The Odd Uneven Time

Not consciously, a bit over a week ago I asked my brother in law to teach me how to make his delicious (and simple) 4-ingredient artisan bread. We were visiting them for a couple days in their home a state away from ours, and he was gracious to walk me through the process with patience and enthusiasm.

Bread making, while often finicky and labor intensive, is always a sensually-pleasing experience for me. The aromas that rise as the yeast and flour interact over time, the rising dough, the browning and crisping crust, the reward of a warm slice once it’s finished resting out of the hot oven… I love it all.

It wasn’t until we were settled back at home and I was nurturing a feverish child for several days that I had the time to slow way down and realize that Lughnasadh (or Lammas, from the Anglo-Saxon) was just a bit more than a week away from my happy bread-baking lesson. The timing was divinely perfect, as Lughnasadh is - among other things - a bread festival.

We are observing and celebrating the first harvest. It is the offering up of the first fruits, the first grains gathered, the sweetest creams, the brightest and newest collected nutrients.

Lughnasadh also marks the midpoint between the summer soltice (Beltane) and the autumn equinox (Mabon). At least, this is so in the northern hemisphere, and as Lughnasadh is originally a Celtic festival, I will speak to those energies.

This year, Lughnasadh falls on the full moon in Aquarius, which calls us to release and finally let go of what is not truly who we are at our core. Aquarius is the rebel revolutionary, the water bearer that pours out the holy waters of spirit over our mortal flesh. She is Isis, waking us to our divine inheritance. She is The Star in the sacred tarot, showing us the means and ways to restoration and authentic expression of our soul self.

These energies, these invitations to cross over and away from inauthentic, people-pleasing, approval-driven behaving in order to avoid conflict, to fit in, to keep the status quo as-is and into centered, grounded, truthful, honest, joyful self-respecting, soulful, uniquely and bravely YOU-ness is the pivot point of August, her full moon in Aquarius, her rising Sirian star, and the first-offered fruit and grain- in hand, in body. It’s you. It’s me. It’s the invitation to reflect on the distance we’ve come this far in the year, to take stock of what has grown and flourished, what is ready to be reaped, what is to be set aside as compost - and what still needs mixing, sitting, proofing.

So we find ourselves at a midpoint again. A middle land. Liminal. A portal, a threshold between things.

Sylvia Plath wrote of August,

“…the best of summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.”

First fruits, first harvests. The odd uneven time. The dwindling days of summertime and the not-yet arrived autumn graces. The sultry in between heat, the dog days of Sirius rising. Inundation and exhaustion.

It’s both in liminal spaces, always. It’s always both- the paradox of in-between-ness.

Which brings me back to the blessing and teaching of bread.

In the Netflix series based on Michael Pollan’s book Cooked (which is a must-watch, in my humble opinion, for every human that eats food), he devotes an entire episode to bread, its embodiment of elemental air, and the alchemy it undertakes to become something other than the mere sum of its ingredients.

He shares the (profound) reflection that taken alone - water, flour, salt - these ingredients ingested might keep a person alive for a short time if there was nothing else more substantial available to eat. But mixed, given time, and baked - now you have a true food that could sustain life indefinitely. This is a high, elegant magic to be sure.

The ingredients are mixed, handled in particular ways, allowed to sit, covered for lengths of time. More handling, folding in and over again and again. More sitting under cover. Ensuring the ambient temperature of the room is agreeable to the burgeoning life of the dough. Heating in the oven to cook through. Resting for a time out of the oven.

This alchemy breaks down the individual parts as they currently are to make way for a collective new entity to emerge. All the parts undone, stirred, disturbed, distrupted from their current state of being and given the elements of time, space, air, with mixing and kneading to become…nourishment. Nutrition.

Magic.

And, a teaching about how we can let ourselves be moved in ways delightful and disdainful for the divine purposes of deeper growth, more substantial wisdom and more nourishing presence for ourselves and others.

Lughnasadh offers us the chance to reflect on what we have grown thus far, what wants to be offered up now, and where in that middle space we find ourselves within the process we are currently inhabiting. Where are you in the cooking? Are you being mixed now? Dissolving? Sitting still, contained and proofing? Rising and gathering air? Heating and baking? Resting?

At the rising of Sirius, the second brightest star in our sky which coincides with Lughnasadh and the hottest days of the year in the northern hemisphere, the ancient Egyptians celebrated the return of the inundation of the Nile. This was the return of the life-giving waters that flooded the land, bringing with them the necessary sediments, rich and abundant, to nourish the thirsty ground and fertilize the new plantings.

This is a moment of return, of folding over and mixing; nutrients delivered in ways long awaited and often unexpected. A time of offering up gratitudes for what has been provided, and trust that what is still needed is on its way. Let us not forget this is only the first harvest. There is more to come, greater wisdom on the wing, richer foods ripening.

Let’s honor this sacred time by pausing at the portal, looking through the doorway at what is before us, but not neglecting to praise and thank what is now in hand and resting at our ankles.

Blessings to you.

A Blessing of Bread

I am mixing a god all up on my kitchen counter

Rolling her over, mending each separation

With hands that remember the taste of crusts

And butter, and honey, and heat

And healing...

May the sweetness of earth fill you with comfort,

And the warm knowing of your sacred place

Among the grasses of the fields.

May the grandmothers of your ancestry

Reveal their secrets within your hands;

Making a sweet and holy bread of your life.

To be shared and gifted as a well-baked loaf

to a kindred spirit, feeding you both with an ancient love.