Daily Archives: May 11, 2024

On the Year

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For the ancient Celtic Christians, May was the first month of summer. It may feel strange to think of the rhythm of the year in this way, mostly because we’ve been conditioned by society to see May as still part of “spring,” but for those Celts who paid attention to how things look and feel, rather than acquiescing to what others told them to feel, they knew that the change of May meant the beginning of summer.

Their wheel for the year was:

November-December-January: Winter (the cold would set in, ground would freeze, and things took a dormant nature…which is why in the middle of December you’d celebrate the undying light of Christ, reminding yourself that the sun/Son always shines)

February-March-April: Spring (things start to break through the ground, thaws happen, tulips push up and animals stir and mate…which is why Easter is the capstone to the season, the eternal “emergence”)

May-June-July: Summer (heat sets in, you start to do all things out-of-doors, you plant and tend, and the midpoint is the celebration of John the Baptizer/Summer Solstice where you remember that St. John the Baptizer said, “I must decrease so that Christ may increase”…and the sun starts setting a little earlier each day)

August-September-October: Autumn (you celebrate the waning heat, you harvest, you prep and store, and prepare for the winter, with the capstone of the season being All Hallow’s Eve where you give thanks for the harvest and the faithfully departed, knowing winter is coming where nature reminds us that all things die)

This cycle was the year life, but imbued into all of this was the sense of death and regeneration. It was an Easter life.

In our modern days where we’re so tossed back and forth between this event and that event, seeing so much of it all as isolated incidences that rock our boats, we forget the golden thread, the rhythm, or as the ancient Celts would call it, the “heartbeat of the Divine” running through it all.

If we tilt at every windmill, we never stand up straight. The ancient Celts understood this, and so they were able to weather most any storm knowing what season it was.

Now? Now is the start of summer. The season of “out-of-doors.” Take advantage, live into the newness around you, and breathe deeply into the now.

Because now it’s about living life.

The Commoner

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Because much of the church honors Saint Solange on May 10th, I would propose we move the commemoration of an 11th Century saint also honored on the 10th to today: Saint Isidore the Farmer, Commoner and Tiller of the Land.

Saint Isidore is by most accounts utterly unremarkable.

This is, of course, why I like him.

He never penned a single thought that we’ve ever found. He never joined a religious order, never wrote a hymn, and never recorded a mystic vision for historical memory.

Instead he lived his life and tried to live it well, and for this he has my heart.

Born in the late 11th Century in Madrid, Spain, Saint Isidore was born into a working poor household and would die as a member of the working poor. He was a farmer by trade (often called a “husbandsman” having less to do with marital status and more to do with how he raised livestock), tilling the land for a wealthy landowner and working the farm, never fully able to buy the land outright. He married a young woman, Maria, and they had a beautiful baby boy who would not live past his elementary years.

Saint Isidore knew beauty and heartbreak, love and loss…like most of us in this mortal coil. He was you and me.

His shadow darkened his local parish hall weekly, and his prayers were said faithfully. He was known to have a lovely glow about him, despite his relatively meager existence. Some reported that they would see angels working with him in the fields, helping to push his plow.

Though Saint Isidore had very little money, he was known for being generous with his parish, with his family, and with his friends in need. Generosity is, after all, not a matter of means but rather a matter of the heart.

I’ll say that louder for the people in the back.

He died on May 15th in the year 1130, but because May is chock full of commemorations, sometimes they’re rearranged to fit them all in. May 11th is a relatively free day when it comes to saints worth remembering, so I’d suggest we lift up Saint Isidore today.

In his meekness he was mighty.

Saint Isidore is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that the ordinary life is extraordinary, by God.

-historical bits gleaned from Clairborne and Wilson-Hartgrove’s Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals and common sources

-icon is from Monestaryicons.com written in a classic style