Often in June I find myself on the west coast of Donegal looking out at sunsets and noting how the last flicker can stretch past midnight. Summer with its memories and longing is upon us. Near Kincaslagh I notice the children adding to the growing mound that will be a bonfire on St John’s Eve, a feast that coincides with the longest day of the year – the summer solstice.
We know that earlier communities would have lit their fires as a way of calling on Brother Sun at his highest point to make their crops fertile and celebrated with music, singing, games, dancing and leaping through the flames while torches of firelight were held aloft and carried through the fields for protection. Some brought home an ember for their own hearth or a shovelful of red hot sods as foundation for a new house. Even the ashes had curative powers and were spread on the land as a blessing.
Recalling these rituals, brings us down to earth and causes us to wonder. What kind of God uses the elements manufactured in the core of a star then scattered abroad in a supernova explosion to make life and creates in timescales beside which our life span is no more that the single pulse of a firefly?
Making these connections is to recognise that we are part of a dazzling communion; that the providential tilt of the Earth allows us to have seasons; that our remote origins are overlaid with the blessing, ‘You are my beloved on whom my favour rests.’ And this is my sun!