Opening Prayer for Litha
by Daria MacGregor
Hail Summer Sun
Riding high in the sky, longest day of the year
And yet a paradox
A tipping point
Light turns to dark, slowly at first, then pouring faster and faster as the wheel turns
So drink in the light
Dance in the light of the fireflies
Under the Cancer Mother's Moon
Revel in the gifts of maidenhood, cavort with your brothers and sisters
For soon it will be harvest time
Harvest of fruit to feed us
Harvest of children to succeed us
Can you feel the womb of the world, growing heavier with life?
Welcome friends, to our Litha celebration.
Mine is the Month of Roses; yes, and mine
The Month of Marriages! All pleasant sights
And scents, the fragrance of the blossoming vine,
The foliage of the valleys and the heights.
Mine are the longest days, the loveliest nights;
The mower’s scythe makes music to my ear;
I am the mother of all dear delights;
I am the fairest daughter of the year.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Wedding Day
written by a fellow One Spirit minister, Rev. Mary Diane Hausman, on the eve of her ordination
A serious, joyful surprise,
my marriage to the Divine.
On a summer’s eve,
as solstice nears
and willows form a bower of green
embracing, supporting,
I take the hand of my sacred Self,
speak the vows of Lover to Beloved.
In this snapshot of time
I am a hologram,
a shard of the ancient yet
eternal Moment.
One shard shows this cheek, another
that eye. But in each piece the whole
of the Holy Me winks from within, as
I become partnered with the One:
the vital Force that bids me
to the bridal bed.
This Moment holds me
beyond time. I repeat the
wordless words of bonding,
kiss my Beloved. Oh!
God in me tastes so sweet.
This moment is my only now.
Complete, unioned,
I Am.
Chant:
Cauldron of Change
Blossom of Bone
Arc of Eternity
Hole in the Stone
A poem from the Chinook tradition:
We call upon the Earth, our planet home
with its beautiful depths and soaring heights,
Its vitality and abundance of life
And together we ask that it teach us and show us the way
We call upon the mountains, the cascades, and the Olympics
The high green valleys and meadows filled with wild flowers
The snows that never melts
The summits of intense silence
And we ask that they teach us and show us the way
We call upon the waters that ring the Earth horizon to horizon
That flow in our rivers and streams
That fall upon our gardens and fields
And we ask that they teach us and show us the way
We call upon the land that grows our food
The nurturing soil and fertile fields
The abundant gardens and orchards
And we ask that they teach us and show us the way
We call upon the forests, the great trees reaching strongly to the sky
With the Earth in their roots and the heavens in their branches
The fir, and the pine, and the cedar
And we ask that they teach us and show us the way
We call upon the creatures of the fields, and the forests, and the seas
Our brothers and sisters,
the wolves and the deer
The eagle and dove,
The great whales and the dolphins
The beautiful orca and salmon who share our home
And we ask that they teach us and show us the way
We call upon all those who have lived on this Earth
Our ancestors and our friends
Who dreamed the best for future generations
And upon whose lives our lives are built
And with thanksgiving,
We call upon them to teach us and show us the way
And lastly, we call upon all that we hold most sacred
The presence and power of the Great Spirit of love and truth
Which flows through all the Universe
To be with us and teach us and show us the way
To Love Is Not To Possess
by James Kavanaugh
To love is not to possess,
To own or imprison,
Nor to lose one’s self in another.
Love is to join and separate,
To walk alone and together,
To find a laughing freedom
That lonely isolation does not permit.
It is finally to be able
To be who we really are
No longer clinging in childish dependency
Nor docilely living separate lives in silence,
It is to be perfectly one’s self
And perfectly joined in permanent commitment
To another--and to one’s inner self.
Love only endures when it moves like waves,
Receding and returning gently or passionately,
Or moving lovingly like the tide
In the moon’s own predictable harmony,
Because finally, despite a child’s scars
Or an adult’s deepest wounds,
They are openly free to be
Who they really are – and always secretly were,
In the very core of their being
Where true and lasting love can alone abide
William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed; But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Big
By Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
This is, perhaps, the year to learn to be big. Spruce tree big. Cliffside big. Big as mesa, as mountain lake. Big as in cosmos, as in love. Being small has never served me—constricting, contorting, trying to fit into a room, into shoes, into a name. Let this be the year to escape all those little rules with those little shoulds, all those little cages with their little locks. Time to make of myself a key, time to lean into immensity. Time to supersize communion, time to grow beyond self. Time to open, to unwall, to do as the universe does, accelerating as it expands, not rushing toward something else, no, but changing the scale of space itself.