or Walpurgis Night.If I were "home" in Rhode Island, I might be attending a Valborg celebration with my family at Little Rhody Vasa Park. (In truth, of course, I bet they'd celebrate not on April 30th but on the closest weekend!) We'd have some Swedish food (with some Italian specialties--I mean, it IS Rhode Island) and a folklorist would share a story and a song. We might build a bonfire (to ward of demonic spirits) and the children might enact running the Winter Witch out of the community. (Lots of layers here.) And there might be a little drinking. Just a little. (Right.)
Wikipedia says that Walpurgisnacht (German) is the time of the "Enclosure of the Fallen." Odin died to retrieve the special knowledge of the runes, and this night of his death is a time when, like on Hallowe'en and All Saints/All Souls, the boundary between the living and the dead is especially slim. It represents a night of chaos when the dead walk among us and might communicate with us. Bonfires contain (enclose?) the dead and protect us from confusion. All creation awaits the return of order with the coming of the sun on May Day, the beginning of summer. (Mid-summer is marked on June 21 with the summer equinox.)
April 30th marks the end of the academic year, and at universities, I'm told, students (and I bet a professor or two) spend the night with peers, singing and drinking and carrying on. Enormous bonfires are built in the weeks leading up to Valborg, perhaps mirrored in the countryside by people having spent weeks pruning trees and then building fires to burn out any mold that has accumulated with the spring's rain. I'm told people expect to sleep away the next morning.
Tonight at our church, we'll have another session in our series of meetings talking about reconciliation in our community. Tonight will be a conversation about shared leadership, shared ministry. I expect that the dozen or so of us who converse will find much agreement, even with differing emphases. I'll hope to post the results of our conversations, even as I try to create a ritual based on our thoughts.
