Hiroshima for Lammas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barefoot_Gen

Most of my fellow Druids, at least judging by the Reformed Druids home page on Facebook, have celebrated the Lughnasad First Harvest festival already, at the New Moon, because it's closest to August 1, and that is the customary day for Lammas. But to me, the time of year has always meant Burning Man, and sacrifice. That is because of the anniversary of the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an anniversary I have been celebrating for decades even when I didn't have a Grove.

It makes sense that even as my fellow happy campers and gardeners celebrated with feasting and music, out on my front lawn I would lay out some silhouettes of life sized humans, made of papier mache, meant to commemorate the vaporized lucky few who died instantly to seed the clouds of the future. Just as blood and ash refuel the fertility of our way of living upon this garden world, so our war machines reap and cull at our leaders' guidance. We feed the war machines with our babies, brighter than one thousand suns. Every feast has a price, even if it is not paid by us.

Be kind to one another, and bring your children to the festival that follows the slaughter and the butchering and the roasting. We roast the ears studded with seeds sweet as syrup, then we tear off the charred husks and let them cover the thirsty soil. Lightning and thunder are followed by heavenly tears that keep the fruits swelling upon the branch and vine.

There are three harvest festivals in the fullness of a year and Lammas is the first. From new moon to full moon, we bring in the first and feed the roots to keep the fruits coming.

The midst of harvesting is at equinox, HarvestHome, it is sometimes called, a time of barn dances and the massing of tribes to beat their chests in display, Homecoming it is sometimes called, and that is the second.

The third is when the frost is upon the pumpkin and the year is about to end, and it is All Hallows, or Samhain. What we could glean is by then safe in the cellars and it is time to remember the ones who did not live, but passed on to the next way of existing. The pumpkin is slaughtered, as are the stock we choose not to feed all winter. We leap over the fires to show that we are strong enough to survive it ourselves.

It has started. Be ready to burn or be burned, if your fruiting days are not upon you. As you circle in the dance, linger not too long upon the eyes of those you do not know well as allies, for your time will come and it will someday be your turn to feed the fire. Better it be a time of your own choosing. But dance, knowing the origin of the full ear of corn.