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Friday, August 1, 2014

Awesome August 2014 Number One

I am continuing my personal challenge to write daily with Awesome August. These posts will be a potpourri, so hang on, you will not know from day to day what you will be getting. I am celebrating the awesome life I have, warts and all. You may get photos, a poem or two, some contemplative memoirs, tales from my childhood (or Roger's!), updates on my trials and triumphs. Because when all is said and done, I have an Awesome Life. 


Significance of August 1:
In Earth and Nature based religions, especially those who draw heavily on Celtic traditions, August 1 is Lughnasadh, also called Lammas. A time of celebrating the bounty and harvest, when the corn is in abundance, fruits and vegetables are ready to be preserved and stored for the coming season of cold and rest for the land. Joyous excitement begins to build, as food and beverage is in abundant supply and the weather lends to communal gathering and celebration. The wheel of the year has eight "spokes", four are the four seasons, and four cross-quarter days. August 1 (Lammas) is the cross-quarter day between the summer solstice (Litha) and the autumnal equinox (Mabon).

Something I am personally so excited about:
My beautiful daughter, Johnna, and her handsome husband, CJ, are going to be parents in about three months. Yes, I am going to have a grandson. This is a special blessing for me, because Johnna is not only my only child, but I gave her up for adoption at birth and we only reconnected in 2008 when she was 23 years old. I am grateful in ways I cannot express that she has allowed me into her life. So now the gray hair will be OK, because I will be Granny Smith Apple in real life. 


A Sonnet for First Harvest

August brings to mind an end of a task,

Memories of hours of effort and toil.
I submit today that harvests, like masks,
Can remove pretensions, like root from soil.
We reap what we sow has often been said
When speaking of the human condition. 
Whose, because of wrong choices, lives are led
Dangerously near fiery perdition?
We can choose to replant the fields of youth,
If we have learned a few hard taught lessons - 
Like the folly of choosing lies, not truth;
And when not to trust our first impressions.
Each day we sow hope and each day we reap - 
The choice was ours if in the end we weep.






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