SEC & Anglican Calendar of Prayer for August 2018
The Scottish Episcopal Church, The Most Revd Mark
August 05
Strange, Primus and Bishop of Moray,Ross and Caithness
The Church of the Province of South East Asia, The Most
August 12
Revd Ng Moon Hing. Archbishop
The Church of South India (United),The Most Revd Thomas
August 19
Kanjirappally Oommen, Moderator
The Anglican Church of Southern Africa, The Most Revd
August 26
Thabo Makgoba, Archbishop
Letter from a much healthier priest ☺ Somewhere in the Highlands
Wouldn't it be nice to reclaim midsummer?
It’s the time of year when for me it really hurts to be an urbanite.
Summer’s a bad time to live in the city, what with nature calling you to get
out in the fields, and your knowing the nearest you’ll get is your municipal
park.
But midsummer is worst of all. It’s the culmination of all the spring flowering,
when nature is at its fullest, greenest, lushest and most vigorous, and the
only hint you get is from other people’s front gardens.
I got a glimpse of the real season when I walked on the shores of Loch Ness
the other day and walked through meadows of knee-length grasses that
looked like something from a Monet canvas. At times like this, I feel a bit like
Mole at the beginning of The Wind in The Willows. All I want to do is down
tools and go and play outside.
Funnily enough, the calendar once revolved around precisely this sensation:
the stirrings of midsummer. I’m not talking about ancient Britons doing stuff
in stone circles, which contemporary pagans try to reimagine at Stonehenge
and which the papers faithfully report as if it really were a re-enactment of
what went on in 2,000 BC.
The reality is that we honestly don’t know what exactly happened at
midsummer in pagan times, although if 23,000 people want to celebrate by
watching the sun rise, with braids in their hair, that’s great.
But we do have a very good idea of what people did for the solstice only a
few centuries ago, until the Reformation spoilt everything.
And it all revolved around one feast in particular, that of St John the Baptist,
on June 24, and especially the night before, the 23rd, the time of year when
the sun stands still for a few days (the literal meaning of the word “solstice”).
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