This is a time when so many of us are holding Ukraine in our hearts and thoughts.  But it is also a time when, for us in the Northern hemisphere, the earth is pouring herself out in a profusion of life and leaves and joy.  For me, this is a balance and a healing.  We need the life and the joy to balance the huge amount of anger, fear and sorrow that are being released at the moment. And for those who are feeling weighed down by this, the natural world can be such a place of healing.  Take a walk out where it is green. Breathe in the beauty of new life, and breathe out the pain.  We are about to enter our summer months as Beltane or May Day is the next day, May 1^st.

I love May

I love May.  Everything is here, new-born after winter’s absence, fresh-green and glowing.  The newly hatched leaves are translucent and are as perfect as a baby’s toes, eliciting the same surge of awe.  The trees swell to their full size and you can just catch them in their playdays, unfurling fingers, learning the lure of the sun before they settle into the majesty of their maturity.  The world is green again, and for a moment it is surprise, it is joy, it is balm, before we acclimatise ourselves and it becomes backdrop to our everyday occupations.  I love the green, I drink it in deep breaths to water my parched heart.

And not just green.  The hedgerows are bright with white, hawthorn flowers above, cow parsley below, not the cultured pink of cherry blossom but mile upon mile of the bounty of the wild.  They shine as you drive past, they declare the winter dead and gone and celebrate the opening of the earth.

In May the sun can warm you mellow, playing remembered tunes on white skins.  It calls you outside, out of the dark domain of buildings and into the open air, newly refurbished and ready for custom.  And the air, the air is sweet, perfumed by the abundance of flowers so you don’t even need to hold one close to smell it.  The scents mingle with the sun to bathe you inside and outside with splendour.  At my house there is a waterfall of wisteria blossom over my porch door, and a cascade of white clematis over the back so whenever I enter or leave I am filled with the scent of May. 

I have been reading ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ by Robin Wall Kimmerer which I do recommend. It blends scientific knowledge with indigenous wisdom particularly regarding plants. She quotes the Anishinaabe story of creation of the first man, Nanabozho. ‘As he continued exploring the land, Nanabozho was given a new responsibility: to learn the names of all the beings. He watched them carefully to see how they lived and spoke with them to learn what gifts they carried in order to discern their true names. Right away he began to feel more at home and was not lonely anymore when he could call the others by name and they called out to him when he passed, ‘Bozho!’ – still our greeting to one another today.’

This could be the basis of the parallel biblical story in Genesis 2.19: ‘Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.’ However the way it is written gives the impression that Adam (and therefore us) had some kind of authority and superiority over creation. Naming here looks like a way of control instead of knowledge, respect and relationship, not helped by Genesis 1.28 where they were told to subdue and rule the natural world. However the instruction in Genesis 2.15 was to work or serve the land and to take care of it. Let us follow this way, serving and taking care of the land, and the way of Nanabozho, watching and learning from the more-than human beings so that ‘each step is a greeting to Mother Earth’.

In accord with its name

The summer is sizzling the lawn. The short grass has bled its green into the dry earth and has taken on its colour, brown with yellow highlights in its hair from the steady sun. The longer blades are still green so the lawn is mottled with tufts of grass and suckers of trees, and with the green of wildflowers that have now come into their own. Clover predominates, trefoil leaves like lace and white flower heads with russet at the roots. In one corner I have a patch of bright yellow flowers waving in the breeze with deep purple below among the clover. The purple I know, it is self-heal, such a powerful name for so unprepossessing a plant. Perhaps previously we would all have know its uses, all have welcomed it as an easy remedy for infections or inflammations and picked it for our wounds and sores. That knowledge is no longer part of the common fund but is kept in herbalists’ purses. For us it is just a wildflower, but one I treat with respect because of its heritage.

And above, the yellow. How many dandelion-type yellow flowers there are, all glorious in their wild brightness. There are hawkbits and hawksbeards and hawkweeds, not to mention catsears, sow-thistles, nippleworts and various lettuces. I think mine is the lesser hawkbit. I have had them here for years and have never bothered finding their name before. Names make things more intimate, we have been introduced, we have a relationship. I have also found out the name of the wildflower that colonises all my beds, one I always addressed as ‘number 4’ as it was my fourth worst weed. It is herb bennet, and now I find I have to treat it more kindly in accord with its name.

We are now more aware of how beneficial it is for us to spend time in nature and particularly with trees, both for our mental and physical health. Trees of course give off oxygen. But the main cause of these health benefits are chemicals called phytoncides.

Phytoncides are antibacterial and antifungal chemicals that plants emit to create a field of protection around themselves against harmful bugs, bacteria, and disease, but they also protect and help us. The oils boost mood and immune system function; reduce blood pressure, heart rate, stress, anxiety, and confusion; improve sleep and creativity; and may even help fight cancer and depression. When we breathe in these chemicals, our bodies respond by increasing the number and activity of a type of white blood cell called natural killer cells or NK. These cells kill tumour- and virus-infected cells in our bodies.

Exposure to green space also reduces the risk of type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, premature death and preterm birth. In comparison to the urban environment, walking in trees lowers people’s blood pressure, cortisol levels, pulse rates, and sympathetic nervous system activity (related to stress), while increasing their parasympathetic nervous system activity (related to relaxation). Hugging a tree also increases levels of the hormones responsible for feeling calm and happy, and for emotional bonding (oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine). So go and enjoy your local green spaces as often as you can.

Wild places

The hazel and hawthorn trees dapple the foxglove and campion. The bracken breaks through like a bishop’s crook, the brambles arch and the nettles gather. They hold silence like a living quality of air, broken by birdsong and bees hum, and the river stroking stones in the hollow. There is a magic quality to wild places that restores the soul.

So what of ourselves? Do we allow wild places to grow in rampant chaos, or do we cut and control our inner being? Is there room for birdsong in our plans and processes, do bees visit our memories? Do we allow nettles and spiders as part of our harmony, or do we prefer manicured thoughts and concrete paths? Can I breathe in an inner silence, can I trust the pillars of trees that border my feelings? Are there rivers I listen to although I can’t see their source or destination? Am I green, can I make my own oxygen?

And when error or disaster have bulldozed pain through my orchards, can I give it time to heal, can I let new growth cover the scars and enjoy the wild flowers that thrive in new-made clearings? Can I trust that the chaos of wild places is as important to my creativity and sanity as my carefully constructed buildings?

1st February is Imbolc, one of the four Celtic festivals lying between the equinoxes and solstices that divide up the year. These were primarily agricultural festivals. Imbolc saw the beginnings of new life with the start of the lambing season. Beltane (1st May) was the beginning of summer when the livestock were moved to upland pasture and were driven between two fires to purify them from disease. Lugnasad (1st August) was the central point of the harvest celebrations when the grain was brought in for safe storage. And Samhain (1st Nov) was the end of the farming year when the livestock were brought inside.

Because the farming cycle of the year was based around the seasons of the sun, so too were other activities such as social gatherings, marriage and legal agreements. What can we learn from the festival of Imbolc that might be relevant to us now?

Imbolc is the beginning of new life, the return of the sun’s energy, the sap rising in plants, the source of growth and creativity. For the Celts this energy was represented by the appearance of the maiden goddess Brigid which is why the church now celebrates Candlemass on 2nd February, relating to the Virgin Mary. Brigid is associated with springs and wells, and with poetry and song, so this is a good time to enjoy either. I can find the winter difficult so it helps to remind myself at the start of February that new life is on its way.

February

How good that the most challenging month is the shortest of the year, to hurry us towards March and the coming of spring and sunshine and Easter and revelations and new growth and life and abundance. Goodbye February, thank you for cushioning the winter for us, for being the one to welcome crocuses and catkins, and to allow new buds to grow subtly and subversively, and to tease more of the light out of the winter sky, drawing the sun back again with your string of promise.

Thank you for Valentines and pancakes, and for the hard clay earth waking up from the cold. There is a bee buzzing, you are letting in the workers of summer. The grey skies are like the mother of pearl lining of living shells, hiding secret growth. And the carpet of brown leaves is broken by merry shoots of green weeds and wild things that are always the first to show. Soon we will have bluebells. Soon the sun will choose our side as his preferred companion and the evenings will unfurl into glad day.

But the buzz isn’t here yet, the busy explosion of life under a newborn sun-season. February is still a season of peace, like a mother who rises before dawn and prepares the home while the children are still abed.

Christmas is past, the season when we remember and honour God becoming man and so linking heaven and earth, matter and spirit, love and justice. But that promise has fallen short and our world, its people and its planet, are suffering. Too much of so many religions has been caught up with maintaining the status quo, with divisiveness, control and patriarchy instead of the love and justice promised for all. This is a critical time for our planet, and we look to find new ways (which are often old ways) of bringing the healing and understanding we need.

This is a time for acknowledging that the spirit is at work in all of us, whatever our creed or lack of creed, and in all the life forms of our planet. This is a time for recognising that we and God are not best served by the emphasis on masculine terms and attributes for deity, we must restore the divine feminine and so bring that unity in the godhead into our world. This is the time for working together in hope and love and justice.

Symbols of hope

We have just passed the solstice, the shortest day of the year. It hid behind tatters of snow and the fear of more. It hid behind the focus on Christmas and the bustle to be ready. Silently, mysteriously, we have now moved back from the brink and are inexorably heading into the light, although it still feels the same, although the cold still hugs us like a friend.

The beginning of the return of the sun is also the beginning of winter. Like the yin and yang symbol where each has the other in its centre, we are not abandoned to winter, we are climbing back to the light, we are living in the rebirth of hope.

Hope is essential currency when so much of the fullness of living is shut away. We know the sun and summer will return, our hope is a solid substance that pulls us through the night. In the old days the return of the sun hung on our shoulders, interwoven with our celebrations, and our symbols of hope were the living greens that never died, the holly and the ivy.

We no longer honour the ways of the sun and the cycles of plants in the same way. But we all still fear and face the long death. That is why Christmas nestles in its cradle of dark – not just to celebrate the gift of light but to remember the gift of God, coming to live with us when the days were bleak, sharing with us the power to outlast death.