Friday, August 7, 2026: “Soon you can no longer be an onlooker.” Lammas - The Beginning of August

Have you ever stepped into an ancient building or stood on the edge of a natural site and felt that you had some connection with that space? I have. It is as if there is something in my cultural DNA that connects me. That is how I feel about Lammastide — the beginning of August.

This is the time for the wheat harvest. It was the first harvest of crops necessary to sustain life through the winter. It also signaled a significant change in the seasons. August is not just a continuation of the summer. Spring is when we plant, summer is when we care for what has been planted, but in August we begin to harvest.

“Lammas” or the “Mass of the loaf”  is an old pre-Christian festival carried over into Christian times. Every family baked a loaf of bread from the new wheat and took it to the village church. In some places, there was a great festival and people rode to the church atop the harvest wagons in a celebration known as “Harvest Home.”

A person living close to the land will feel a change in the tempo of the season. It is understood that at this time, we all help each other, for nothing is as important as the harvest. Even in my lifetime, when there was an unusually late bean harvest in the fields surrounding my town, the schools were closed for several days. 

Almost all of us kids were out helping bring in the harvest — because this is also a time of fear. Nature does not always cooperate. There can be storms that destroy our dreams. Poets and composers have captured these tense moments.

Shakespeare had Juliet born on the eve of Lammas. Yet she died before her love for Romeo could be harvested. It was a bittersweet reminder to the audience of his day that innocent love does not always prevail over the hatred and prejudices of society.

Walking through the orchard, in the garden, or between the rows of olive trees, it is as if I hear a voice saying, “Soon you can no longer be an onlooker.”  There is a role I must fulfill together with others to harvest what has been planted and cared for. That is true not only of this land that I love but in my own life and, perhaps most frustratingly, the society in which I live.

Well, the time to rest is over. Let us pick up our tools and get on with it. Maybe it will be picking tomatoes, or it might be a major change in the way we live. Perhaps for some, it is manning the barricades and unfurling the banners against the forces of oppression! Oh well, we can all dream. Now, for me, back to the tomatoes...

- Brother Toby (1931-2025)