A song for this time of year, in the mood of the Summer Solstice and the feast of  St John.


Each year for me is a learning experience with The Festivals that mark each transition point and each season's highest point.


 As I understand it the feast of St John is to do with the need for change and transformation in ourselves; clearing out and burning up the old, to make space for something new.


St. John’s tide is a time of inner struggle, of striving for virtue.
This is why a bonfire is the symbol of this festival.





This is not a classical song, nor one for the children, but I think it catches the mood of the journey we are going through now.

• By Peter Gabriel

Walk Through The Fire

Walk through the fire
Walk through the fire (walk through the fire)
Through the dust and ashes
While the building crashes
Walk through the flame (walk through the fire)
No trace of indecision
Lion keep his vision clear
Moving out
Across the water
The wet leaves quiver in the heat
Darkness heavy on my shoulder
Smell the smoke, sickly sweet
The body's weak, the shadow's strong
Walk through the fire (walk through the fire)
Through the dust and ashes
While the building crashes
Walk through the flame (walk through the fire)
Lion show no sign of fear
Walk through the fire (walk through the fire)
Through the dust and ashes
While the building crashes
Walk through the flame (walk through the fire)
No time for doubt or caution
Taken by the strong emotion
Walk through the fire (walk through the fire)
No trace of indecision
Lion hold his vision clear
(Walk, walk, walk)
Walk through the fire (walk through the fire)
Walking in the path of angel
Walk on down below, walk on down below
Walk on down below, walk on down below








More about the meaning of St John's festival here for us to read....it makes sense...I like the it especially because in me there is always a small internal struggle to find the balance in me and everything! That is why I like Macrobiotics; it is all about balance!

copied and pasted from :

http://threefoldwaldorf.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/st-johns-tide-question-of-balance.html


St. John’s Tide – A Question of Balance

By Christine Natale

“Too Christian for the Pagans and too Pagan for the Christians!”

The first point I would like to make is that I truly believe that “school” and the “school community” by extension, should be year-round. The “summer off” is based on long outmoded needs of the agrarian society of the far past. With few children needing to help on the family farm and many homes in which both parents are working full time, it is not really a viable schedule. I would prefer to see the year divided into four quarters of eleven weeks “on” and two weeks “off” at Festival time. A two week break would be enough to allow teachers to both rest and to work on preparing their lessons for the upcoming quarter. It would allow the children to rest, too while avoiding the lassitude that often comes from the too-long summer break. For those who feel that the children need such a long summer “break from academics” may I say that if the activities of the “normal school year are that draining and stressful, perhaps that is where the problem actually lies. The thing is, school should not be only about academics! If it maintained a living, healthy balance, it should be enlivening and enriching all year round. If it is so draining that we need an eight week "break" something is wrong to begin with.

 Parents could easily schedule their work vacations for any of the four breaks. And the cycle of the year for both a school and its community could be more complete. A school community that is really interested and enjoys celebrating the cardinal festivals of the year would be more likely to include St. John’s Eve or Midsummer Eve to their round of celebrations.

All that being said, let’s look at St. John’s Tide and explore its potential for fun and benefit in the round of the year. Few Waldorf schools (that I am aware of) hold St. John’s Bonfire nights. This is most likely due to the reality that with the school disbanded for the summer, the school community has dispersed as well. If there are school communities that do celebrate St. John’s (and I hope that there are!) they may have a core of parents deeply interested in the more “religious” aspect of Anthroposophy and Waldorf Education. 

Before we go further, I would like to clarify my use of the word “religion”, especially in connection with Waldorf Education. Neither Anthroposophy nor Waldorf Education are based in or connected with any formal religious group or dogma. I have written another article clarifying this matter to a greater extent than I will here. I often say that Waldorf Education is “too Christian for the Pagans and too Pagan for the Christians!” To discover what I mean by that, you can access the article here:

Religion in Waldorf Education
http://community.eons.com/uploads/2/0/20774441_Religion_in%20Waldorf%20Education.pdf

How Waldorf Education and its spiritual ideas fit in with your family’s belief systems and choices in child raising is completely up to you and how much time and effort you are willing to spend to explore the insights of Rudolf Steiner and those who have spent their lives studying and working with his body of work. 

With these considerations in mind, let’s re-acquaint ourselves with the traditional Pagan and Christian aspects of St. John’s Tide.

Midsummer’s Night Dream

This really says it all! If it has been many years since you have seen a live production of Shakespeare’s loveliest play, or watched a film or read the play how about making this the summer to re-connect with it? I loved 1999 film with Kevin Kline and Michelle Pfeiffer, but I adore the 1935 film with Mickey Rooney as Puck and James Cagney as Bottom. I have a couple of copies coming my way courtesy of Ebay.

Of course, if you have the blessing of being able to go (and to take your children) to a live production (or even better, to be in one!) by all means, do so! The play captures all of the magic and romance of the most magical night of the year – Midsummer’s Eve.

Midsummer’s Eve is the evening of the Summer Solstice – the turning point of the year and the longest day and shortest night of the Northern Hemisphere. It is the mirror opposite of Christmas or the Winter Solstice. (You will find I mix the Pagan and Christian rather indiscriminately from here on!)

At the Winter Solstice – Christmas Tide, the Earth as an organism breathes in to the deepest extent. The gnomes and seed babies are deep underground. The animals are warm in their barns or around our feet. The stars come down to use, represented in our homes through the candles and lights on our Christmas trees. For those who believe in Fairies (and if you don’t – don’t bother reading any further!), the Fairies who are given birth by the interaction of human beings with the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms come close to us, perhaps even into our homes if we give them a welcoming space and a warm, loving and minimally electronic atmosphere. The time that people spend outdoors is shortened dramatically and there is usually an internal “inwardness” that focuses on family, relationships, love and personal meaning – or in some cases their absence.

At the Summer Solstice – St. John’s Tide, the Earth is breathing out to her fullest. Human beings spend as much time as possible outdoors working with the earth and animals when they can; enjoying the element of fire with campfires and barbeques; enjoying the element of water with swimming, boating and fishing and savoring the summer breezes of the forest, mountains and the sea. The gnomes rise, the seed babies awaken and bloom, the peas, asparagus, strawberries, new potatoes and lettuces are abundant. The promise of new life that was born in the Spring is coming to maturity both in the outer world of Nature and within our souls. We may spend time gazing at the bright summer stars and wondering how and why we are connected with them. In older days, before people became unfortunately self-conscious there was a lot of spontaneous singing and dancing to be had. One may have to look harder for it or work harder to create these experiences now, but they are still worthwhile.

The ancient customs of the Midsummer Festival center around building a great bonfire and celebrating around it. As it dies down sufficiently, young men and women “jump” over it to both “purify” themselves and at the same time “fertilize” themselves with its power. It is the warmth element that engenders the seed. Midsummer traditions are full of fertility beliefs (and practices) and divinations of future (and not so future) lovers. Babies conceived during this time would be born in the Spring, the time of new life. In many ancient cultures this was the preferred time for “mating” allowing for gestation over the winter and the new birth in the Spring.

St. John’s Eve

While it traditionally falls on June 23, with St. John’s Day being June 24, it is a little “off” from the astronomical Summer Solstice, just as Christmas is a few days away from the Winter Solstice. Nevertheless, they both relate and create a “tide” or season of the festival over a few days. 

The Feast of St. John the Baptist is his supposed birthday. John was Jesus’ cousin and a close spiritual companion. John’s mother, Elizabeth is said in the Bible to be Mary’s cousin. I like to think of her as Mary’s aunt. I’m not sure if my hypothesis could ever be substantiated but I like to think that Elizabeth and Anna, Mary’s mother were sisters and that Elizabeth was very close to Mary as a little girl, especially due to the fact that Elizabeth had no children of her own. Mary went to see Elizabeth pretty much as soon as she learned of her own pregnancy. Elizabeth was six months pregnant with John. In the womb, John “leapt up” in recognition of Jesus and made his mother aware of the holy status of Mary and “the fruit of her womb, Jesus.”

Mary stays with Elizabeth until just before the birth of John. In my imagination, I think of Elizabeth helping to prepare Mary for her own delivery but wanting to avoid exposing Mary to the actual experience beforehand. I have lots of other Imaginations of the story, but that is a subject for another thesis. 

In any case, John is born and in the Gnostic and Apochryphal traditions the two boys were partly raised together. John becomes a “forerunner” of the Christ who is about to incarnate into Jesus. He becomes a “voice in the wilderness” urging people to change and to prepare for this cosmic event. The Baptism of John was a process in which he was able to hold a person under the water just until the moment that is said to happen when a person almost drowns, until they see “their life pass before their eyes” in the panorama that Rudolf Steiner explains we all experience just after our death. Due to his spiritual development and clairvoyance, John is able to follow the soul to this point and to resuscitate the person in time. After seeing their own life from the spiritual point of view, the person is “reborn” and filled with a sense of wanting to change and improve themselves. 

A Question of Balance

It is this moment of self-awareness that is the fulcrum of our lives. It is the recognition that we are not perfect and will never be, but that we can always strive to balance our excesses and weaknesses. The shy, reticent person can decide in personal freedom to do a bold thing, such as taking a role in a play. The bossy person can (at least temporarily) take a back seat and let someone else shine for a change. These characteristics are lovingly and humorously portrayed by the peasant workers who decide to put on a play in honor of the wedding of their king, Theseus in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” 

An athletic person can read a book or go to a symphony. The bookworm can decide to participate in a game of backyard baseball. We all have activities that we prefer and shine at and we all have areas in which we are less capable and less enthusiastic. 

In Waldorf Education, teachers are asked to learn to read the “riddle of the child.” This means to get to know each child well enough over time to really begin to perceive what he or she is about. What has this child come into the world with? How does this child express himself? What are her areas of weakness that need a bit of strengthening? How do we turn the choleric tendency to boss and bully into creative and compassionate leadership? How do we bring the sanguine little social butterfly down to earth long enough to learn a bit of math? How do we help to keep the melancholic child from wallowing in self-pity and to turn this to empathy and a desire to help relieve the inner and outer pain of others? And how do we “spice up” the life of the sweet phlegmatic child who loves to daydream and inspire her to take up the work and discipline of accomplishing some of those daydreams?

We don’t need to be something other than what we are, but we need to learn how to put it to good use for ourselves, for others and for the world. In the gentlest sense, perhaps this is the meaning of the call to “Repent” of St. John. The call to access our higher self for the good of mankind. 

There is also the cosmic picture contained in the words of St. John, “I must decrease so that He may increase.” Which carries the inner gesture of a scales. 

Archangel Uriel

Rudolf Steiner cites Uriel as the Archangel of the Summer season and festival. He describes Uriel as holding scales. Perhaps these are the Scales of Judgment or maybe just the Scales of Balance. I have not been able at this time to find the exact reference from Steiner. I believe it is to be found in “The Four Seasons and the Archangels” lecture series.

Wikipedia has some good background information and relates Uriel (meaning the Light of God) to John the Baptist through the Apocrypha.