A new week begins, and I must admit that I am very glad to let go of the last one, despite the challenges that this one might bring. My first, admittedly gentle, challenge is that last week I forgot to write about Spring Embertide, but the Embertides are so deeply beautiful and so little known these days that I must grasp the nettle, a fine spring pursuit in itself, admit my temporary bewilderment, and write about them now.
And so, last week was an Ember Week, with the ember days themselves falling on Wednesday, Friday, & Saturday.
The 'ember' may come from the Latin term Quatuor Tempora, which means four times, although I prefer the alternative suggestion that it has its roots in the Anglo-Saxon ‘ymbren’, a circuit or revolution (from ymb, around, and ryne, a course, running), relating to the annual cycle of the year. The word occurs in Anglo-Saxon compounds such as ymbren-tid 'Embertide', ymbren-wucan 'Ember weeks' , ymbren-fisstan 'Ember fasts', ymbren-dagas 'Ember days'.
The four Embertides; Advent, Lenten, Whitsun, & Michaelmas, or Winter, Spring, Summer, & Autumn, are ancient festivals of the agricultural church year, preparation times of prayer, fasting, & reflection for the season to come. Their dates vary slightly each year and can be worked out from the old rhyme, "Lenty, Penty, Crucy, Lucy", with the Ember Days beginning on the first Wednesday following these festivals ~ the first Sunday in Lent, Pentecost, Holy Cross Day, and St Lucy's Day. I like to mark these days in peace, contemplation, and preparation for the season ahead, quietly cleaning the hedgehermitage and making seasonal decorations. They are a time to imagine the embers of the new season catching fire.
Being related to Easter, both Lent and Pentecost are calculated by the moon, with Holy Cross Day and St Lucy's Day fixed dates calculated by the sun (14th September & 13th December respectively), and so the Embertides connect us more deeply to both. These are such valuable pivots and anchors at shifting points in the year when many of us are wobbled off our axis and need a pause to breathe deeply and settle ourselves.
The Embertides were once a time to thank God for the gifts of nature, to teach us to respect them in & of themselves, to use them wisely & only in moderation, & to support those in need. These days of kinship, solidarity, & reciprocity with all beings, have become in the Church, if they are remembered at all, times of fasting for the sake of fasting, for the denial of matter, & for the ordination of clergy; the final act of 'thumbing the nose' at cycles whose very essence is the antithesis of hierarchy.
In a faith whose great blessing & beauty is the embodied nature of its divinity; the absolute holiness of the place where spirit & matter meet, the religious institution of the Church has no business creating separation between us & the land as sacred. Nor in letting, or encouraging, those festivals of the liturgical year which acknowledge, honour, & celebrate, our connection with the land be locked away in a dusty box marked 'nostalgia', or in changing their meaning.
These then are days to be 'humbled', in its most positive sense of 'grounded', from the root 'humus', 'of the earth', rather than elevated & divided. One might suggest that the Embertides have indeed become days of humility but from a different history of the word; this time, relating to feudal England where the lowest cuts of meat, or 'umbles'; the leftovers when the upper classes had taken their share, were provided to the 'lower classes', or the common people, to eat 'humble pie'.
The Embertides remind us that we are in deep & beautiful relationship with the land & the turning of the seasons, that justice & equality always come from below, never willingly from above, and that there is no justice without land justice.
Spring (excerpt) by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Nothing is so beautiful as spring --
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning in Eden garden…”
Spring may not quite be here yet, but the earth is warming and the embers are beginning to catch flame.
References:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ember_days
https://www.fisheaters.co/customslent3.html
https://www.farmersalmanac.com/ember-days
https://www.beautysoancient.co/embertide-lenten/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humble_pie
https://interestingliterature.com/2017/03/a-short-analysis-of-gerard-manley-hopkinss-spring/
I had never heard of Ember Days before. This was so interesting and well-written. Thank you!
Catching flame, perfecto x