Lammas, or Lughnasad, is
fast approaching.  As long as I
have been Pagan I have had a special fondness for this Sabbat.  For me it speaks to the essential
mystery of life more eloquently than the others.  On the one hand, there is the beauty of the harvest,
Farmers’ Markets are overflowing with tomatoes, squash, beans, flowers, and the
other abundance of summer at its height. 
My balcony is filled with flowers.

But manifesting this
abundance requires us to harvest, to bring things to an end.  No more sowing for the future.  The harvest is now, and what you’ve
sown is what you’ll get, if you nurtured it well.  If you’ve been remiss, what exists is what you’ll get.

And afterwards the wheel turns ever more rapidly towards the dark side of the year, where the sacred cycle will again repeat itself in decline, death, dormancy, and the return to life that always follows.  The plants giving so abundantly now will die or go dormant and the earth itself will begin to close in.

I love all the Sabbats and all that they symbolize, but Lammas is for me the most beautiful, the most poignant, and in many ways the deepest.  Perhps that is why I’ve always loved Katherine Kurtz’s novel Lammas Night. 

So themes of sacrifice are deeply entwined with Lammas’ abundance.   Sacrifice is simply a kind of giving, the greater the gift from the giver the greater the sacrifice.

The earth has given us from its richness.  What do we give in return?

Our society has long forgotten what it is to give, and seems to be getting increasingly worse at it.  Corporations and politicians know how to take, and take ruthlessly, as the land is degraded, the seas emptied of fish, the earth itself poisoned to feed the greed of a few and the thoughtlessness of the many.  All too often we ourselves simply take, maybe shake our heads that there is nothing we can do in the larger scheme of things, and proceed with our lives.  The world is so complex all of us have to do this some of the time, otherwise we would be overwhelmed, and never notice the gifts and abundance and beauty of life.  But too many of us do it all of the time. 

I think Lammas is a particularly fitting time where we, like the earth, can give of our own fruitfulness in whatever way it seems best to us.  And since Yule is when we give to other people, perhaps this is the time when we most appropriately give to the earth which sustains us, and which receives so very little in return.

I am speaking of giving out of our abundance, not of sacrifice done simply from a sense of duty.  Sacrifice with an “I want” motive rather than an “I should” one.  What service, what gift, can you give to the earth itself this Lammas or thereabouts?  I think it need not be big, but I think it needs to be meaningful. 

I’ll be thinking about this in the few days remaining before Lammas and I hope others will as well.