Beltane Weekend at Hucklow
Unitarians who use the Nightingale Centre at Great Hucklow know there is a special quality about that place. It is more than just the sum of its parts - quiet village, comfortable accommodation, good food, helpful staff. Perhaps we should say that there is a heightened sense of closeness to creation or nature around that place. There is a feeling of being in tune with the heartbeat of a time that ticks so slowly against the pendulum of eternity.
Those who came to the Earth Spirit Network’s Beltane celebration this year tuned into the atmosphere at Hucklow at once. There was a sense of togetherness and a feeling of closeness as a group. The weekend starts with a ritual that gives identity to the group and embraces all as participants into the coming celebrations. Many were able to say with personal honesty that they had come with expectations of finding something in the weekend that would be life enhancing. This set a mood of honesty for all that carried right through the weekend. At the end the closing ritual was an acknowledgment of farewell and a desire to meet again in the future.
Beltane is a celebration of life. Traditionally this festival is associated with maypole dancing, bonfires and rejoicing in the fertility of the earth. Over the course of this long weekend we did just that. The highlight was making up a bonfire and then circling it as we threw into the flames tokens we had brought that represented things in life that we wanted to give up. We made a symbolic jump through the flames and enjoyed chanting and dancing as the fire slowly died away.
It is often said that if the congregations are the weft of Unitarian spirituality, then the groups that meet up at Hucklow are the warp. These two directions of Unitarian spirituality meet up in the Sunday worship at the little Unitarian Chapel opposite the Nightingale Centre.
Week after week the congregation partake of worship like no other in the country. They receive the avant garde and the experimental without a murmur. The Earth Spirit Network invited Rosemary Arthur to accept the invitation of the Chapel to lead the Sunday service - and this she did with humour and sensitivity. She reminded us that in nature there are no straight lines. Perfection is a transitory illusion in the cycle of growth and decay and for life to meaningful there had to be some rough edges around and that imperfection was a gateway to the discovery of truth and the vision of the ideal.
During our session gatherings we learnt something about the history of Paganism and how the word is much more accepted now than it was fifteen years ago when the Earth Spirit Network came into being as the ‘Neopagans’. Initially we had reservations about calling ourselves Pagans - hence the Unitarian earth Spirit Network.
A survey conducted by Jo Rogers as part of her MA thesis shed interesting light on how members of the ESN viewed themselves within the Unitarian spectrum. Some still saw themselves as part of the wider Christian community. Most saw themselves as separate from a New Age Movement. All saw themselves as part of the Unitarian family.
The gathering finished with a rousing meditation led by Gillian Peel - as if there could be such a thing - but there is -- meditation to the unsynchronised sounds of voices and musical instruments opens little windows that reach the inner stillness. Each person is articulating a silence through the sounds they are producing - I suppose it is like seeing the reassuring beam of the lighthouse during the storm even though the storm holds no fear.
If there is a mystery about the universe and our own being, we were shown links between them through a session on astrology - which managed to ground us in our earth centred natures. What was good about these charts is that they can reveal strengths and weaknesses that can be examined - and if necessary worked on to make changes in ourselves for the better.
This was a very good Beltane celebration at Hucklow. We each took some of its magic fire home with us to the four quarters of our Unitarian way.
tony mcneile
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