The Blessings on our Doorsteps & Dying Alone in the Time of Corona

Hello dear readers. I hope that you, and those you love, are well in these extraordinary times. This is just a small sharing before I write more in the weeks to come, especially as we move into the strangest of Holy Weeks & Eastertide. For now, we are continuing our forty days & nights in the wilderness, which has seemed so deeply apt this year. But, of course, it is a wilderness whose blessings we have unlearned how to see.

We are well here in our self-isolation and I have been enjoying many heart-opening walks, during which I have foraged for wild medicine. I have bern hugely drawn to nettles, who I am finding more and more ways to incorporate into my diet, and also to cleavers spring tonic, of which more soon. Today, I have heard that it's going to be beautifully sunny for many of us and so I am hoping to go for a little walk to the woods to see if I can find wild garlic. These are blessed times in so many ways.

But I wanted to write a little about another nearby plant and all that her presence and recent flowering has led me to reflect upon.

The plant pictured above is beautiful herb-Robert, also known as red robin, fox geranium, & stinking Bob, amongst many other names, who has come into flower just by our front door.  She has so many wonderful edible and medicinal qualities that I'm quite determined to write a longer blog about her soon. But what her presence makes me think about today is how supported we are by the other-than-human world, and otherworld, that surrounds us.

Aside from herb-Robert, on one side of our front door we have cleavers and, on the other side, nettles. All either support our immune systems, or are, like herb-Robert, actively anti-viral. I feel better, and more protected, just by knowing that they're there but I fully intend to add herb-Robert into my daily medicine taking practice; not because of what I hope to gain, but because its presence by our door feels like an invitation to relationship.

Over recent weeks it has become more clear that so many of us feel deeply, achingly, alone and unsupported; this is why swathes of us immediately took to stockpiling when Covid-19 first came to our shores. It's why so many insist on going out to get-things-done, even though they would be better staying at home and asking for help. And it is making our mourning even more painful to think that our loved ones, or anyone, has died 'alone' in a hospital bed.

This wound is deep; borne partly of the human condition; that feeling of separation that so rarely leaves us. But it has also been nurtured in us through many years of the deliberate erosion of community, and also our disconnection from sister death, our loss of relationship. No wonder that we panic so. We just don't trust Life. If only we were able to look just outside our front doors, or in the cracks in the pavements we walk every day, or in so many places that are so familiar that we look but rarely see. We are surrounded by friends. We are never without good company or support for the journey, and that feels to be especially true now.

But, today, I especially want to say something about dying alone, as we come to a time when some of us and some of those we love may fall to the coronavirus. It is indeed a terrible thing to contemplate dying without the surrounding presence of those who love us. Particularly in this country, we are very used to that being possible, although we might also breathe deeply into the fact that many choose to die when their loved ones have slipped out of the room, and that our animal kin will often take themselves away to wait for their final heartbeat.

To die is a solitary activity, but we are never alone in it. Sister death is with us, our ancestors are there to hold out a hand, our God. I know in my bones that many beings of good intent will show us the way.

When my dear, beloved dad died I was the only one who was with him; it was a privilege, the holy of holies, but I didn't feel that it was my presence that made him not alone. He was so busy with what he had to do; he moved his hands in the air in ways that I later discovered mirrored the movements he made at work when using his lathe, every now and then he would reach up as though picking an apple and then hold the prized fruit to his lips with great pleasure. When he had been struggling, for what seemed like forever, to let go of this wordly life, I prayed for his mum to come and show him the way. And I swear that he took three more deep breaths and died. It was the most beautiful moment of my life and it mattered that I was there as a witness but no, it wasn't my presence that made him not alone. Far from it.

And yes, it must be frightening and heatbreaking to be in hospital ill and dying and not to be abe to have visitors, and the greatest of tragedies for loved ones not to be able to hold a hand one last time before death comes. But we are never, ever alone and no one dies alone. The herb-Robert, the cleavers, and the nettles by my door tell me that. My dad taught me.

Be of good heart, beloved friends. We are held in this world, the next, and the places in between. We could not be more blessed.

Bewitched by the Blackthorn Being, part II ~ sacrifice & service

"Beloved, gaze in thine own heart, the holy tree is blooming there..." W.B. Yeats

I absolutely adore this stunning blackthorn pattern by William Morris, which was first sold by Morris & Co. in 1892. It is mostly the work of John Henry Dearle, as Morris was reaching the end of his life during its design, but it contains many of Morris's signature themes, such as daisies and entwined leaves.

I can see so many aspects of the Blackthorn Being here; owls, with shades of Blodeuwedd, foxes, stags, the presence of serpents in the snake's head fritillary which form the eyes of the Mother of the Woods; she is serpent-eyed indeed. In the Irish legend, 'The Pursuit of Diarmaid & Grainne', the deer goddess, Sadhbh, becomes pregnant as a result of eating sloe berries, the dark fruit of the blackthorn. Her son is born with a lump on his head, which contains a snake. Later, the snake is killed in sacrifice to save another man, underlining blackthorn's sacrificial service in mythology.

Since I wrote about blackthorn the other day, I have been reflecting on this sacrificial aspect which feels to be part of her purifying medicine. She is a great stabiliser of emotion & a bringer of hope & joy, a healer of depression. She does this by taking in negative, stagnant energies which are not her own; scapegoating herself, just as the, primarily Welsh, 'sin eaters' once did for the newly dead. How appropriate then that she was believed to be one of the trees woven into Christ's crown of thorns; the crucifixion as the ultimate scapegoating, sin eating for the world. Sacrifice and service. 

Blackthorn too seeks to transform despair into hope, death into life, just as winter transforms into spring. Indeed, the Buddhist practice of 'tonglen', or taking and sending, does much the same thing; breathing in the negative as a thick dark smoke and allowing it to settle in the heart chakra before breathing it out as transformed light. At its most powerful we are not working with only our own suffering but the suffering of others, whether of body, mind, or spirit, seeking to transform it as a gift, and a relief, to them. With our breath we can offer others a breathing space, an opportunity to also, at last, 'breathe out'. This turns on its head our usual human urge to avoid discomfort and seek out only what makes us feel good. Sacrifice and service. In this way we awaken compassion in ourselves for the suffering of others, whether human or non-human. Might we do this for humans with whom we vehemently disagree, as well as for those we love? Might we offer our heart breath to the victims of the badger cull, to trees cut down? 

But, of course, what we do for others we also do for ourselves, and vice versa. Pema Chödrön describes this as "breathing in for all of us, breathing out for all of us". It may be that we are too deeply entwined in our own emotional, spiritual, or physical, journey to feel that we have anything to offer to others. I have written about this before; the sense I have that some of us who feel a great deal are also feeling for those among us who are too overwhelmed, numbed, or disconnected to feel. This is the path of the serenydd, which I hope to write about more this year when I can find the words. Here is the path of the wounded healer, offering healing from our own pain & turning what seems like poison into medicine. Sacrifice and service. 

"You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal
of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, 

and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on."


Mary Oliver, ‘Wild Geese’


And this is the gift that the blackthorn also offers us; physiologically, as all trees do in breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen, but also spiritually in the power of her deeper prayer. She is so often regarded with suspicion and fear, as all beings associated with death are. That is because we have cut death off from life. Still, she keeps breathing for us and offering us her medicine.

And of her association with death, blackthorn is a tree of the 'warrior's journey' helping us to face our own dying, perhaps the bravest journey of all. But she also teaches us how to be fully alive. She is a wise, wild teacher to anyone who has an enduringly negative or pessimistic attitude, interpreting their life story through the bad, rather than the good. Blackthorn reminds us that the stories we tell ourselves about our lives matter, that we can re-frame them & change everything. I dislike intensely the 'New Age' view that we are somehow to blame for the terrible things that happen to us, just as we would not blame a blackthorn if she were mindlessly cut down. There are many with power in this world who do not use it well but it is good to be reminded that we have some power. On a day when we are feeling particularly compassionate we might choose to breathe in their suffering. Again, blackthorn teaches us that we don't need to rid ourselves of our 'thorns', or let go of our protection against what wounds us, in order to offer healing to that which wounds.

As for our own power to interpret our stories, I once read, I think in 'New Scientist' magazine, an article which talked about the disturbing trend for aid workers seeped in our cultural way of thinking to go to other parts of the world where natural, and other, 'disasters' had occurred and think that they were being kind by persuading the victims to take anti-depressants, of course encouraged by pharmaceutical companies who were keen to increase the market for their wares. But the issue was the assumption that the people who had experienced the death of loved ones, the destruction of homes and livelihoods, would be depressed. But often this wasn't so. They may have been in shock, desperately grief-stricken, angry, horribly sad and distressed, all entirely appropriate in those circumstances, but they had ways of framing their experiences within a worldview that we can scarcely even imagine. Anti-depressants just weren't the sort of medicine that were needed.  Indeed, our propensity to medicate perfectly valid human reactions to experience is to be questioned in our deepest core. It might be also be suggested that, increasingly, natural disasters due to climate change are caused by the rich Western world disproportionately effecting the poor elsewhere, and that, rather than seeking to truly offer healing, we wish to numb victims in order to avoid seeing, or engaging with, the pain that we ourselves have caused. Even medicine becomes the tool of oppression in the wrong hands; a colonisation of the heart. Unfortunately I have been unable to trace the article but there is an equally interesting, and more recent, article here on similar themes.

In our culture happiness has become a tyranny, but in so many ways victimhood is becoming equally attractive. The inauthenticity of emotion is a disease; the denial of grief, when there is so much to grieve, the burying of anger, when there is so much to rage against, and the refusal to see beauty in spite of, and because of, our grief & anger when there is so much that remains beautiful. Grief AND gratitude is increasinly the wild edge that we must walk upon. As in so many fairy stories, we perhaps need a jab from the sharp thorn to wake us up to reality and then the medicine of her petals to help us forgive it. There is so much that needs to be re-written and re-framed.

Tony Benn comes to mind. He said;

"There is no final victory, as there is no final defeat. There is just the same battle. To be fought, over and over again. So toughen up, bloody toughen up." 

A true warrior of the blackthorn speaking truth to power! No one said that it was meant to be easy. That's why we need to befriend the dark and the beings who understand its medicine, lest we should slip into a fairytale of denial or depression.

Interestingly all of this is a conversation that often arises here in the hedgehermitage, most recently today even before I had fully thought about blackthorn in this way. There is always a reason why our attention is drawn to a sister or brother being at a particular time and blackthorn is so rich with medicine and meaning. There is a lot to share, but of course it is personal too.

Returning to this lovely pattern, Morris & Co. tell us that, "the face of the Mother of the Woods in the wine red version gives life to the tree & the forest ~ a sort of a Morris 'green man'". They also note that, "sometimes children are afraid of the Mother of the Woods, kindly though she is, & so it's possible to place the daisies in the centre to 'ofset the crone'. I'm not at all sure that that's but I wish them much luck!

References:

Previous piece on Blackthorn ~ https://radicalhoneybee.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-blackthorn-being-and-vashtis-great.html

William Morris Blackthorn pattern images, Wiki Commons.

William Morris Blackthorn tiles information ~ http://williammorristile.com/textiles/blackthorn.html

Blackthorn folklore ~ https://www.druidry.org/library/trees/tree-lore-blackthorn

Sin Eaters ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin-eater

Mary Oliver, 'Wild Geese' ~ http://rjgeib.com/thoughts/geese/geese.html

Buddhist practice of tonglen ~ http://awesomemindsecrets.com/healing-meditation-tonglen/

Pema Chödrön, 'How to Practice Tonglen' in 'Lion's Roar' ~ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.lionsroar.com/how-to-practice-tonglen/amp/

'The modern epidemic of sadness destroying heart and soul cannot be solved with anti-depressants', Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, International Business Times,  23rd February 2018 ~ https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/modern-epidemic-sadness-destroying-heart-soul-cannot-solved-anti-depressants-1663346

The Blackthorn Being and Vashti's 'Great No'

It was lovely to see a froth of blackthorn blossom at the edge of our church field on Sunday. A member of the rose family, she is one of the first trees to blossom in the hedgerows after the dark of winter and so she is a powerful symbol of the determination to return to life from the frozen places. I love that her blossom appears before her leaves, which reminds me of the blackbird singing before the dawn. They both know that what they long for is coming, so why not just start singing now? “Why wait?”, they say, “open your petals, sing your song, the light is coming!”

Blackthorn, whose magic is deeply woven into the folklore of winter, is sometimes known as 'The Mother’, or ‘Dark Crone’, of the Woods and grows prolifically in the British Isles. She is often planted in boundary hedgerows as a protection due to her sharp thorns. Her folklore is equally thorny, and it was that that I sat down to write about this afternoon but, as so often happens, in the writing of it I somehow connected to a deeper ‘river beneath the river’ of what the Blackthorn Being* might want to say. As well as their stunning blossom, blackthorn also has striking deep blue/black fruits called sloes at the beginning of winter. It was when I read that the expression ‘sloe-eyed’, which refers to someone with beautiful, dark eyes, was first written of in Augusta Jane Wilson’s 1867 novel, ‘Vashti’, that the lightning struck.

Vashti is one of the little known women of the Bible, who appears only in the first chapter of the Book of Esther. I’m not sure that Augusta Evans’ novel has anything to do with the Biblical Vashti, but I was reminded just by seeing her name how compelling she is. In Esther we are told that Vashti is the Queen of Persia and the first wife of Persian King Ahasuerus. In the third year of his reign, Ahasuerus held a celebration for visiting nobles, together with his officials and servants, to ‘show the riches of his royal glory and the splendour & pomp of his greatness’. This lasted for one hundred & eighty days, at the end of which he held a further seven day feast in the garden of his Royal palace, to which everyone was invited. There, drinks were served in golden vessels and ‘the royal wine was lavished’. However, the king made sure to declare that no one was under any compulsion to drink as, ‘the king had given orders to all the staff of his palace to do as each man desired’. At the same time Vashti, his queen, was giving her own feast for the women in the palace. But she was not to be offered the same respect as the men.

On the final day of the feast, the king, who was ‘merry with wine’, told his servants to summon Vashti, ‘in order to show the peoples and the princes her beauty, for she was lovely to look at’. But Vashti said no. Her defiance infuriated the king, who then consulted his officials on what should be done. Afraid that Vashti’s 'great no' would encourage other women to also say no to their husbands, and considering her refusal to comply a wrong against not only the king but all the men of the king’s provinces, an order was issued that Vashti was never again to come before the king, that she should be ‘replaced by someone better than she’, and that ‘all women must give honour to their husbands, high and low alike’. When the king’s anger had cooled he 'remembered Vashti and what had been decreed against her' but his reaction was not to mend what had been broken but to send out his officers to ‘gather all the beautiful young virgins in his kingdom’ and bring them back to his harem. This is when Esther appears and the story continues. But Vashti is gone, disappeared. And most people, even those who read the Bible regularly, are unfamiliar with her name.

I have been in a Bible study group studying the Book of Esther and Vashti was almost glossed over entirely, with perhaps a disapproving mutter. It seems that the church prefers Mary’s “Yes!”, which is so often painted as passive submission rather than the radical act that it was, to Vashti’s “No!” Where Vashti is remembered she is an ambivalent figure. Occasionally she is written of as a feminist icon; Harriet Beecher Stowe called Vashti's disobedience the "first stand for women’s rights’. And, author of ‘The Women’s Bible’, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, wrote that Vashti "added new glory to [her] day and generation...by her disobedience; for 'Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.'" The African American poet Frances E.W. Harper, who considered the queen’s refusal to come from self-respect, wrote of her 1895 poem ‘Vashti’ that she was, "a woman who could bend to grief, but would not bow to shame." In contrast, the ancient Judaic interpretation of her story in the Midrash considers her to be wicked and vain, rejecting the possibility that her refusal was made for her own dignity and instead speculating that she must have been afflicted by a disfiguring illness, such as leprosy. Another interpretation suggests that the angel Gabriel had visited her and given her a tail!

But what of her connection to the Blackthorn, other than the suggestion that she may have been ‘sloe-eyed’? In many ways, Vashti reminds me of our own ‘hawthorn Christa’, the Welsh Blodeuwedd, who is described as the most beautiful woman on earth, having been created by enchantment out of flowers as a wife for Lleu Llaw Gyffes, without of course ever asking her what she wants. When she falls in love with another man, Gronw Pebr, whilst Llew is away she plots with him to kill her husband in order to free herself from this enforced spell and is punished by being turned into an owl who is ‘shunned by other birds’. Again, there are many interpretations of her story. To be ‘turned into an owl’ might not be seen as a punishment at all, but instead as Blodeuwedd’s decision to reclaim her claws after years of submission. This is Blodeuwedd’s ‘great no’. As Alan Garner writes of her in ‘The Owl Service’, “She wants to be flowers, but you make her owls. You must not complain, then, if she goes hunting.”

Nevertheless, again I was once in a group, comprising only women, which was discussing the Blodeuwedd story and it was suggested to me that her meaning in myth was as, “a warning to women not to give in to our fickle and unfaithful natures!” I wrote more about Blodeuwedd, and her connection to hedgerows in my article, ‘Boundaries and Blodeuwedd’. Then, I had only thought of her in relation to hawthorn, which is one of the flowers purportedly used in her creation, but perhaps there was a petal or two of hawthorn’s hedgerow sister, blackthorn, included too. They are both after all so wonderfully willful and wild.

Blackthorn is often associated with witches and with spells used to 'bind or blast’. In South Devon witches were said to carry blackthorn walking sticks for use in mischief making and, in Irish folklore, Blackthorn is the home of the Lunantisidhe, or moon fairies, who are unfriendly towards humans; and with good reason when one considers the devastation we have brought to hedgerows. In medieval times the Devil was said to prick his devotees' fingers with a blackthorn & heretics & witches were burned on blackthorn pyres. She is also one of the trees said to have been included in the crown of thorns at Christ's crucifixion. What a heavy burden to bear.

In older Celtic lore blackthorn is said to symbolise a warrior's death in service to a higher cause & to provide aid to heroes who, if they threw a blackthorn twig, would find an impenetrable hedge between themselves & their enemies. In Scotland too she is associated with warfare, & with the 'Old Hag of Winter', the Cailleach, who calls in winter by striking the ground with her blackthorn staff; a long & difficult winter being named a 'Blackthorn Winter' in her honour.

But, of course, Blackthorn is also a healer. She is not only a protector but a purifier. Medicinally, like hawthorn, sometimes known as whitethorn, she is wonderful for the circulation, for stimulating the metabolism, & for 'cleaning the blood'. Her dark sloes, ripen & sweeten after the first frost, which puts a rather different slant on the Cailleach's cold prayer; just as we are warned after the first frosts not to eat the remaining blackberries because the Devil has spoiled them, the sloes sweeten & help us to settle into the dark. As we emerge into the very early spring, her flowers help to purify the blood, soothe the stomach, and lessen the apathy that we can sink into in the winter. Drinking water infused with blackthorn bark is said to relieve fatigue and increase vitality and the fresh juice of her sloes when gargled can relieve a sore throat. The pulp of her berries, when combined with other ingredients, has also been used to make face masks to maintain skin elasticity and so ‘enhance beauty’. I’m sure that both Vashti and Blodeuwedd might have been said to have skin that was ‘blackthorn blessed’. And, of course, her sloes make the most delicious sloe gin.

And so, here is Blackthorn, a most wonderful healer, a provider of protection and much needed boundaries, and a bringer of joyful intoxication, yet there is such ambivalence towards her. Despite being acknowledged to have her uses, she is associated with the Devil and with witches’ curses, and linked inextricably with, the often terrifying Old Woman, the Cailleach, and so with winter, that most ambivalent of seasons. Perhaps with her stunning froth of flowers, which belie the ‘savage thorns’ beneath the prettiness, she just isn’t ‘friendly’ enough?

Which brings me back to Vashti, Blodeuwedd, and another Biblical woman who refused to say a submissive “Yes”, Adam’s first wife, Lilith. Lilith was said to have been ‘created from the same clay as Adam’ and at the same time, or even sometimes before him. This is in contrast to Eve, who was created from Adam’s rib later. In Jewish mythology, Lilith is often described as a sexually voracious demon who is banished to the desert but returns in the night to steal babies. Shades of Vashti’s ‘tail’ here perhaps? And what of Lilith’s crime? That was to refuse to be subservient to Adam, or in some versions of her story, to refuse to have sex in the missionary position! Here then is her ‘great no’. We might then find meaning in the knowledge that her name translates from the Hebrew as ‘night hag’, or ‘screech owl’. Indeed, Lilith is sometimes depicted with the feet of an owl. Sometimes she is also described as ‘the serpent in the tree’, but that is another story and another thread to follow. Isaiah 34 tells us that, “Her castles shall be overgrown with thorns, her fortresses with thistles and briers. She shall become an abode for jackals and a haunt for ostriches. Wildcats shall meet with desert beasts, satyrs shall call to one another; There shall the Lilith repose...” Again, she is often described as beautiful, but, like Vashti, like Blodeuwedd, like the Blackthorn she just isn’t nice enough. She has claws.

All of these stories provide inspiration for women not living the lives that they themselves have chosen, and to all living without liberty. Vashti, Blodweuwedd, and Lilith, all had status, at least in relation to their men, and all were valued for their beauty. And they all said “No” to living a life without power over their own bodies and destinies. But it isn’t really about being able to say no. Rather, it is about being counter-cultural, taking back our power to choose, just as Mary took her power by saying her ‘great Yes’. The Blackthorn Being, both blessed and burdened by the meaning that she has been given, can teach us about the strong boundaries that we need in order to make these clear decisions over our own lives and, if we are met with resistance, how to use our claws.

In response, we too might be regarded with, at best, ambivalence; thought of as unbeautiful; too willful, too wild, too fat, too thin, too waspish, too sharp, too unruly, just not friendly enough, but the world is changing, slowly, and Vashti, Blodeuwedd, and Lilith, queens of the Blackthorn Being with their ‘great nos’ are flowing through our veins to make sure that it does. They know that what we long for is coming, so why not just start singing now? 

“Why wait?”, they say, “open your petals, sing your song, the light is coming!”

References:

* I borrowed the phrase 'Blackthorn Being', slightly adapted and with much respect, from Sharon Blackie's wonderful article, 'The Blackthorn Beeing' at https://www.sharonblackie.net/theartofenchantment/the-blackthorn-beeing/

Blackthorn, and other plant lore ~

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prunus_spinosa

http://www.speedyremedies.com/7-health-benefits-of-prunus-spinosa.html

https://ireland-calling.com/celtic-mythology-blackthorn-tree/

http://www.plant-lore.com/blackthorn/

https://www.druidry.org/library/trees/tree-lore-blackthorn

https://speakingofwitchwands.net/2018/10/23/folklore-of-the-blackthorn-dark-crone-of-the-woods/

http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/the-old-english-legend-of-the-devil-and-the-blackberries-466/

Vashti ~

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/esther-full-text

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vashti

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/vashti-esther-a-feminist-perspective/

https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/esther-and-vashti

https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/esther-actlly-vashti

http://day1.org/1066-the_woman_who_just_said_no

https://www.thoughtco.com/who-was-vashti-2076497

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Esther

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midrash

Blodeuwedd ~

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blodeuwedd

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lleu_Llaw_Gyffes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gronw_Pebr

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Owl_Service

http://radicalhoneybee.blogspot.com/2015/04/boundaries-and-blodeuwedd.html

https://broomcloset.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/blodeuwedd-flower-faced-goddess-of-wales/

https://www.druidry.org/library/gods-goddesses/blodeuwedd

Lilith ~

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith

http://witcombe.sbc.edu/eve-women/7evelilith.html

https://www.thoughtco.com/legend-of-lilith-origins-2076660

https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/neeqgw/praise-lilith-a-chill-demon-cast-from-eden-for-refusing-missionary-position

Shrovetide & Turning the Fresh Page of Spring

(Image: Jacqueline Durban)

Today is Shrove Tuesday, the final day of Shrovetide or the ‘Pre-Lenten season’, which either lasts for three days or seventeen days, depending on your point of view. This is a period of preparation for Lent, which in itself is a preparation for Easter. I must admit that I like the slow mindfulness of this coming into spring. I often underestimate how much energy it takes to wake up from the dark and becoming more aware of that movement; of the ending of Christmastide at Candlemas, and then the intake of breath before Shrovetide and Lent begin, is valuable. The more that we are able to mark the holiness of our days the better.

The seventeen day Shrovetide begins on Septuagesima Sunday, the ninth Sunday before Easter and the third before Ash Wednesday. Septuagesima comes from the Latin word for ‘seventieth’, falling as it does around seventy days before Easter. The subsequent Sundays; Sexagesima, Quinquagesima, and Quadragesima, translate as ‘sixtieth’, ‘fiftieth’, and ‘fortieth’ respectively. These pre-Lenten Sundays were abolished as part of the liturgical calendar by the second Vatican Council and ceased to be marked from 1970. However, Septuagesima Sunday remains the first day of the carnival season in many countries.

Carnival, or Mardi Gras, is a period of public celebration, parades, and street parties; a welcome opportunity to rejoice before the ‘stripping back’ of Lent. Often carnival involves ‘over-indulgence’ in alcohol, meat, and sweet foods which will then be given up, which of course is the purpose of Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day; a chance to use up the last of our flour, eggs, butter, and sugar before Ash Wednesday begins. Another facet of carnival is the wearing of masks and costumes, the stripping away of individuality to allow for a deeper, collective experience. Oliver Rafferty SJ, notes that carnival’s “most important social function was as a highly ritualised challenge to the established order of Church and State” and that, “this was often done under the cover of anonymity and hence the need for the dressing up and masking of participants. This essential element gave individuals freedom to indulge in chaotic displays of anarchic behaviour which sought to undermine the sanctimonious seriousness of ‘normal’ life.” Carnival then was an opportunity to confront the dogma of religion and the strict monarchical hierarchy with a different reality.

Carnival might also be thought of as a sort of ‘wassailing’ of the year, with the last of the winter spirits being driven out in a cacophony of noise to make way for the new, but what that new might be is in many ways for us to choose. In Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 1559 painting on the theme, ‘The Fight Between Carnival and Lent’, Carnival, depicted as a rotund king riding a barrel of beer, and ‘Lady Lent’, a starving nun with a beehive on her head (beehives being a symbol of the church), joust for dominance. Here are Carnival and Lent as two manifestations of the human experience; plenty and poverty, merrymaking and moderation, chaos and order; springtime Oak and Holly Kings of the human heart. 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 1559 painting, ‘The Fight Between Carnival and Lent’, Wikiart

We are really not very good at negotiating between extremes and so often find ourselves going far too much one way or the other; Carnival and Lent remind us to watch the path. Indeed, in Bruegel’s painting a couple are being led between both along a path of light as though being shown the dangers inherent in becoming too identified with either way of being. We all need our times of celebration and revelry, giddy with abundance like the hedgerows of autumn. We all need our times of being stripped back, waiting for new growth like the bare earth before spring.

(Image: Jacqueline Durban)

Whilst we might feel inclined to turn away from the austerity of Lent and to celebrate the liberation of Carnival, both have their dark and light. Carnival was often associated with violence and with the further pushing aside of the already marginalised, although of course we must always consider who was reporting such happenings. If we are honest about ourselves though we will see that in many large groups, liberated after being too long hemmed in, there is potential for things to go too far. It is this dark seam in rich strata of humanity that allows us to weave the crown of thorns again and again, for the migrant, the refugee, the poor, the vulnerable, the scapegoated, the fox, the badger, the cormorant, the Christ. This too we will consider in the weeks to come, and Carnival, among so many things, is a reminder of what we are capable of at our very worst.

Southwark Fair, which was held in September to coincide with the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary had its delights, including a ‘Mr Pinchbeck, who caused a tree to grow out of a flower pot on the table and flower and bear fruit in a minute’, and stallholders collecting money to help prisoners in the nearby Marshalsea. Nevertheless, amidst much reported criminality, a woman was trampled to death by the crowds in 1733, prior to the Fair being banned in 1763. Similarly, there have been many attempts to ban carnival itself. In 743, the Synod of Leptines in Belgium spoke out against the ‘excesses of February’, and dire warnings were also issued in this period against people who attempted to drive out winter via a ‘variety of less honourable acts’. Confession books from the period also tells us much about the activities of the common people who were noted to dress as an animal or an old woman during festivities in January and February, despite the severe penance required. This writing down of confessions in a book may explain where the name ‘Shrovetide’ comes from, as the original meaning in Old English of ‘scrifan’, whose root is in the Latin, ‘scribo’, is ‘to write’, but has now come to mean ‘confess’, to be ‘shriven’, perhaps then to ‘rewrite’ the book.

Moving to the present day, we find the annual ‘Shrovetide football’ game, which takes place over two days in the rural town of Ashbourne in Derbyshire and have been played in England since the 12^th Century and in Ashbourne since at least 1667. This game is played on a ‘pitch’ that is three miles long, stretching from one side of the town to the other, and any number of people are allowed to join in with birth in relation to the town’s river dictating whether one should join the Up’ards or Down’ards team. The game is characterised by much eye gouging, punching, and stomping, shops and boarded up and parking in the main streets of the town is much discouraged! There are very few rules involved but, tellingly, these include the prohibition of murder or manslaughter, with ‘unnecessary violence’ being frowned upon, the ball not being carried in a motorised vehicle or hidden in a bag, coat, or rucksack, and the avoidance of cemeteries, churchyards, and memorial gardens. Enough said I think! 

(football-origins.com)

In Bohemia in the Czech Republic, a Shrove Tuesday tradition sees a man dressing up as the personification of ‘Shrovetide’ and whoever is able to snatch a straw from his hat and place it under a hen is assured of a fine batch of eggs in the spring.

As for the, perhaps by now welcome, peace and quiet of Lent, it once would have made much practical sense to enjoy all our persishable foods, such as meat and dairy, before the warming days of spring, and then to give meaning to doing without them until a new season of food could be gathered. It would also give people of the land a chance to cleasnse through fasting and the taking of spring tonics to wake up the body, mind, and blood. This finishing up of our winter larder is expressed in many ways. The Syrian Orthodox church celebrate ‘Moonnu Nombu’ at this time, a three day pre-Lenten fast which recalls Jonah’s three days in the belly of the whale. In Byzantine and Orthodox traditions, ‘meatfare’ and ‘cheesefare’ Sundays are designated to help use up these ingredients. In Russia and other Slavic countries, the week before Lent is known as ‘Butter Week’. In Iceland, this day is known as ‘Sprengidagur’, or ‘Bursting Day’, and is characterised by the eatring of salted meat and peas. The word ‘carnival’ itself is said to come from the Latin, ‘carne levare’, to ‘remove meat’. The last three days of Shrovetide then are our final chance to use up all of these foods (not forgetting ‘Fat Thursday the week before).

Shrove Monday, also known ‘Rose Monday’ and ‘Merry Monday’, is known by the name of ‘Collop’, or ‘Collopy’, Monday in Britain. The ‘collop’ refers to the traditional meal of the day; leftover meat, or ‘collops of bacon’, and eggs, although in East Cornwall it is sometimes referred to as ‘Peasen’ or ‘Paisen’ Monday due to the local custom of eating pea soup on that day, presumably with bacon added. Interestingly, Lithuania have a similar tradition of eating pea soup on the last day of Shrovetide, Shrove Tuesday.

Known in Britain, and elsewhere, as ‘Pancake Day’ and in others as ‘Mardi Gras’, or ‘Fat Tuesday’, Shrove Tuesday is filled with tradition. Our custom of eating pancakes on this day dates back until at least the 16^th Century, although the instruction to be ‘shriven’ is much older. Church bells were traditionally rung on this day, the toll being known as ‘the Shriving Bell’, both to call people to confession and to remind everyone to start cooking their pancakes. Christianity is full of mixed messages!

‘Mob football’ games are a feature of Shrove Tuesday festivities in some towns, such as Ashbourne, mentioned previously, but also Alnwick in Northumberland, Atherstone in Warwickshire, St Colom Major in Cornwall, and Sedgefield in County Durham. In others pancake races take place, thought to be inspired by a 15^th Century housewife from Olney, Buckinghamshire, who was once so engrossed in making pancakes that, when she heard the shriving bell calling her to confession, she ran out of the house frying pan, pancake and all, tossing it to stop it burning in the hot pan! Pancake races still happen there, with only women allowed to join in and with the instruction to wear a bonnet and apron.

(Olney pancake race, Wiki Commons)

In Scarborough, it’s traditional for local people to skip over long fishing ropes from the harbour on this day, called by the town crier with a ‘pancake bell’. In Whitechapel, Lancashire children, echoing many traditions of going from house to house, visit local homes to ask, “Please, a pancake” before being rewarded with sweets or oranges. At Westminster School in London, the "Pancake Grease" is held, an event during which the schoolmaster tosses a very large pancake over a bar that's set to about 15 feet high. The children then make a mad scramble for the pancake and whoever emerges with the largest piece is the winner.

Choristers vs. staff and parents annual pancake race, Norwich Cathedral

And so, it seems that we begin our spring in the same spirit as we journeyed through winter, with our traditions full of the invitation to share what we have in unity and community, not to grasp or cling with the thought that we might then not have enough, but to trust the earth to give us enough, and freely; that what we give out will be returned when we too have need. It seems to me though that we are encouraged to trust less and less, to instead blame, to scapegoat and point the finger, to believe that everyone is out to take what we have and that it is our right to have it, even at the expense of another. In the invitation of our seasonal festivals we are shown both the best and the worst that we can be and Shrovetide and Lent reveal that to us in all the raw, stripped back, vulnerability that we can bear and bare, and perhaps even more than that. We may not like what we see but it is a blessing to be shown it. So, this evening let’s rejoice in our pancakes, and I hope that there will be far too many until we are full to bursting, and then let’s let it all go; the grasping, the fear, the meanness, the blame, the always wanting to be full, let’s turn the page of our confessional and give ourselves up to the green things of spring. We can be so much better than we are. They are waiting to help us rewrite the book.

(Image: Jacqueline Durban)

References:

On Shrovetide ~

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrovetide
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shrive
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagesima
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/how-to-pregame-lent-septuagesima-carnival-and-shrovetide-56266
https://www.fisheaters.com/customsseptuagesima2.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrove_Monday
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrove_Tuesday

On Carnival ~

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mardi_Gras

The Fight Between Carnival and Lent ~

https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/%E2%80%98-fight-between-carnival-and-lent%E2%80%99

On Moonnu Nombu ~

http://newandoldmonks.blogspot.com/2010/01/significance-of-nineveh-nombu-for-us.html

On 'Mob Football' ~

https://sports.yahoo.com/news/shrovetide-%e2%80%93-an-ancient--brutal-and-bloody-game-223015662.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Shrovetide_Football

Southwark Fair ~

http://www.exploringsouthwark.co.uk/southwark-fair/4593650298