I may have given up on Weathering the Psalms a bit prematurely.Those who know me know that the weather impacts my mood.Now that I have a yard to mow that feeling has grown exponentially since perpetually wet grass is happy grass and is impossible to cut with a reel mower.Today, while those of pagan inclinations celebrate the sun, there’s more rain in the forecast.As there has been since Sunday.If Yahweh’s the God of the sun, then Baal’s had the upper hand for some time now.As an article on Gizmodo has pointed out, this has been the rainiest twelve months on record for the United States.And we’re largely to blame.We’ve known we’ve been warming the globe since the 1980s, at least.Yet we do nothing about it.You can’t stop the rain.
Our species occupies that odd role of predator and prey.Most predators, actually, are prey to somebody else.Not being nocturnal by nature, we fear the dark when we feel more like prey.Since we’re visually oriented, we crave the light.Today, when the conditions are right, we have it abundantly.Ironically, of the seasonal celebrations, the summer solstice is the only one with no notable holidays.Easter and a host of May Day-like holidays welcome spring and Halloween and Thanksgiving settle us into fall.December holidays around the other solstice are the most intense, but summer, with its abundant light and warmth, is perhaps celebration enough.Or maybe we know that marking the longest day is a transition point, since now we’ve reached a natural turning point.
So, it’s the solstice.From here on out the days start getting shorter and we slowly move toward the time of year when horror becomes fashionable again.The light that we crave now ebbs slowly to the dark we fear.There should be a holiday around here somewhere, for those of us outside academia continuing working right on through.The problem is western religions, especially Christianity, place no especially memorable events here.Resurrection’s a hard act to follow.Calendars, apart from telling us when to plant and harvest, are primarily religious tools in origin.When things are their darkest, six months from now, the church moved the likely spring birthday of Jesus to counteract pagan festivals encouraging the return of the light.I, for one, would like to see a day to commemorate it, even if it’s raining again.
