Winter Rains Have Turned the Star Wheel
Among the many stories about the seasons that we have told each other down through
the centuries of human wondering and wandering on this lovely planet earth is this
one according to classical Greek mythology.
One day while Demeter, goddess of grain, was gathering flowers, Zeus, king of the
gods, decided his brother Pluto, god of Hades, should marry Demeter's daughter, Persephone.
So, in Demeter's absence and without her knowledge, Pluto came and carried his new bride off to his underworld kingdom.
Demeter searched for her daughter in vain. When she learned how her daughter's disappearance
had been engineered, she was not only grief-stricken but infuriated with Zeus. She
refused to return to Olympus. She wandered about until finally she had the opportunity to cause a special sanctuary to be built into which she retired, wasting
away in her grief for her lost daughter. And the earth wasted ,too. So that the
drought might be reversed, Zeus insisted she return to Olympus; but Demeter vowed
she would not let the vegetation grow again until her daughter was restored to her. In the
face of the dead and dying vegetation, Zeus relented and Pluto was ordered to bring
Persephone back.
But before Pluto returned Persephone, he saw to it that she swallowed a pomegranate
seed which magically ensured that she would return to her husband in his underworld
realm annually. Demeter, rejoicing to have her daughter back made the earth bring
forth green and growing things once more. And so the classical world organized the
heaven, earth, the underworld, and, of course, the seasons.
* * * *
She handed us the small paper sacks, wrinkled and well used. "Here," she said, "This
is what I promised you." And then she was gone. Inside the paper sacks were small,
dried, wrinkled globes. If I had found them under my sink or back in the refrigerator drawer, I would have been embarrassed and I would have disposed of them quickly.
But these ugly, brown, dried up little chunks were a gift from a friend and as such,
they placed us under obligation.
At home, we stowed the packages in a cool, dry place until we could find some time
to deal with them. Weeks went by, and we had all but forgotten them, when our friend
accosted us and asked if we had taken care of her gift. Feeling guilty, we confessed
that they were still waiting our attention, and went home and got out the shovel and
the brown, wrinkled bags and headed out into the yard. Digging at random, we placed
the sere and shriveled little globes into the ground in the front of the house and
in the rear and along the side. I remember thinking that from appearance, at least, we
might as well be planting rocks. There was no sign of life in the little brown packets
we dropped into shallow holes and covered lightly with earth. I wondered, had we
waited too long; had the basement where they had been stored been to warm; was this
an exercise in futility.
And before very long, as if to confirm my doubts, the winds of late autumn whipped
the last of the leaves from the trees and piled them over the lawn and hid from view
the evidence that anything was buried there. Winter was mild and wet with short
days and long nights and occasional snows and more frequent rains. The lawn, with the last
of the leaves still gathered under shrubs and around trees turned its usual color
of dormant brown. The solstice came and went; the days grew longer and the night,
shorter, the sun, stronger. Then Imbolc called the small creatures from their winter lairs
and the birds began to call to each other in the dark hour before dawn.
One wet and rainy morning, my little dog decided that he did not want to get his feet
wet, and refused to leave the yard. Not wanting to have to clean up after him, I
insisted that he follow me, on the end of his leash, as I made a quick tour of the
boundaries of our estate. Remembering the fall planting, I scanned the landscape for any
sign of new life. Nothing raised its head above the sodden leaves and the brown
grass. Rain streaking my glasses, I turned back to the house, convinced that the
bulbs had rotted in the ground or had fed the squirrels over the winter. The dog, relieved
to see that I had come to my senses at last, pulled me up the steps and shook rain
from his coat all over my pants.
I forgot the fall plantings, and the little packets I had buried in the dark earth.
I began to fret about finding time to remove the last of the leaves I had not found
time to remove last autumn. One morning, kicking at some mouldering leaves, suddenly
I discovered a small green spear piercing the earth. Looking more carefully, I discovered
a row of green spears pushing aside a blanket of leaves in front of the house and
others along the side and in rear. And thoughts flooded my mind--thoughts derived
from many traditions:
"Though they be dead; yet shall they live again."
"For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
the flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.."
"Rejoice and sing, for Persephone returns from shadowed halls of Hades
Rejoice and sing, for, in gladness the Earth Mother
robes herself in new life."
* * * *
Contrary to popular wisdom, neither the ancient Greeks, nor even the ancient Hebrews,
were the first of our species. Others before them had also experienced the round
of seasons and watched with intelligence and growing awareness the cyclical activities
of the moon and the sun and the stars in their constellations. Others before them
had devised stories built out of human experience to give expression to what they
saw around and above them--great tales that began with"as if
-"-it is as if,
they said, the world is engendered by a Great Mother who gives birth to life and receives
it back again and goes on giving birth again--we see it most poignantly in the springtime.
As the years wore on, some decided there was a more masculine genius moving the world
and so the Great Mother was relegated to one of those lesser deities subject to the
whims of the King of the gods. And the story of the One who was three: Mother, daughter, Wise Crone/ Demeter and Persephone and Hecate took on a more mundanely storied
career of being more or less at the mercy of the gods.
Elsewhere, as the stories got more complicated and being devised to serve other purposes,
though the maternal one remains feminine, the young one is no longer a daughter,
but rather a son who dies and is entombed, then rises with the hilarious green wave of spring.
* * * *
All winter long, the rushes stand brown and sere by the side of the road. Buffeted
by a cold wind, they seem to dance stiffly, but, in truth, there is no life in them;
it is only wind moving through dead reeds. They seem to whisper some subtle message
in a language remote and unknown to any living on the earth. But it is not a voice;
it is only wind moving through dead reeds. All winter long, moving but unmoved,
they sway with the wind; all winter long, they sing its song. All winter long, bundled
in my coat and wrapped in my thoughts, I pass by; I see them, but I do not see. All winter
long, I hear them, but do not hear.
There comes a day when the voice of the wind changes from keening dirge to soft lullaby.
There where the dry and brittle reeds are still held tightly by roots deep in the
dark earth, a green wave appears and laps about them. From out of the earth new
life emerges and begins to flow upward, like a rising tide, among and through the corpses
of last season's growth. Each day, as if lured by sun and encouraged by wind, the
green rises higher among the reeds by the road. And in time, the green tide of life
rises and engulfs the dead remnants of other seasons. And now, as the reeds dance
fluidly in the wind and sing sibilant syllables of unbridled praise, my soul is drawn
to this miraculous phenomenon, and the scales fall from my eyes and my ears are unblocked and spring drives winter from my soul.
And I hear the reeds singing:
"Though we were dead, yet shall we live again."
And I hear the reeds singing:
"For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
the flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.."
And I hear the reeds singing.
"Rejoice and sing, for Persephone returns from shadowed halls of Hades
"Rejoice and sing, for, in gladness the Earth Mother
robes herself in new life."
* * * *
This first Sunday after the full moon after the spring equinox has for centuries been
observed by the Christian world as Easter, though it was not called that until the
late Middle Ages. This holiday in particular represents an amalgam of many spring
celebrations--the name being taken from a goddess Eoster or Ostara going all the way
back to Astarte, and the date having been changed from its original correlation with
the spring equinox to the more labored designation so it could never coincide with
the Jewish celebration of Passover. Indeed, most of the themes and symbols embedded in
the Christian Easter story which some accept as fact have nonetheless been borrowed
from earlier myths. When we search out the sources of those themes and symbols,
we might indeed begin to appreciate the depth perspective on life and its mysteries that those
who walked this way before us gleaned. Though they have lived their lives and are
long gone, received back to our mothering earth, it is as if we can yet see their
faces in those of our children, knowing their experience of the fundamentals of life and
death and the eternal round of the seasons to be like unto our own. We share the
grief of loss and the joy of new life and the continuing recognition that we are
all children of the same great love that gave us birth and will receive us back again when
life has used us up.
* * * *
It is afternoon in late winter, or early spring. The long shafts of sunlight find
their way through the slats of the blind. My daughter, visiting for a few days,
has fallen asleep over her book. I slip into the chair across from her, reading
my own book and sipping from a cup of coffee. She stirs and I look up to see something flit
across her face--a shadow, perhaps, caused by a cloud crossing the sun. I watch
her settle back to sleep. And then I see it.
In some subtle way, her face changes and I am looking at a stranger--a very familiar
stranger. For a moment I am confused. Of course it is my daughter I am seeing,
but there is someone else there, too. And then it strikes me. I am looking at the
face of her grandmother, my mother. Not a very remarkable insight, were it not for the
fact that my mother died when I was nine months old. I have no memory of her. I
have seen only one photo of her--standing at a far distance, in a field, her face
averted. I have no image of what my mother, her grandmother looked like. And yet, sitting
in that living room, that late winter, early spring afternoon, I suddenly knew her
face. I saw her in my daughter's face, and somewhere deep within me, an ancient
hurt for which there had never been any name began to heal.
My daughter opened her eyes; saw me watching and smiled. She could not know what
I had seen, how out of death and winter, spring and life had emerged to clothe my
world in gratitude and praise. We smiled at each other and turned back to our books.
But in my mind a voice whispered:
"Though I be dead, yet shall I live."
But in my mind a voice whispered:
"For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
the flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.."
But in my mind a voice whispered:
Rejoice and sing, for, in gladness the Earth Mother
robes herself in new life."
The sermon in a Unitarian Universalist setting is never the last word
on any subject, but rather an invitation to further dialog.
You may want to read other visitors'
comments on David and Beverly Bumbaugh's "Winter Rains Have Turned the Star
Wheel"
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