gidding," by T.S. Eliot
PRAYER FOR THE DAY
Lord Jesus Christ you wait for us,
To come and see you.
You wait to shine light where there is darkness,
To show love where there is hate,
To share peace where there is conflict,
To give hope where there is despair.
Lord Jesus Christ you wait for us,
To come and see you...
Let us come,
To the One who waits to show us love.
from Celtic Advent: Following an Unfamiliar Path
by Christine Aroney-Sine.
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| "La Primavera," by Botticelli (1478-1482) There are more than 500 plant species identified in the painting, including at least 150 different species of flowers. (Click on the painting to enlarge.) A book by Mirella Levi D'Ancona attempts to identify them all. |
Many of us are familiar with today’s reading from Ecclesiastes, which names the ‘seasons’ of our lives that mark the ways we grow and change and live in relationship with one another. The passage is set up in binaries of opposites, in part so that we can feel the keen differences among them.
The Celtic people before and after Christianity measure the year in eight seasons: they rely on the two solstices, two equinoxes, and the four cross quarter festivals. These four main festivals of the Celtic wheel of the year were how the Celtic Christians of the 5th - 8th centuries navigated time. It starts with Samhain (pronounced sow-en, see Day 2) and the entry into darkness on November 1st. It lasts until the feast of St. Brigid on February 1st, known as Imbolc, as winter is starting to turn to spring and the lambing season begins. This season continues until Beltane (pronounced in Irish Be-al-ta-neh), which became associated with Mary mother of Jesus and which takes place on May 1st as the planting happens. Lughnasa, which comes on August 1st, marks the start of the harvest months. 'Winter,' 'spring,' 'summer' and 'autumn' were unknown as terms during this period. They evolved starting in the ninth century. 'Spring' did not emerge in Europe until the 14th century. In cultures all over the continent, the local Indigenous/cultural words for the agricultural seasons of the year were mostly what were referred to.
Today's art is a work of the late 15th century by Botticelli. At the time of the painting, it was untitled. It was Giorgio Vasari, the art historian, who fifty years later named the work using the Italian word for a 'springing into blooming time' that had come to be associatd with that time of year. Botticelli himself might have heard this word from time to time when he was making the painting but it was not in common usage. It has been a modern age calendrical decision to attach the seasons to turning points of the year. Those turning points happen to be the Celtic equinoxes and solstices. March 21 (the first day of spring) is the Celtic spring equinox, that comes exactly half way between Imbolc and Beltane. June 21st is the summer solstice, and so on.
Ecclesiastes also does not name seasons in the contemporary way that we understand the word. The Hebrew word means only 'time,' or 'occasion.' Replace 'season' with 'time' in each occurrence in the verses and you have what is actually written. Translators use the word 'season' to conjure for us a fuller sense of ages and stages of life.
What is the 'time of life' that you find yourself in? How is God present to you in it, and how can the coming of Jesus bring life and light to illuminate it?
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| The moon and Venus, January 2025. Image by Tony Armstrong-Sly |
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Scripture passages are taken from The Inclusive Bible.
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LC† Vigil in Hope is a devotional series of Lutherans Connect, supported by the Eastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada and the Centre for Spirituality and Media at Martin Luther University College. To receive the devotions by email, write to lutheransconnect@gmail.com. The devotional pages are written and curated by Deacon Sherry Coman, with support and input from Pastor Steve Hoffard, Catherine Evenden and Henriette Thompson. Join us on Facebook. Lutherans Connect invites you to make a donation to the Ministry by going to this link on the website of the ELCIC Eastern Synod and selecting "Lutherans Connect Devotionals" under "Fund". Devotions are always freely offered, however your donations help support the ongoing work.
Thank you and peace be with you!
