And so,
Here we are on August 1st – it’s midsummer.
Today is the first day of the 8th month of the year 2024.

Today is Lammas today –
Feast of First Fruits, a Harvest Festival.
Cross-quarter day between summer & autumn.

Lammas
(Old English, for “lamb”, & later “loaf” as in “bread”).
Lammas celebrates the first grain harvests.

Observed August 1st in the northern hemisphere, we extend the festival all week.

Lammas is also & most importantly, a festival of gratitude.

After summer rains, wheat was (is still) harvested and ground into flour. Loaves of bread, including communion bread, were made and taken to churches for blessing.

Lammas was a community celebration. Shakespeare refers to Lammas Eve as the 14th birthday of Juliet (Romeo and Juliet).
This first harvest prepares humanity for the coming autumn and winter, cooler days, crisp apples, roasting of the southwest chile and the last of summer’s tomatoes and corn.
Lammas reminded humanity of the cycle of life and death (light & dark). During August the people knew that soon Persephone would be taken to the underworld by Pluto and Demeter, her mother, grief-stricken, would make the leaves fall and the darkness to come. But before autumn, there was to be festivity, celebrations, gathering the first fruits and baking the first loaves of bread.

And so, we too, in these hot August (northern hemisphere) days give pause, recognizing what is abundant in our lives.

In celebration, let us decorate doorways and tables with vines, leaves, sheaves of wheat and oats, make corn dollies, eat summer fruits, celebrate skills, talents and craftsmanship of friends and family, and bake bread together from the first harvest of grains.

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Reappearance of the Christ Meditation
Standing together under the light of the Group Soul, facing the Christ with intention, dedication & Love, we say Reappearance Mantram together…

Forgetting the things which lie behind,
We will strive towards our highest spiritual possibilities.
We dedicate ourselves anew
To the service of the Coming One
And will do all we can
To prepare men’s minds and hearts
For that event.
We have no other life intention.

We sound the OM three times, dedicating the three-fold personality (triangle of the personality – physical body, emotions, lower mind offered to the triangle of the Soul – Will, Love/Wisdom, Divine Intelligence) to the work of Preparation for the Christ’s Reappearance on Earth.

May the power of the One Life
Pour through the group of all true servers.

May the love of the one soul
Characterize the lives
Of all who seek to aid the great ones

May we fulfill our part in the one work
Through self-forgetfulness,
Harmlessness, and right speech.
Ohm Ohm Ohm