Ostara: The Vernal Equinox

Folklore connects egg balancing to the 

lunar new year in China, the Dragon Boat Festival
 in Taiwan and vernal equinox in the US. 

Egg balancing can be done throughout the year

What do Carl Sagan, Merlin, and the March Hare have in common? What can the egg balancing trick teach us about living in this world?

"Ahhhh, Spring: a heart lifting in hope and a shoe squishy with mud."

On St. Patrick’s day I think about the wisdom contributions of Celtic people. One of the most famous Celtic sages was the Welsh wizard, Merlin.

Merlin

During WW I, T.H. White, an English author and Naturalist living in Ireland decided that war is one of the worst evils human beings visit upon one another. He wrote “The Once and Future King”, the story of King Arthur. In the book the bumbling wizard named Merlyn advises the young Arthur and teaches him about using strength and wisdom in service to peace.

Merlyn turns Arthur into an ant, and then into a goose. As an ant he experiences life in the totalitarian state, obeying orders. As a goose he feels the wind in his face and the mud under his webbed feet. He feels the camraderie of the whole flock flying together. Merlyn is teaching him ethics, and politics. He learns that structure is important but so is freedom. Both/and.

The Vernal Equinox

We are creatures of the land we live on. All during the short days of winter our rational minds know that the sun will return. But there is something deeper that despairs, yearns, and suffers in the dark. At its worst it is diagnosed as Seasonal Affective Disorder. It’s cure: the return of the sun. Our climate, the land we live on, tempers the way we think of what is holy. It determines, even in cities, many of our habits and rituals. The natural cycles are in us.

March 21 is the Vernal Equinox. The mid-point between Winter and Summer, and the official first day of spring. This is the time of the emergence of green. We are tipping over, from the fallow death of winter into the exuberant spring. This is a time when we see the holy in nature. As Hildegard of Bingen said: “God is Rich and Green and Juicy!”

Photo by Hawthorne Post

In New York, each year when the cold snow had ended and the first gentle spring rain began to fall, I would set down my computer and run out into the street. I’d breath in the fresh scent. FEEL the warm rain. And LAUGH! This spring I’m watching my beagle roll in the grass, four paws waving in the air, with a grin on his face. And I find myself transfixed by the sun on the camellia buds and the tiny green leaves just emerging from the plum tree branches that just a day ago looked dead.

Ostara

The March Hare. 

Illustration by John Tenniel

Throughout history we gratefully celebrate Earth's annual resurrection. Spring equinox is a time for joy, fertility and sowing seeds. In medieval societies in Europe, the March Hare was a fertility symbol -- this is a rabbit that is usually nocturnal, but in March when mating season begins, there are bunnies everywhere all day long. As if that wasn't enough, the males tend to get frustrated when rebuffed by their mates, so they bounce and run around like mad.

Ostara (1884) by Johannes Gehrts

Many modern Pagans use the word Ostara for the celebration of the spring equinox. Ostara is from the name of a Germanic goddess. Eostre was the goddess of the land, and farm, so she was celebrated as the days became longer, the chickens began laying eggs, and the cows started giving more milk. The depictions of Eostre are like the European paintings of maiden Spring. She’s a joyous woman, with flowers in her hair, carrying a basket of eggs and a bunny rabbit.

It‘s no surprise to find that the bunny brings Easter baskets full of eggs for children! It is no surprise the Christian resurrection story takes place in March or April and in the Jewish faith, Passover takes place as well. Passover, the celebration of the gift of life in the midst of horror and death. This is the season to celebrate the victory of life over death.

Resurrection

Martin Luther noticed the connection: “Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.” Each tree, bush, and plant that looked dead all winter, has completed its hero’s journey and returns to the land of the living. Indeed, the whole earth is re-emerging from the harrowing adventure of winter.

Tajikistani Girls celebrating Novruz with wheatgrass sprouts

All over the world, people are celebrating the transformation into spring. Naw-Rúz is an ancient Persian and modern Bahai festival which occurs on March 21st. It is celebrated with many symbols indicating re-growth and renewal. The purpose is to celebrate the messages that spiritual teachers, such as Mohamed and Jesus, proclaim. Messages which bring us spiritual springtime. Some celebrations of Naw-Ruz include floating new sprouts of plants down a stream and doing Spring cleaning.

Earth and Sky

Merlin and the earth-based traditions advise us to look to nature and the behavior of the wild creatures for insights into our own nature. How we can become our best selves. I hear that same message from those who look UP, beyond our earth as well.

Earth and sky. Both/And.

Neil Degrasse Tyson says “We are all connected, to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, to the Universe atomically.”

And Carl Sagen: "The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.”

Beauty and love on the one hand, death on the other, skepticism on one side, openness on the other: an exquisite balance.

Kraslica is the art, in Slovakia, of painting eggs,

more commonly known by the Ukrainian name:

Pysanki. In memory of my Slovak grandma.

Photo by Luba Petrusha

Translated literally, equinox means "equal night." It is an astronomical term. Equal day and equal night. Both/And. We can’t have one without the other.

I imagine my grandparents on their farm in Upstate NY. Checking the root cellar and seeing that the jars and boxes of precious food are depleted… worrying. Checking the seeds stored and waiting… ready to plant to grow more food: the end, and the beginning, both together. Those seeds came from the death of the plants. Life can only return after the descent into death: Life and death. These opposites are both present at this time of year. Both/And.

Balance and Harmony

If we practiced this embrace of both/and, perhaps things that seem to be irreconcilable could co-exist with one another. We would appreciate the value each side brings. Western and Eastern healing modalities, both Muslim and Christian wisdom, both activists and mystics, both Black kids facing death and proclaiming #blacklivesmatter and White kids putting shoes on the capital lawn to represent those killed in school shootings... both/and.

Taking up both/and as a spiritual practice means taking the time to pay attention to how our lives are in or out of balance. It means paying attention to what is present and what is absent. It means welcoming the fallow time, and then welcoming the green growing times as well.

Tauʻolunga - Own work

I invite you to breathe with me. Breath deep.

Feel the polarities in this moment – Earth as our home is poised in relationship with the Sun. Feel for your own embrace of day-light and night-dark within, your own balance of old and new – this fertile dynamic of tensions. Both/And. Reach out and wrap your arms around it.

Release your breath into it. Breathe in the light, swell with it. Breath out. Let your breath go into the dark, stay with it. Shift on your seat, from left to right, forward, back, feel your centre…breathe it in.

1st day of Falgun in Bangladesh Photo by Ibrahim Husain Meraj

In my part of the Earth, the cycle is about to tip into new growth, into the light. In the southern hemisphere the same balancing moment is about the tip toward dark. Feel the shift within you, see in your mind’s eye the energy ahead, the light expanding and contracting. Feel the warmth of it. Breathe it in.

Ahhhh. Spring: a heart full of hope and a shoe full of mud.

Come, Yet again, Come!


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Blessed be.