Wheatlings

Carol Christ (awesome spiritual eco-feminist author and blogger for Women and Spirituality) just posted on the death of a (Greek) neighbor of hers. (She’s living in Greece.) She says,

My mind went immediately to the explanation of the Eleusinian Mysteries that has always made the most sense to me. According to this theory, the Eleusinian “mystery” was “revealed” when the priestess held up a sheaf of wheat and said words that are echoed in the gospel of John 12:24: “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” According to Cicero, the ancient Athenians sowed wheat on graves and called the dead wheatlings. Surely the women of my village did not know any of this, yet they perform gestures far more ancient than Christianity when they place a bowl of wheat beneath the head of the dead woman and later share it with the community of the living.

Read the whole post here.