Le Sacre du Printemps, the sacred spring.

Usually this time of year - the doorway between spring and summer - is one of great joy and enthusiasm. The lusty month of May, as Julie Andrews sang in Camelot. Reckless abandon and lascivious license. Girls gone wild and all that.  But this year, we seem to have gotten a different sort of May Day. And not just different. Very different. In the words of Monty Python, something completely different.  

In some cases, it's a revolution of sorts. And in some it's a real May Day - in the S.O.S. sense of the phrase.

For many, the crappy economy, the failure of our government and genuinely tragic climatic issues have made this past winter feel particularly long and arduous. And that makes whatever other issues you are facing in your life seem all the more daunting. Honestly, in my session work I have never seen so much fear and apprehension in people. Or so many lawsuits and criminal investigations. Everything seems so weighty right now, and appears to have such dire consequences. Talk about a buzz-kill.

Hang on, baby, and go easy on the hot fuss. There are gifts and lessons inherent in each season. And to a certain degree, the dilemmas we face now are not that far off the mark. Beltane is, after all, more than just a fertility ritual. In the great psychological drama that is our annual cycle, Beltane is your third act crisis, where the protagonist is confronted by obstacles, often of his own making. It is a time when the things we have planned and planted encounter their first major test or snag, where our path takes its first big bend and we have to grow into a solution. Or a slew of them.

Olly-olly-oxen-free. Ready or not, here we go.

I think the challenge before us this Beltane is in getting with the program. A very different sort of program. And finding a way to be excited and enrolled. Or, as Drew Barrymore once said, in the face of her husband's cancer diagnosis, "How do we make this fun?" Seriously.  This Beltane, find a way to make it fun. It's not about things being so dark we can't or don't celebrate, it's about find a new way. Innovate. Be committed to finding joy and the grace of the process. And as usual, the energies of the stars can show us the way, though sometimes it is not the way you would expect.