Needless to say, this summer isn’t going the way we thought it would.
When we first emerged from the darkness at Imbolc, COVID-19 was emerging as a threat, but no one really had expected that we’d spend weeks and months either locked away in our homes, or on the front lines in “essential” positions constantly worried about whether your PPE was sufficient. We were not prepared for hundreds of thousands of dead. Nor did we expect that the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer who cut off his airway for 8 minutes and 46 seconds would set off a global wave of protests and a renewed interest in seeing racial justice both in our policing and in our society as a whole.
When you add in the murder hornets, the coke snorting wild boars, and tropical storm Christobal, it’s starting to feel like someone’s been playing an impromptu game of apocalypse bingo.
And yet here we are, celebrating Midsummer, which is also called Litha. Midsummer is the noontime of the growing season. It is not only the moment at which there is the most sunshine, the longest day, and therefore the height of the sun’s influence over our world. It is also that moment when we enjoy the most abundance with the least amount of effort. The harvest time in the fall also yields abundance, but the harvest of fruits and vegetables and other things we enjoy just before the…
