Merry Lughnasa all Ye Pagans and Witches!

Happy Early Harvest! Or End of Summer! Or Height of Summer! Or Fair Day! Or Sporting Events Day! Or Climb a Big Hill Day! or Visit a Well Day!
 
etc!

Just for the heck of it I've been doing a bit of reading around (on the web - what dig into one of my 1200 books??) about Lughnasa. Found all kinds of origins. Which makes sense really - traditions vary from neighborhood to neighborhood today, internet or no internet, so surely it makes sense that this turn of the wheel was celebrated in many ways. (Just so you know, it's not that I don't have a long relationship with Lugh, it was just the urge to look with fresh eyes.)

So what matters is what it means now. I tend to take the cross-quarters approach; Lughnasa signifies the first sign of fall in the height of summer, with related first fruits and harvests (though I also have a lingering Irish festival/sports connection from the time I found one of the god's stone circles in that part of the world).

Today I brought a loaf of cinnamon bread to work and put it out to share (I actually had a conversation with Lugh, where he suggested sharing food as a good celebration; pretty traditional :-) ).

Walking on the path at lunch, I noticed for the first time tiny green acorns on the ground; a promise of fall to come. So I picked up an acorn which still had a few leaves attached and brought it in to my cubie and sat in on top of the file cabinet next to the bread.

It's nice when the reality meets/becomes the symbols. 

Bi is harder to get than trans

On Tuesday night I was on a diversity panel (via the DeFrank Center) at Santa Clara University (which I recently discovered is a Jesuit university; explains all those Catholics last time I was on a panel there!). It was part of a multiculturalism class for psychology majors, which is a different angle of approach than usual. And hence made for a few slightly different questions, which rocked. 

One of the most interesting moments of the evening for me came when one very earnest woman asked one of the panelists about her sexuality: "I understand gay. I understand trans I think. I don't understand bisexuality," and went on from there to add stuff about, "if you're in a relationship with a woman now does that mean you'll choose to be in a relationship with a man next?"

The panelist did a pretty good job, coming at it from the angle of being monogamous, which I thought was quite original. Explaining she wasn't looking for a 'next,' and it wasn't 'choice', it's just who you fell for. I had to chime in, explaining bi people are sometimes sexual with both genders, but emotionally attach to only one, and sometimes are both sexual with and capable of emotional commitment to both genders. She got it, which was cool.

I can still be surprised.