What Lammas Is and Is Not

Last updated on: July 28, 2016 at 5:00 am by Rev. Catharine Clarenbach

What Lammas Is and Is Not 2016-07-28T05:00:53+00:00 Rev. Catharine Clarenbach

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In my tradition, Lammas is about sacrifice. About willingly giving what you have for the greater good. And it is, too, about receiving that gift to benefit the great good. This post is about the beautiful metaphors of Lammas, and it is also about some of the realities of contemporary US culture. This missive is written primarily to my white siblings, though I welcome the commentary of my siblings of color.

While I know that we are all part of one human family, I also know that our experiences in the United States are very different and always have been. I hope these Lammas reflections can speak to that difference, and to how white people can help to move the culture toward justice, the prerequisite for peace.

Shut up, Show up, Speak up

Thanks to Randal Mason for the following concept of shut up, show up, and speak up. I don’t know whether it’s original to him, but I find it extremely helpful when thinking about privilege, supremacy, and sacrifice.

Nowadays, this concept makes me think of things like supremacy—the power-over that is wielded, mostly unknowingly, by those with unearned privilege. I am thinking about those of us with white skin and when we need to shut up and listen and believe people of color—and give over our tendency not to listen and not to believe.

Lammas makes me think of how whites and others with privilege need to show up and occupy places, in physical and online places where we can “boost the signal.” We need to be careful not to take up spaces where people of color could be. We need to know when to follow the lead of people of color as a consequence of listening and believing. We need to be where we can be, whether that’s rallies, community meetings, writing online, or sharing the work of people of color where our white friends, family, and colleagues will see it. And we need to work where people of color cannot be, cannot reach in this culture, do our anti-racist work there.

And Lammas makes me think of speaking up. Sometimes our—whites’—comfort is the sacrifice we make to talk with those like us who are inadvertently or overtly racist. Sometimes the sacrifices come in conversations with our comrades of color. What we give for the greater good are our relationships, our fears, our own comfort, the revelation of our own ignorance, and the commitment to do better.

There is a word, Holocaust, that most associate with the Second World War, and the atrocities thereof. There is another word, less well known outside of Jewish circles: Shoah. Holocaust means a burnt offering to God. Shoah means disaster, catastrophe. In my view, describing those years as the Shoah is much more accurate than calling them the Holocaust. God did not demand the sacrifice of all who died at the hands of the Nazi machine.

When I Think of Lammas

Similarly, something that is NOT a Lammas sacrifice sadly demanded by the Goddess are the murders of people of color of all genders, cisgender (both men and women) and trans* people in disproportionate numbers. Orlando, Ferguson, Baltimore, New York…so many places around the nation. These deaths are not Lammas sacrifices. They are part of catastrophe. They are part of a national disgrace. They are not a holocaust, a sacrificial offering to God.

So as I think of Lammas, I think of what sacrifice is and the symbol of the wheat stalks I have. I think of the way those stalks were cut down to be used in the making of bread. I think of the way “the fruit of the Earth and the work of human hands” (words from the Roman Catholic liturgy I grew up with) come together to bless us as the result of the harvest.

When I think of Lammas, I think of the threshing floor. Of separating what is needful from what is extraneous—perhaps separating ignorant wielding of privilege from conscious anti-racist courage?

Grain, Flowers, and the Need to Move toward Justice

When I think of Lammas, I think of how that single stalk of grain was shown at the Mysteries of Eleusis, of Hades, Persephone and Demeter (and of the trickster figure, Baubo). I think of how the mystai, gone through purification, layers of Mystery, were brought to confront life and death, seeding and rebirth, winter and summer. Agriculture, that civilization-changing and -building that demands Earth and Her humanity to work together.

I think of the beauty of the flower that stands tall, then wilts, only to be born again anew in the spring. The flower, like the phallus of the God, both standing and resting. Neither one (except perhaps in the case of Priapus or the Herns) more necessary than the other. But each coming in their time.

In Unitarian Universalism, we have the many wonderful quotations pertaining to the arc of the moral universe turning toward justice. The original version was written by Rev. Theodore Parker and made famous by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It has been added to in the years following King’s death to say that it is we who must do the bending. It is we who must set our hands and feet to the threshing. What is given is given and if the people are to be blessed, we must put our shoulders to the Wheel.

How Might We Celebrate Lammas?

How are we confronted with our own desires to remain separate? To remain in the comfortable, rigged condition of privileged ignorance? How are we afraid to build bridges across race (and gender, sexual orientation, dis/ability, size, and many more qualities of identity)?

What sacrifices will we make for the greater good? What will we offer to the Goddess’ sickle? What metaphorical blood will we shed that the people can live together in justice and so eventually in harmony?

What can we do? What will we do?

How will we celebrate Lammas this year?

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