This is a sermon in three parts, the structure loved by preachers for centuries, but in this case the form grew organically from the subject. The subject is "Mayday" in its various meanings, and they happen to be three meanings: Mayday as a Spring festival; Mayday as the European Labour Day; and Mayday as a distress signal. Those of you who like puzzles and challenges are probably already trying to work out what connection I'm going to find between these meanings, and it was a challenge to me, too, of the kind I love. The exhortation, "Only connect!" from E.M. Forster's novel Howard's End is one I try to carry out as much as possible, and it always provides some good insights. I think I found something worth passing on this time.

Mayday has been a joyful spring festival in the Old World since very ancient times. According to my Dictionary. Of Beliefs and Religions, it's been celebrated in a multitude of forms. To the early Celts, for example, it was the feast of Beltane in honour of the sun god, and the Womynspirit Circle will probably celebrate that aspect of it together. To the Romans it was the festival of the mother-goddess Maia, goddess of nature and growth, after whom the month of May may have been named, although there's some doubt about that -- another source I have, The English Year, by Roy Strong and Julia Oman, says rather dismissively that ......the most [probable] account of the origin of the name of the month is that which represents it as being assigned in honour of the Maiores, the senate in the original constitution of Rome ..... The notion that it was in honour of Maia, the mother ..... of the god Hermes ..... seems entirely gratuitous, and merely surmised in consequence of the resemblance of the word.....

So you can take your pick about the word's origin, but there's no doubt that Mayday was festive. My Multifaith Calendar tells me that

May Day celebrates the conjoining of the infinite potential of the Goddess with the life-sparking energy of the God in the sacred marriage which is the basis of all creation. It is a time for balancing the feminine and masculine tides within the psyche as each celebrant prepares to participate in bringing the creative potential of the year to fruition.

And in The Cult of the Mother-Goddess, by E.O. James, there's a very full account of what went on. Writing in a rather quaintly archaic style, James says that ..... the month of May has [in Christianity] been dedicated to the Madonna ..... it has been a common and widespread custom in peasant Europe for youths to go out to the woods [in the early hours of May 1], cut down a tree, lop of the branches, leaving a few at the top, and after wrapping it round with purple bands to decorate it with violets ..... It was then taken back to the village at sunrise on May Day to the accompaniment of the blowing of flutes and horns, together with either young trees or branches which were fastened over the doors and windows of the houses, while the May-pole was erected on the village green or ..... near the church.....

The May-pole often has stood more than sixty feet high, and ..... has been conveyed in a wagon by from twenty to forty oxen, each adorned with garlands on the horns, followed by mean and women and children ..... On its arrival at the selected spot in the village it was erected ..... and around it dances were held. Sometimes those taking part in them were confined to lovers, though frequently all the younger members of the community joined in the merry-making. In England long streamers are ... attached to the top of the pole, each held by a child, and as they dance round it the ribbons are twined round it, to be untwined when the dancers reverse.....

Not infrequently the May Queen herself has been taken in triumph to the village green in a decorated cart drawn by youths or maids of honour, and headed by the May-pole..... The May King, who has often been associated with her, has been represented by a man, usually a chimney-sweep, clad in a wooden framework covered with leaves ..... Sometimes the symbolism was that of a sacred marriage of the May Queen and the May King, united to each other as bride and bridegroom ..... As [the ancient mother goddess] was responsible for the flowering of the fields, so the May Queen sat in an arbour wreathed with flowers, or in the porch of the church, resembling [the goddess] seated at the entrance of her mountain abode and receiving floral offerings from her votaries.

..... although the ancient rites have degenerated into little more than picturesque popular pastimes, ..... they have retained their original figures and traits little changed through more than two thousand years during which they have persisted, however much their purposes and functions may have become desacralized. So ingrained in these customs and observances were the myth and ritual of the [Mother Goddess] that the enactment of the theme has been handed down through the ages ..... even though the fruitfulness of the earth may no longer be thought to rest upon the fulfilment of their time-honoured offices.

These pagan observances were taken over by Christianity, and the distinction between the Great Mother and Mary, the mother of Jesus, became blurred, until the Maypole, for instance, became almost as important a religious symbol as the spire of the village church. The Puritans, in the seventeenth century, didn't like anything which smacked of paganism, and they uprooted all the Maypoles they could find, and put a stop to all the jollities, but only for a little while; after the Restoration of the Monarchy they began to be re-erected, and the old ceremonies with the lovers and fertility symbols -- all those carryings-on started all over again. It couldn't be stopped for long. Mayday as a Spring festival seems rooted deep in our psyches, even if we don't do much about celebrating it on that particular day in North America any more.

Now, the second meaning of the word, which again is mainly European: Mayday as a festival of the labour force. My Dictionary of Beliefs and Religions tells us that Mayday is a ..... modern festival of hope, centred in many places upon Labour Day, ..... which honours the dignity of workers. Until recently, in communist countries, May Day processions were occasions to exalt the achievements of Marxism. This festival gathers up natural and secular themes such as sunrise, the advent of summer, growth in nature, and the [nineteenth century] vision of a [time] in the future, beginning on May Day, when there would be no more poverty, injustice or cruelty but people would work and live together in harmony and friendship.

Maybe someone here can enlighten me later about whether Labour Day was ever celebrated on Mayday in North America, or whether it's always been observed on the first Monday of September, and how that was fixed. Karl Marx's philosophy was celebrated on many May Days, in many places, until the 1990s and the widespread fall of communism. Here's a piece from the writing which influenced the course of human history for more than a century; it's from the "Communist Manifesto" of 1848. Despite the fact that it comes from a system of political thought which most of us probably reject overall, I think it has some relevance for us:

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. .....

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. ..... Workers of the world, unite!

When I first thought about that reading and the festival of the workers, it seemed like a very stark and rather bleak contrast with the first meaning of Mayday, the Spring festival, with all its sensory delights, its love-ins and dancing and pleasure. But then, out of the blue (or probably not; these things usually come from some intuitive part of one's being) I remembered a song by Stephen Foster, that nineteenth century American songwriting champion of the workers. The words and tune went through my head and I realized that it wouldn't be entirely out of place at either kind of Mayday celebration -- the Spring one or the Labour one. That's why I read you part of it a few minutes ago: "There's a good time coming [yay! ], a good time coming!" I very much like that optimistic way of presenting our hopes for a better deal for the workers of the world! It's good to keep it in mind, I think, in relation to Mayday, along with all the Spring Fling stuff, and along with those memorable words from Marx: "we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."

And now, the third meaning of Mayday: a distress signal. Again, it seems like a stark contrast with the festivities of Spring and even of Labour Day. And it's true that the origin of this use of the word has very little to do with the other uses. When I first thought of speaking on this topic, I didn't know, or at least couldn't remember, how Mayday came to be used in this way, as a distress signal, but I was confident that I'd find out well before the service. And sure enough, even without my asking, someone came to my aid and asked me if I was aware that it probably came from the French phrase "m'aider" -- "[Please] to help me". Some of you may be aware of other possible origins, but this one makes sense to me. "M'aider! M'aider!" "Help me! Help me!"

And here, in case you hadn't guessed, is the connection I find between all these meanings of Mayday. They're all about helping something to happen -- about the need to help something to happen. Yes, in all the senses of the word I see this element of help -- in the Spring festival, in the Labour celebration, and in the distress signal. It's a little obscure, maybe, in relation to the ancient celebration of Spring, but let me refer us back to an idea buried in the excerpts I read to you, first from the Multifaith Calendar, which is jointly published each year by various Canadian multicultural and multifaith organizations, with participation by the Canadian Unitarian Council. You may remember the Calendar said that Mayday "..... is a time for balancing the feminine and masculine tides within the psyche as each celebrant prepares to participate in bringing the creative potential of the year to fruition."

What a fascinating idea that is -- that we can actually be involved in helping the natural processes along, that "each celebrant prepares to participate in bringing the creative potential of the year to fruition." It reminds me of a wonderful Spring poem -- yes, you probably guessed that there would be some poetry in this service! This poem is called "Naming of Parts", by a rather obscure poet, Henry Reed. It's about young soldiers learning the parts of a gun; their instructor, standing in the warm sun of an April day, is demonstrating how the weapon works in these words:

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.

What we're doing when we celebrate Mayday and Easter and Beltane, I think, is easing the Spring. Sure, it would happen anyway, but as E.O. James noted, we somehow feel moved to continue the old traditions "even though the fruitfulness of the earth may no longer be thought to rest upon the fulfilment of [these] time-honoured offices." Perhaps Spring doesn't depend on us, but we may be able to give it a helping hand, rather like the birth process which happens whether or not there's a midwife or doctor around, and yet it's good to have them there. I wonder if this is some of what's meant by the passage in the Letter to the Romans, where it says (in Chapter 8), "..... the whole created universe groans in all its parts as if in the pangs of childbirth." Those of you who're interested in theology may recognize the basic idea of "process theology", that the whole universe, including whatever we might call God, or the highest powers, or the Spirit of Life, and including ourselves -- all of it -- is going through a long evolution in which we can be passive or active, as we decide. We can "ease the Spring"; we can participate in evolution; we can even extend Earth Day to the whole year and help the planet be more prolific. We participate in the easing and the evolution, with our ceremonies of gratitude and celebration, and with our lives of dedicated work.

Ah, work -- that's the whole thrust of the second meaning of Mayday. In words I read from the song about the "good time coming", Stephen Foster talked as glowingly as Karl Marx did about the Utopia in which "little children shall not toil, under or above the soil" and "nations shall not quarrel then to prove which is the stronger", but all he told us to do was to "wait a little longer". I suggest that we can do more than wait, although patience and the determination to wait are very important; we can also commit ourselves to work while we wait, to work in every way we know to hasten the coming of the Good Time. Because we are participants in the process; we can ease the Spring and facilitate the time when, in the words of one of our hymns, "a spirit then shall move them we but vaguely apprehend -- aims magnificent and holy, making joy and labour friend".
This can only come about with our help, because
We are builders of that city. / All our joys and all our groans
Help to rear its shining ramparts; / All our lives are building stones.
Whether humble or exalted, / All are called to task divine;
All must aid alike to carry / Forward one sublime design.

Let's ease the Spring with our celebrations, and the coming of the Good Time with our labour. Well, there's not much puzzle left for you about the third meaning of Mayday, the distress signal, the call to "help". All over the world there are people sending Mayday signals to us, from those in our own families, our own congregation, our own province, in distress of one kind or another, to those threatened by renewed famine in Ethiopia, fundamentalist religious fanaticism in Afghanistan, and the myriad other miseries you know about. We don't have to look for distress; it's everywhere, along with the joy and the beauty and the celebrations. May the Mayday signal "help me!" be heard by us all, and may we respond with all the help we can give. Let's remember our role as midwives of health and wholeness, assistants in the birth of better things. In the words of poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy:

We are the music makers, / And we are the dreamers of dreams, .....
.... For each age is a dream that is dying / Or one that is coming to birth.

And when it seems just too much, and we find ourselves in despair over our inability to solve all the problems of the world, or even one of them, may we be reminded of the paradox that although it depends on us, it doesn't depend on us entirely or on us alone. We can ease the Spring, but we don't control the Spring; we can help the Good Time come not only by our work but by our patient waiting. And we can respond to distress signals by standing in solidarity with the troubled and needy of the world, by affirming over and over again, in whatever ways we can, that we're all in this together: we are not alone. So be it.