Hello September
It’s September and I am back in that feeling that surrounds me every September. I feel like everything is coming down. After all the happenings of the summer, the world is cooling. Back to school. Black shoes and pencil case. Early mornings and darker evenings. The old routines. Back to earth. There’s certainly some pathos in the feeling, for me at least.
Where I live, the world takes a gentle and beautiful turn in September. There are acorns on the ground. Elderberries, hawthorn berries, damsons and rosehips: all things I’m learning to forage for food. It’s cool and bright, which feels good after the hayfever season. The sunlight is slanted and side-ways, making the light and the shadows strangely wonderful.
The trees make a very particular sound in September. The rich summer leaves have darkened and dried somewhat, and they make a kind of roaring whisper when the trees sway like giants in the growing winds. It's an awesome sound. It’s always this wakeful watch of the trees that calls my attention out of the summer and through the gate of September.
I find myself often rooting around among old and forgotten traditions these days. I’ve become aware that there are many churches and many liturgical calendars. In some of them, September 14th marks the Feast of the Cross, or Roodmas (that is rod-mas). This was not so much a remembrance of the crucifixion as of the cross itself as an object. It is said that St Helena, on this day in 326 CE, discovered, by way of a miracle, the cross on which the Messiah was executed. It was thereafter kept at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.
I’ve never been part of a tradition that marks this feast, so the story isn't well known to me. Even so, I’m always compelled by the retelling of a tale from the perspective of one of its marginal characters: in this case, a retelling of the crucifixion from the perspective of the cross itself.
Historians tell us that the Romans did not, generally, build crosses to execute people on. Crucifixions were performed by nailing a person to a living tree, with perhaps a plank of wood nailed horizontally across the trunk for the person’s arms. This is, afterall, much easier than chopping down a tree, using the wood to make a cross, and then planting the cross back into the ground. As it says: “they put him to death by hanging him on a tree.” (Acts 10.39). And so, for the last six hours before his death, Jesus’ closest creaturely companion was indeed a tree: not a mere object, but a living thing that—as Jesus would often point out—tells us what time it is.
No doubt, the shift in seasonal time holds many different things for many different people. And so a prayer for September:
Whatever the time of September may hold,
Whatever joys, duties and trials
May we keep watch with Christ in the garden
May we keep watch over one another’s peace
May we keep watch with the trees in the wind
As the year darkens and cools once again
Hazelnut Community….
We’ve got some great events coming up. Please do join in with us, tickets and information are available at www.hazelnutcommunity.com
