A Midsummer Night

Steep thyself in a bowl of summertime. ~ Virgil, 70 - 19 BC


I love that quote from Virgil. Steep means to extract the essence of by soaking; and anyone who has experienced the liquid humidity of a Georgian summer knows that is right on the mark. Nothing else captures summer quite the way a pool of bright green pond scum does.

Midsummer actually falls on the solstice. The "mid-" part comes from old calendar systems where summer begins with May Day. Although astronomically, we are just beginning summer at solstice, it is the mid-point of the maximum daylight, so it all works.

For much of the English-speaking world, due in large part to Playwright Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, the faeries of Celtic mythology are still remembered and associated with this festival day. To create a setting for his comedy, Shakespeare drew upon the ancient belief that summer solstice created a "thin place" in the cosmos where one could travel between the mystical and the physical realms.

When the first Christian missionaries visited the Celts, they found a people who believed that the divine pervaded each facet of life—that the spiritual and physical coexisted. It was a culture that fit the descriptions in Acts where scripture says that God did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness. and that the divine Creator of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Despite some dissension between factions and conflict with the papal hierarchy, the more effective early missionaries did not fuss over changing the culture and converting the Celts into "good Roman Catholics." What came of it was a style of Christianity that emphasized the handiwork of the Creator more than the approach that came out of Rome.

Virgil, Shakespeare, or whomever, whether or not you celebrate Midsummer's Eve with faerie dances and bonfires, it is a good time or year to remember your Creator and thank Him for a universe that runs with such precision that we have a summer solstice to celebrate.

Scripture from Acts 14:17 and 17: 14