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Still editing SWALLOWING DARKNESS.  The line by line edit is always the most time consuming.  It’s always more fun to work on first draft then the painstaking polishing.  Though, there are writers that prefer the polishing to the first draft.  Different strokes for different folks, I guess. 

Today is also Lammas, which is a festival for our religion.  It’s the celebration of the first harvest.  Some Wiccan traditions celebrate it on the first of August, but one of the benefits of being eclectic is that if the second of August works out better, then you can celebrate on that day.  Traditional for us is to look at what we’ve harvested at this point this year, and celebrate and be thankful for it.  I usually end up including all the usual things, marriage, husband, kid, pets, and the latest book, or project.  What have you harvested so far this year?  Lammas is the first check of the year, to get you paying attention to what you’ve accomplished, and what you still hope to accomplish this year, and celebrate what you have already brought into your life. Celebrate what you have already harvested for the year: friendship, money, new car, whatever means something to you.  No judgments on that.  Be honest with yourself, what are you grateful for, what do you want badly enough to put work and effort into it?  The next time to check your hopes and goals for the year will be Autumn equinox, also known as Mabon.  Wiccan year, actually ends for our tradition on Halloween.  All Hallow’s Eve is the end of the year for us, so by Mabon, whatever we’re planning to accomplish better be close.  The idea that the year ends then, is based on the old idea that you better harvest everything you can by then, because Winter is coming.  This day and age, you can have fresh tomatoes in February, but they don’t taste as good.  We bought some heirloom tomatoes today, organic and pure as we could find them and not grow them ourselves (though we’re thinking about trying that next year), and we tasted the sun in every bite.  More than any other fruit or vegetable a good tomato is the taste of summer for me.  I’ll leave you with a blessing:

"When we eat the good bread, we are eating months of sunlight, weeks of rain and snow from the sky, richness out of the earth.  We should be great, each of us radiant, full of music and full of stories.  Able to run the way clouds do, able to dance like the snow and the rain.  But nobody takes time to think that he eats all these things and that sun, rain, snow are all a part of himself."

-Monica Shannon (1905-1965)

The quote is from the book, BLESS THIS FOOD, ancient and contemporary graces from around the world,, compiled and edited by Adrian Butash.