Dear Friends,
According to Wikepedia, "May Day is a public holiday in some regions, usually celebrated on May 1 or the first Monday of May. It is an ancient festival marking the first day of summer, and a current traditional spring holiday in many European cultures. Dances, singing, and cake are usually part of the festivities."
May
1 later became International Workers' Day; labor unions marched for an eight
hour work day - their work day was fifteen hours – along with proper wages and
paid leaves.
Mayday (one word) "is an emergency procedure word, used internationally
as a distress signal in voice procedure radio communications…it's repeated
three times in a row during the initial emergency declaration to prevent it
being mistaken …under noisy conditions."
In Gaelic culture, the eve of April 30th and May Day began the start
of the summer season. In Ireland, the feast of Bealtaine (or "lucky
fire") has been celebrated since pagan times. Traditionally, bonfires were
lit to mark the coming of summer and to grant luck to people and livestock. The
celebrations mainly focused on the symbolic use of fire to bless cattle and
other livestock as they were moved to summer pastures. Cattle would be made to
jump over fires to protect their milk; people would also leap over the fires
for luck. The best known modern May Day traditions, observed both
in Europe and North America, include dancing around the Maypole and crowning the
Queen of the May.
In her fascinating blog, my friend Beth
Owlsdaughter goes more deeply into these celebrations and speaks
of this season as "the ecstasy of the Earth Herself". She reminds us:
"Despite vast heartache
unimaginable, despite terror and pain across every continent, here in the
Northern Hemisphere, the magic of May Eve and Beltane arrive just the same. They
come as an ancient, sacred blessing to all who receive them with grace, joy,
and the ecstasy of the Earth Herself.
We are at an
unprecedented moment in the history of humankind, with a most ominous future
for civilization as we have known it, as well as for the living land and all
who share this planet together…But now, at this sacred threshold, even with so
much uncertainty, the life force that now calls to us from the living land is irresistible…
The divine conspiracy of Love abides."
The
photograph in this issue was made with infra-red film while in residency at The
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; for me, it speaks to the fecund
creativity of the land and the creative resilience of its inhabitants. The
verse is excerpted from my poem "The Tangible Illumination of Summer" (NOTEBOOKS FROM MYSTERY SCHOOL, Finishing Line Press, 2015)
May we cut
through all the noise to heed the distress signals our Earth has been sending
us.
May
her beauty break open our hearts in the best ways, leading us to heal.
There
were no meadows near, but still I knew
myself to be a part of meadows, their dirt was in my hair,
no matter where they were I did not have to be separate from them,
their openness, their vastness, their big-heartedness
were all mine.
How could I have not seen clearly
this was the case all the time? What blindness veiled me,
shielded me from the tangible illumination of summer?
What in my soul made a wall that needed to be cracked
then breached?
©photograph & text copyright Margaret McCarthy 2022