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This is a sermon I gave today - as a lay leader, not a minister - for our Unitarian Universalist congregation in Maryland. I thought some of you might be interested. There's also a short guided meditation at the end.
blessings,
LiberalEsto
The Summer Solstice
The Summer Solstice is sometimes called Midsummer because it falls in the middle of the growing season in much of Europe. It was originally a celebration of fertility and a time for prayers and rituals to ensure a good harvest. Midsummer is one of the only pagan holidays still celebrated in Europe.
In Estonia, the small northern European country where my parents came from, Summer Solstice is a big annual celebration. It's called Jaanipaev, which means St. John's Day, and it is an official national holiday.
Although the Solstice usually falls on June 21 or 22, many European countries celebrate Midsummer Eve on June 23 and Midsummer Day on the 24th, the Christian feast of St. John the Baptist.
Midsummer is widely celebrated in Scandinavia and the other Baltic countries, Latvia and Lithuania. As they have done for centuries, people make bonfires. Families get together with relatives and friends, have cookouts, and sit outside singing Midsummer songs, dancing, eating traditional foods like caraway flavored cheese, and of course, drinking beer. At this time of year it stays twilight all night long. Many stay up all night to greet the rising sun.
In Latvia, people make garlands to wear on Midsummer, which they call Jaani or Liigo. Latvians consider it their biggest holiday of the year, more important than Christmas. The men wear huge wreaths of oak leaves around their necks, while the women weave wreaths of flowers for their hair. Traditionally Latvians wait for sunrise on the 24th, when they believe that the Midsummer sun dances. This movement of the sun is called LIIGO, which roughly means to move or sway. As the sun comes up, Latvians sing songs that include the refrain liigo, liigo, swaying sway back and forth in almost a trance-like state. Singers improvise words as they go along.
Bonfires are a focus for powerful charms and spells to promote fertility. Nowadays people jump over the bonfires for prosperity and good luck, but back when almost everyone was a farmer, it was vitally important to do whatever they could to ensure a good harvest. It was literally a matter of life or death.
But all that fertility stuff is old hat and irrelevant now, isn't it? Or is it?
At a time when millions of people around the world are going hungry because of rising food prices, maybe the concept of fertility magic is more important than we think.
Let me tell you about what some giant corporations are doing to restrict and privatize the fertility of the food plants that Mother Nature has blessed us with.
On April 22, the head of the United Nations World Food Program called for urgent action to tackle the “silent tsunami” of rising food prices that threatens to push more than 100 million more people worldwide into hunger. An estimated 850 million people worldwide are already suffering from hunger.
Meanwhile, giant agribusiness corporations are trying to cash in on this food crisis by seeking hundreds of patents on genetically modified crops that are supposed to withstand drought and other environmental stresses. The media reported last month that the current administration slipped a controversial provision into a proposed $770 million package of aid for the food crises. This provision calls for promoting the use of genetically modified crops in food-deprived countries.
According to a recent article in The Nation, there are now thirty-seven nations with food crises, while global grain giant Cargill harvests an 86 percent rise in profits and Monsanto reaps record sales from its herbicides and seeds.
The value of genetically modified or GM food is highly controversial, especially in Europe, where many countries have banned it.
GM seeds have been blamed for triggering crop failures and pest attacks, while not living up to their claims. A two-year-old US Department of Agriculture report contends that "currently available GM crops do not increase the yield potential... In fact, yield may even decrease."
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, the director of ISIS, the Institute of Science in Society, warned two months ago that further use of GM seeds will severely damage our chances of surviving the food crisis and global warming.
Genetic modification hurts farmers by turning them into dependents of megacorporations. A 2001 report from the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Department of Ministry says:
"Genetically modified seeds may strip billions of (people of) their agricultural independence and also cause famines if monoculture crops are hit by blight. Third-world farmers are sold seeds that require heavy applications of chemical fertilizers and will not reproduce for next year’s crop. Farmers must buy new seeds each year from firms like ADM and Monsanto, firms that advertise a humanitarian image on public television - and pour millions into political campaigns — while imposing a new economic dependency around the world."
Essentially these corporations are privatizing the world's seed stock. According to the Organic Consumers Association, the 12 million farmers worldwide who plant GM seeds this year have to sign contracts agreeing not to save or replant seeds. That means they must buy new seeds every year. These contracts give multinational corporations tremendous power over farmers' lives.
As of last October, the Center for Food Safety reported that in the U.S., Monsanto had filed 112 lawsuits in 27 states against farmers accusing them of “seed piracy” for alleged violations of its patents on genetically engineered seeds. Basically, if you’re growing a crop of regular corn, and some pollen from a nearby field of patented GM corn drifts over to your fields and pollinates your corn, they accuse you of stealing their corn’s DNA.
According to the Center for Food Safety, up to 45 percent of American corn is genetically engineered, along with 85 percent of soybeans. The center adds that Congress has yet to pass a single law intended to manage GM technology responsibly.
Some types of GM seeds are called terminator seeds, which have been engineered so that they cannot reproduce. This planned sterility is the exact opposite of the fertility that the Summer Solstice celebrates and promotes.
Two years ago, the Canadian Unitarian Council opposed all forms of Terminator technology, asking all national governments and international bodies to ban them, calling it “a clear threat to the planet's well being”
Earlier this month in Italy, some Catholic and other religious organizations issued a warning against GM crops and patents on life. Part of their statement says, "Under no circumstances should patents... restrict farmers' free exchange of seeds and hinder their innovations. Plants, seeds and genes are part of creation which cannot be claimed by intellectual property rights."
As a pagan, I consider these corporate agriculture practices frightening. Our tradition celebrates the fertility of the earth, its plants and its creatures, not the limiting of fertility and marketing of it for corporate profits. I would go so far as to call these practices a sin.
People have been saving crop seeds and replanting them year after year since agriculture was first discovered. Now they are trying to tell us it’s a crime?
This is something that affects all of us, since we all eat, and most of us don’t grow our own food. I intensely dislike the idea of giant corporations telling me what variety of tomato or rice I can eat, or what seeds I can grow. It’s time to take action, to move, to liigo, liigo, liigo as the Latvians would say.
So what can we, as UUs or as pagans, do about terminator seeds and similar products?
The first thing is to educate ourselves. Check out websites like the Organic Consumers Association or the Center for Food Safety.
Once you understand the issue, write to your member of Congress.
Choose organic food.
In a sermon given in 2006 by Ana Porter at the Unitarian Church of Hinsdale, Illinois, she said "Every dollar we spend on local, organic food is a dollar that promotes environmentally sound agriculture, protecting our water and air. That dollar supports a family farm and a culture of small, personal businesses instead of giant, faceless corporations.”
Grow some of your own food if you can. Buy heirloom seed varieties to keep them from becoming extinct. Avoid chemical pesticides and herbicides.
Talk about the issue with others.
Pray.
Raise energy for worldwide abundance, as we just did. Nobody should go hungry on Mother Earth.
And if you get the opportunity at this time of year, leap over a very small fire -- carefully of course -- to encourage the crops to grow tall.
Happy Solstice!
Circle Meditation
Those who are able and willing, please stand and join hands in a circle.
Close your eyes and picture yourself as a wheat plant, with your roots reaching deep into the soil. Your roots carry moisture and nutrients up through your long slender stem, up the green blades, and into the young green flower that will eventually ripen and become grain. Feel the warm golden energy of the Midsummer sun pouring down on your blades. Feel the power of Mother Earth rising up through your roots. The sun power and the earth power meet in you and combine. Now feel the power rising in you as we raise our arms, our leafy blades, to the sun. At the count of three, we will release that power out into the world, sending it to bring abundant harvests and plenty of food for everyone, everywhere. Ready? One. Two Three. Release!
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