Midsummer in transition

 So the summer solstice was on Wednesday and this year I found myself feeling very challenged on how to celebrate. I have only just decided to refocus my spiritual practice, well more accurately my religious structure, and I was actually at a bit of a loss as to what to do. I'm still feeling my way slowly into what works best for me but its also very important that my children have a sense of the holiday and get to enjoy it. I also had a very bad experience with a Midsummer ritual last year that I am still working to overcome, so this holiday is especially challenging for me on a personal level - which is probably why it ended up being the first one to come along after my major shift of focus. Life is anything but subtle sometimes when we need to face our issues....
   We have had a family tradition of baking cakes on the solstices for many years. At the summer solstice we bake the cake for the daoine sidhe and Aine, who may be a fairy queen or may be a goddess; and at the winter solstice we bake a cake for the Sun's birthday. In previous years with a more recon based approach we would bake the summer cake and leave pieces as offerings but otherwise we didn't do too much to mark the day. From an eclectic Wiccan perspective I would have done a full circle to the Lord and Lady of summer, the God and Goddess of the Greenwood. Last year I did a public ritual in a more neo-pagan/Wiccan style that honored the fairies, spirits of the land, and Lord and Lady - this ritual will go down in infamy for the disapproval that resulted from some people* so I may be a little gun shy about jumping right in to do something similar again, despite its overall success.
  In the end I settled on a hybrid compromise, which is, perhaps, the best approach anyway. Combining holiday fun with necessity I gave the gift of new summer shoes to the girls (and my husband) something I might keep as a tradition in the future. We baked a vanilla cake with butter cream frosting and the girls decorated it with candy sprinkles from the store.  The cake came out very nicely, and after dinner when everything was ready we sang a Jana Runnall's song called "Graine" that I learned from Kellianna; then I cut a piece of cake for the fairies and another for Aine. The cake was left outside by our little Hawthorn tree and then we went back in and enjoyed some cake ourselves. I read the girls a book about the Summer Solstice by Ellen Jackson that includes folklore and traditions from around the world.
  Later that night I had my own ritual, more along the lines of a Wiccan circle. Perhaps next year I can find an even better way to celebrate everything together; maybe I will finally get over my feelings of Midsummer inadequacy. But this year went well anyway, it was fun, the girls enjoyed it, and the fairies got their cake.

Cake recipe:
  1 cup white sugar 1/2 cup butter 2 eggs 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 cup milk
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
Grease and flour a 9x9 inch pan....
In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine flour and baking powder, add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Finally stir in the milk until batter is smooth. Pour or spoon batter into the prepared pan.
Bake for 30 to 40 minutes in the preheated oven

Frosting recipe:

 1/2 cup butter, softened, 4-1/2 cups confectioners' sugar, 1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract, 5 tablespoons whole milk
In a large bowl, cream butter until light and fluffy. Beat in the confectioners' sugar, vanilla and enough milk to achieve desired consistency.

 * Long, messy backstory. Shortest possible version is that what one person feels is an acceptable offering may not be seen as such by others. Also I am a tangental ritual leader and not everyone likes my style of ritual. Lesson learned the hard way.

manuscripts and life

  So I am behind on blogging this past week - I will very likely be very minimally blogging this month as I am under contract for a book and the deadline is the end of this month. I'm very excited about the book itself and I think it's coming along really well, but at this point it's taking as much free time as I have after family and school. I plan to get back to regular blogging as soon as the manuscript is completed.
  For anyone who is curious the book is part of a series for children being put out by a small pagan publishing company. My contribution is a book on the modern Fairy-Faith, its beliefs and practices, for children ages 8 through 12. (Although I think it would be just as useful for adults) Writing for children in this age group has proved the most interesting challenge so far as there is a need for a balance in being age appropriate without pulling any punches or soft peddling the information, but I have had my own in-house expert helping - my oldest daughter, who is 8 and a half. I'm very excited about the project, as someone who has taught classes on the Celtic Otherworld and Fairies (Daoine Sidhe) for over a decade and honored them all my life.

                        Beltane candles burning on a small fairy altar at Pandora's Box

 Happy Bealtaine to everyone! May your summer be blessed.

Hospitality in a modern world

 Hospitality is an important quality in both Celtic and Norse tradition. In both cultures, as in many other ancient cultures, hospitality to guests was seen as an important social expectation. In the Norse Havamal we see a selection of advice given in how to live honorably, including this part about hospitality:
  "134. I counsel thee, Stray-Singer, accept my counsels,
they will be thy boon if thou obey'st them,
they will work thy weal if thou win'st them:
growl not at guests, nor drive them from the gate
but show thyself gentle to the poor.
135. Mighty is the bar to be moved away
for the entering in of all.
Shower thy wealth, or men shall wish thee
every ill in thy limbs."
(Bellows translation)

In the Cath Maige Tuired it is a lack of hospitality that is at the root of the second battle between the Fomorians and the Tuatha de Danann, as the lack of hospitality by the half-Fomorian King Bres eventually resulted in a rebellian by the Tuatha de Danann.
 "36. At that time, Bres held the sovereignty as it had been granted to him. There was great murmuring against him among his maternal kinsmen the Tuatha De Danann, for their knives were not greased by him. However frequently they might come, their breaths did not smell of ale; and they did not see their poets nor their bards nor their satirists nor their harpers nor their pipers nor their horn-blowers nor their jugglers nor their fools entertaining them in the household. They did not go to contests of those pre-eminent in the arts, nor did they see their warriors proving their skill at arms before the king, except for one man, Ogma the son of Lain.
39. On one occasion the poet came to the house of Bres seeking hospitality (that is, Coirpre son of Etain, the poet of the Tuatha De). he entered a narrow, black, dark little house; and there was neither fire nor furniture nor bedding in it. Three small cakes were brought to him on a little dish--and they were dry. The next day he arose, and he was not thankful. As he went across the yard he said,
"Without food quickly on a dish,
Without cow's milk on which a calf grows,
Without a man's habitation after darkness remains,
Without paying a company of storytellers--let that be Bres's condition." (Gray's transaltion)

  These are just a few examples of the way that the value of hospitality was expressed in common stories in both cultures. In the first example we see the idea that how we act as a host to our guests reflects on our reputation for good or ill. In the second we see the consequences of failing to offer hospitality when it is expected. In both cases we can see that hospitality involves generosity and openness to guests and that failing to be hospitible opens a person up to consequences of both reputation and (in the Irish) satire. It's clear from this and from other material relating to hospitality in these groups that hospitality was important and most modern pagans and reconstructionists seem to agree with the value of this. Yet how do we, as modern followers of these oder ways, create hospitality in our lives? How do we embrace a virtue of open handed giving and welcome to guests in a culture (talking about America in particular) that is often not reflective of that same value?
  This weekend my oldest daughter had a friend over for a play date. I spent a lot of the visit reminding my daughter that her guest was a guest, and was to be treated as such. When there was only one cookie left, it went to her friend. When they could not agree on a game to play I intervened and said that as the guest her friend should be allowed to choose what to do. This is how I was raised and I feel it is inline with the older values of hospitality, so it is what I want to pass on to my children; however I found out after the other child had left that this is not the usual way of things in modern society. My daughter, who is 8, informed me that when she went to other children's homes she had to do whatever they wanted to do, and was basically treated by the parents as imported entertainment for the other child. I was not happy to find this out, although it gave me an opportunity to discuss the value of being a good guest as well. Of course I also wasn't happy to find out that this child, much like another of my daughter's friends that had come over previously, attempted to steal something while she was here. The whole situation has me thinking about the subject of hospitality and how we, as modern pagans, can create a culture of hospitality - particularly for our children - in a world that is often at odds with those values.
  So far my best solution is to read the stories that I can to my children that emphasize these values and to try to show them by example what hospitality means to me. And what I would like it to mean to them. It's a complex subject, since hospitality is a balance between being a good host and a good guest, and to violate either has consequences, so conveying this to a child growing up in what amounts to a different culture with different values is challenging.
  How do you find that balance in your own life? How much value do you place on hospitality and being a good guest? And how can we, as modern pagans, re-establish this value within our own commuity? Just some food for thought....

References:
 Bellows translation of the Havamal can be found here http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/havamal.html
 Gray's translation of teh Cath Maige tuired can be foudn here http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/cmt/cmteng.htm