Late for Lughnasa

Like last year, I'm slow to celebrate Lughnasa. But unlike last year, I can see what came of my second planting, and can feel the changes that have come about. The wedding? Beautiful and bright and loving. The applications? Starting the PhD program in a month. The quilt? Designed and partly built (the sky, land, and green are attached and await stitching).

But today, celebrating Lughnasa, I am not planting a second harvest. Instead, I am tending.

Let's see how I can extend this agricultural metaphor. Some of what I pray for, work rituals for, and work towards is an annual crop: it nourishes me, it's necessary for survival, it requires renewing every year. The day-to-day work of getting my assignments done, accomplishing short-term goals, and finishing my projects is this kind of crop. It sustains me when I get that boost of a good grade or a project completed.

The results of my second planting last year, however, are more akin to starting an orchard.These are not things that finish neatly with tidy evaluations: "Congrats, you got an A on this wedding!" Tended carefully and treated well, they are long-term, life-long endeavors: love, family, career. Even the quilt, which has a definable endpoint for me (when it goes, eventually, to Ramallah), is a long-term project, one that I hope will reach its full growth far away from me, as people see it and, hopefully, respond to it.

Blessings to you in your second planting, no matter what your crop may be.