Beltane is a time for joy and love. It can be romantic, familial or sexual. But it can also be the love of purpose and meaning--i.e. passion for creativity, craft or calling. It can also be love and acceptance of others in the world.

Reach out to someone of another culture, religion or social group. Not in some grand way, where you save someone. Just in a personal way, like a friend and neighbor. Reach out with an everyday action such as inviting someone to a party, even though they aren't exactly the same as your "regular" friends. Or make space for someone to speak who is usually fairly quiet at meetings. When there is someone in your class or on your street with a disability or other difference, make sure they are welcome and invited when friends and neighbors get together--not out of charity but because that's the kind of world you want to live in.

Include. Even when there is a small risk. This is how we become unified.

Gaia, Damu, Durga, Atabey, Nammu, Mawu, Pachamama!

Our mother the earth, blessed are your names.

Blessed are your forests, deserts, marshes and mountains.

Blessed are your waters, your life blood that gives life to all.

Blessed is your breath, the air that maintains our spark of life.

Blessed are all your growing plants, herbs and trees.

Blessed are all the creatures, your children. We are one family.

Blessed are all the people of this earth..

The same rhythm beats in every stranger's throat.

Blessed are the sun and moon, blessed are the stars,

givers of light that fill our hearts with awe.

Soul of the earth, our mother, blessed is your name.

I spent most of November of 1992 sitting in a basement in Hessen, Germany listening to a young Czech migrant worker play folk songs on a guitar and tell stories of the dead.

I was sixteen at the time and wide-eyed at the horizons that had just burst open before me. Up until a few months before, I had been a girl living in a remote part of the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon. I couldn't spell Czechoslovakia and I had never heard the world Pagan, even though my family was Pagan. Now I heard about the deep Celtic roots of Bohemia and of the centuries of conquest and struggle that successive totalitarian regimes had brought. I soaked up tales of grandfather healers, tough-as-nails grandmothers and one who took his own life.

In that month of November, I grew more than I have in most years of my life. I learned that the dead are never gone, that we breathe because of the struggles of our ancestors, that the stones of a place tell their own story, that my roots stretch back to many traditions and that the whispers of spirit can come through music even in another language.

I had never heard of Birago Diop at the time. He was a great Senegalese poet, story-teller and veterinarian, a man of the African renaissance, whose words would inform my spirituality later and haunt the world. But though I had yet to hear of him, Birago Diop died that month at the age of 83, becoming an honored ancestor of his people.

Today when I look back at those who have passed into the realm of ancestors and prepare for the time of long, dark nights and contemplation, Diop's poem "Breaths" is my primary meditation. They are words true to the beliefs of Pagans all over the world in one form or another, no matter our continent. Surely, they link us back to the common past of humanity, to the ancestors that link us all.

What honor do we give our ancestors if we make war or draw lines between cultures, traditions and races? What honor do we give our ancestors if we fritter away the gift of our lives with consumerism and lifestyles that make the earth unlivable for the next generation?

I make the offering of candles inside vegetables beside my door and freshly brewed tea. Bless the ancestors of this land and hearth. May you be nourished and healed of your wounds that we may be free in our day.

One thing I love about Diop's poem is that it can be adapted. The cadence of it is easily shaped to whatever signals the presence of ancestors for you. As long as you don't try to publish it as your own original work, you can use the poem "Breaths" to make a personal meditation.

Here's mine with all honor to Diop:

The dead are never gone.

They are there in the evening shadow.

The dead are not under the earth.

They are there in the falling rain.

They are there in the line of a child's smile.

They are there in the black soil of the garden.

They are in the fire on the hearth.

They are in cold night wind.

The dead are never, never gone.