Happy Beltane! (When Our Happiness Can Help Heal the World)

I recently received a lovely Beltane message from an Eco-Celtic singer/songwriter who became a friend when she did a fundraising concert at my school last fall. (Beltane is the special time of year in the old Pagan calendar when the Earth is fully awake and alive again after a deep sleep all winter.)

After all the heaviness of climate change and the recent conference struggles and post-conference dissections, Oona McOuat's message rang out loud and true for me. Please visit her website to listen to some of her divine music (turn your speakers on).

A moon round and golden is shining through my window, shimmering with the magic and possibility of Beltane. She invites us to dip into the fullness of this ripe and fertile time, to feast our senses, rejoice in beauty — be ribald renegades risking to celebrate life.

Go to the grove. Leap over the flames. Dance barefoot in the dew. Quiver and giggle and jiggle your way into an overflowing pool of Love. Believe that our subversively playful, pleasure-filled antics will help to mend a broken world. Blessed Be.

And indeed, we are all blessed ... all of us not yet affected by the ravages of a climate that is changing because we refuse to see the impacts of our breaking the laws of the universe, the laws of physics, the laws of cause and effect.

If you're reading this, you're probably old enough to be part of the last blessed generation of human beings. Our children and grandchildren won't be so blessed.

And yet, at times we must give up the hard work for a little while and remember to celebrate that for which we are working so hard.