Posters feature 'celebrating' world leaders: Hillary Clinton on a boat in the canals, Barack Obama hand in hand with Vladimir Putin, wearing identical Kiss Me, I'm Drunk t-shirts, and Nicolas Sarkozy with Silvio Berlusconi, draped in orange feathered boas.
Queen Beatrix today at Keukenhof.
"From that day on Canada became a second home", the Princess has said on several occasions. "I feel a very strong bond with Canada and it is becoming stronger as I grow older. You want to return to the place you were born." With her husband she has travelled the length and width of Canada, including a daring husky-expedition with the Inuit."It is very important that we continue to show gratitude to those who liberated us, who came all the way to Europe, that we continue to respect them and keep them in high regard for peace and liberty come at a price," Princess Margriet said in a special Dutch television programme last night. You can watch a fragment here, too.
There is however, a second reason for returning time after time: the Canadians veterans, the men and women who risked their lives during the Second World War to help liberate the Netherlands.
On the evening of Thursday, June 21, I truly experienced my own Mysterium Tremendum.
Approximately 40 people gathered at the Burlington Earth Clock for a Summer Solstice celebration. I live just a three-minute walk from its location at Blanchard Beach and headed over with my friends around 7 o'clock for the pot luck supper. Friends of the Earth Clock brought salads, soups, casseroles, and fruit to share. I had made a delicious fruit salad with poppy seed dressing. While people gathered to eat, others carried pails of lake water up the embankment to nourish the plants at the site. At 8 p.m., we assembled in a circle while Jessie lead us in the spiritual part of the celebration. Actually, the meal was a spiritual offering - placed on a flat rock apart from the stone circle - for breaking bread together. These kinds of rituals in common have deep meaning for me. We started by sitting in a small circle just outside the larger circle of rocks. People introduced themselves and, passing around a stone which Jessie had brought, said a prayer - one word or a phrase - about their hopes, dreams or praise and connection with spirit, God - as each person understood her - creation, the universe, the sun, the people and animals who came before us. Several participants drummed out rhythmic beats with sticks on stones, played simple wooden recorders as we all got up barefoot and danced inside the rocks, the 'circle of peace.' As the sun lowered over the summer solstice rock, the group became quiet for a moment and then, holding hands in a people-circle, shouted what sounded to me like garlic in Spanish - a loud Ajo! - but I think the sound is meant more an exclaimation of awe and wonder.
The participants were spiritually a pretty eclectic bunch. There were Buddhists, Jews, Druids, Wiccans, Deists, Christians - all sorts and conditions, to use a phrase from the BCP.
One of the organisers of the Earth Circle explained the importance of the placement of the rocks. One pointed to St Anne's Shrine on Isle La Motte, which is an Abenaki sacred ground; another rock pointed south to the deepest part of Lake Champlain; there is a rock for the Winter Solstice and another for the Spring and Fall Equinox.
Today, at 2:30 p.m., the Earth Circle group will gather for another celebration.
