On The Blessedness Of The Fruits Of Summer

A homily for Lammas, 2024.

Dearly beloved,

A very blessed Lammas/Lughnasadh to all of those in the northern Hemisphere and a very blessed Imbolc to our siblings in the Southern Hemisphere! May all of your hopes and dreams grow into fruition over the coming year!

For us in the Northern Hemisphere, this holy day is about the ripening of the first fruits of the year. Here in my home in Northern California, we are welcoming in apples, grapes, melons, berries, and citrus of all kinds, as well as artichokes, avocados, and summer squash, and I can tell you, I am reveling in all of these wonderful foods. As such, I am moved to speak this Lammas on the blessedness of the fruits of Summer.

The fruits of Summer are special. The first fruits of the year’s harvest have ripened and our tables and homes welcome them. Our plates abound with fresh bread, fresh fruit, and fresh vegetables, and we walk happily in the warm days and cool evenings as the days start shortening in earnest. And all of this was due to our hard work (if we are lucky enough to be able to grow our own food) and the hard work of farmers, pickers, washers, distributors, and other diligent workers over the course of the Spring and early Summer. While some of us might be lucky enough to live where the fruit and grain grows wildly and freely for all to take as they need, most likely the food on our tables on any given day came from the hard work of many people.

In the same way, in our spiritual lives, this time of year tends to occasion moments of fruition. As pagans, we believe in a naturalized theology, and accordingly we tend to see moments of spiritual realization coming to fruition as the natural world moves towards its own moments of fruition. This is a time where the seeds of the new selves we planted in Spring and the hard work we have done since then are bearing their first fruits, and thus it is a moment of initiation. Lammas is a feast, a celebration of the fruits of Summer, yes…but for those of us who live the spiritual life, it is also a moment where we begin to enjoy the first rewards of our spiritual work—the Great Work—that we have been doing over the course of Spring and Summer.

So celebrate yourself as you celebrate these first fruits of Summer. You have cultivated yourself and been cultivated by the Divine, and now you can enjoy some of the rewards of that cultivation. Celebrate the fruits and grains of Summer, yes, but also celebrate the person you are becoming as the Wheel Of The Year turns.

I also want to honor the blessed god Dionysos in this moment. Grapes are one of those fruits of Summer, and the Olympic performance has brought our beloved Dionysos to the fore of minds of the general public for the first time in centuries, perhaps millennia. More people are speaking the name of this great deity, who, in the Orphic tradition, is the inheritor of Olympus and the Heavens as Zagreus, than perhaps ever before in history. So in this moment let us honor great Dionysos and remember His gifts! Ιο, ιο Διόνυσος! Blessings and worship unto Thee, Great God!

And blessings to you, dear reader, and bright blessings upon your Great Work. Blessed Imbolc! And hail Dionysos!

In love,

Soror Alice