May Day, May Day!!!!

It's Beltane, and I am in the West Village in New York City. The air is thrumming with life and
everywhere there are tulips, hyacinths, and blooming dogwoods. Soon I will be priestessing a ritual for a friend who has for many years tended the dead and the dying. She was chaplain on the burn unit in the hospital closest to ground zero on that day that still reverberates throughout this city. She had one initiation years back into the Craft that focused on death and rebirth but was long on death, short on rebirth. For too long she's had one hand thru the veil, helping others pass. It has taken a toll.

Today, the focus is on life, on that green fuse that runs thru the flower, that runs thru everything. Today, I've asked her to put her hand on the pole and feel the power as the ribbons wind, that vibration of the joy of connection, the current in the colorful tangle and pattern of life.

Here in New York City, the earth is alive. Death is a current that can be felt, and everywhere there are signs of its power. There is a corner nearby where there is a wire fence completely covered in painted tiles dedicated to the dead of September 11th. Today a conceptual artist, Adrian Piper, has hundreds of people moving around the city with the words "everything will be taken away" written backwards on their foreheads in henna. They will leave it there until it fades.

Everything will be taken away. Yes, that is true. But on Beltane, on May 1st, the earth shouts, whispers, and yodels that relentlessly and consistently there is rebirth. Life's power and beauty is on full display and parade. Today, we bloom. And it feels good.