What will you give up to the Goddess's sickle?
This has been the question running through my head as we approach Lammas, the First Harvest. Though most of my Pagan friends celebrate Lammas on August 1, I have always celebrated it on August 5, for reasons I can't really articulate. So this week, as my Lammas celebrations -- both private and with my circle -- approach, I've thought a great deal about what First Fruits I'll be gathering, and what I am willing to give up to the Goddess's sickle.
This has been an interesting growing season for me. A little over a year ago, I was in the midst of a great deal of life change. An existential crisis, if I'm honest. It had become clear to me that a tenure-track academic position was not going to come into being for me, after 10 years of adjunct teaching for poverty wages and putting my heart and dreams on the job market each fall. I was freelancing and trying to manifest my other dream, which was to find a way to make my living by teaching classes on spirituality, holding retreats, and writing. I had begun holding open Women's Full Moon rituals, which were increasingly well attended (and which are still going a year later!) I was trying to balance these two dreams -- to be a scholar and knowledge worker, and to be a Priestess.
And somehow, in the space of a few weeks, both these things manifested. I was offered a full time staff job working with graduate students at the local historically women's university. And I was offered the chance to teach online at Mystery School of the Goddess, creating my own courses. Suddenly my life was abundant -- too abundant! -- and my arms could not hold all the harvest.
It seems a bit petty to be complaining that my harvest baskets ran over last year, and that that cycle of abundance has continued into this new growing cycle. But as I contemplate my harvest, I also note the ripe fruit which I allowed to fall to the ground to molder, because I was not a good steward of what I had planted and harvested. I had a bumper crop with no plan for harvesting and preserving it. I am determined that this year's First Fruits will be gathered lovingly, and that I will make use of all that which has bloomed and grown in my life during the last turn of the Wheel.
Part of this is putting aside guilt over all I did not do over the last turn of the Wheel because I felt so overwhelmed. Working a 40 hour job for the first time in 15 years is an adjustment for a Priestess used to managing her own time! I have felt guilty that I have not fully utilized my Mystery School learning spaces, that I have not blogged more and written more, that I have at times needed to just sit and rest even as I felt my creativity bursting into flower. I think the guilt comes from the fact that I manifested this abundance, that it was something I wanted so badly but in some way didn't fully trust could come -- and so I was not prepared for it.
I am giving up that guilt to the Goddess's sickle this Lammas.
I am giving up my expectation that I can do everything all at once, and do it well.
As I gather my First Fruits, and prepare for the Harvest season and Samhain, I am committed to finding ways to preserve that harvest, to put it up for winter, knowing that it doesn't have to be consumed all at once. Instead, I go forth into the dark time of the year knowing that what has grown and blossomed and fruited in my life this year can sustain me over the winter. Knowing that I have been through a period of intense change, and intense growth, and that this time is needed just as the land needs fallow time in order to be fully fertile.
I go into Harvest season looking for what should be put up for seed, to be stored away for the winter while I plan what I will plant and nurture in the coming spring and summer.