Greeting the Sun

Willowmoor's first year was not easy. Between surviving the cold months and building during the warm months, they might not have had a thought to spare for anything else. Instead, they were given gardening supplies and the crop starters they needed while en route to the future site of Willowmoor as they passed through a friendly settlement. Even so, some plants didn't take to the soil, and the nearby tributaries were unmanageable, flooding during an autumn rain and killing several crops just before the harvest.

Luckily, the community brainstormed and came together to salvage what they could and deal with the issues at hand with irrigation experiments, levies, storm walls, and various fertilization techniques for the soil. Even so, they still struggled to grow anything as winter approached on the swift wings of the turning leaves.

That was when one of the only elderly residents of the village began her morning ritual: she rose before dawn, making her way to the market garden to greet the sun with a morning prayer. A second generation Japanese American, she spoke in one of her two native languages, reciting words that comforted and calmed her like a meditation. She dwelled on her own personal spiritual connections to the land and her heritage while she did this, but others just saw one of two elders in the village praying in an ancient tongue as if to the sun.

Exactly one week after the old woman started visiting the market for daily prayers, a Scout stumbled upon a ripening apple orchard that they had been trekking through all year without realizing what it was. The day after this discovery, a pair of deer were taken down when they tried to dig up the garden, which led to the discovery that more of the crops had been salvaged than initially thought.

Perhaps Joan's silent prayer, unintelligible by most, had been heard by the sun or the god (or goddess) who dwells within it. Many certainly thought so, for more people began imitating her with their own greetings to the sun in front of the market garden. Eventually, the ritual spread to homes where people tried blessing their personal gardens that way, too.

Or perhaps, of course, Willowmoor just saw a stroke of luck and Joan's greeting to the sun had nothing to do with it.

You can be the judge.

In its simplest form, all one does is offer any friendly or respectful greeting to the sun the moment one sees it during the course of its morning rise. If it does not show due to clouds or other weather, it should be greeted anyway and offered thanks for sharing the sky.

The most elaborate prayer is offered up in an ancient language in front of the market garden where the majority of fruits, vegetables, and herbs grow in town.

Since most Willowmoorans are unfamiliar with the old language from the Before Times, the prayer in front of the market garden is often conducted in a common tongue translation these days.

It's called greeting the sun for a reason! The ritual is always performed at dawn, preferably during the course of the sun's rise over the horizon. It can still be observed if the sun is not visible, however, and it should be every day for the best results.

There are also three special days where even the most skeptical among Willowmoor often greet the sun: the first and last days of the harvest season, and the first day of summer.