Beloved, O Beloved! 

It is the first of May! 

It is Labour Day across much of the planet.  

It is (no doubt in response to the above) St. Joseph the Worker Day. 

It is the day on which many of us grew up with May Queens and crowning statues of Mary, Queen of Heaven, with a garland of handpicked flowers. And perhaps dancing a Maypole in the churchyard. 

I learned to dance a Maypole when I was very small, my mother showing me how the ribbons wound around one another.  

But the holiday most associated with the Maypole and which many of us love best to celebrate today is Beltaine! 

Beltaine, Beltane, Baeltine…however you spell it, or even pronounce it, today is a glorious holiday, and many people’s favorite among the four great Celtic fire festivals. 

While Beltaine has a decidedly, and deservedly, racy reputation, it is not only about “men and women fucking in the fields,” as I was once informed by a bully of a Pagan leader. It is and is not only about sex between cisgender men and cisgender women, symbolized in the great Pole and its loving Garland. 

The Maypole is the World Tree, as well. The center of the Universe and the symbol of our own rooted reaching. The Garland is the omphalous, the Navel of the World, the origin and circumference of our knowing, doing, and being. 

And beyond all of that, at least in temperate parts of the world, Beltane is about flowers! Giving them, receiving them, wearing them, plaiting them, making the Garland…whatever you can do or dream of doing with flowers – DO IT! ?  

It’s probably too late to wash your face in the dew of a May Day morning, but perhaps today, look for a flower. Allow yourself to appreciate it wherever you see it. And furthermore, enjoy this little video message I made for you this blessed Beltaine Day! 

All my love always –  

~Catharine~