Harvest season has kicked in to overdrive, the sun is zooming southward (or northward for my southern hemisphere-dwelling friends) and there is a nip in the air that freshens every breath.
I woke up yesterday morning and it was Autumn. Just like that. Thursday afternoon we had 93 degrees with heat indices over 100 and gawdawful humidity. Friday it got up to about 67 with a stiff breeze. And there was much rejoicing in the land.
I’m still harvesting tomatoes, freezing them now, mostly. Michael wants a moratorium on tomatoes until at least December.
The Autumnal Equinox is a time to celebrate the shifts between things, to honor how life can move from one stage to another. Slowing down to observe the Equinox can help us manage those changes better so we don’t suffer needlessly by making ourselves sick or having little (or big) accidents that lay us up for a time.
At Beltane, I wrote about the swoosh of the yin-yang symbol, how the seasons are in flow like a wave. Let’s just quickly revisit that idea, because as we swoop into the Long Dark, we are also rising toward the birth of the Lord of Light.
So we have this very flexible spectrum, this soft line that flows around the Wheel and through the pantheons, blurring the absolutes and keeping us in flow. Let’s just imagine that the spectrum is the divider between the Yin side and the Yang side; between Resting and Growing, between Night and Day, between Death and Rebirth.
Between Ending and Beginning again, which is the realm of Belief.
Between falling down and getting up; between losing it all and starting over; between winning and getting even better. We’re just entering that arc of Light that swells into the Dark now, and the world fills with sunshine and turns it verdantly green–but at the heart of Summer, the MidSummer Solstice in about six short weeks, the Lord of Misrule will be reborn. For now, though, it’s all sunshine and beauty and looking forward to the incredible bounty of our gardens, fields, orchards and vineyards. Daylight stretches out from the wee hours to bedtime, and nights pass in the blink of an eye.
So here we are, on the opposite side of that arc, harvesting madly so we can drop into rest, recovery and restoration. Things often become insanely busy; school is really ramping up, the holiday season is bearing down like an out-of-control train, and we’re trying to get as much time outside as possible before the freshening wind turns mean. Night starts earlier and ends later, making time seem compressed into fewer and fewer hours every day.
Which is exactly the time we start to do dumb stuff and make mistakes that slow us down even more.
This is when we have to get deep into our Time Ninja mindset and continue to remind ourselves that there are more than enough hours in every day, and if some stuff doesn’t get done, who cares? It’ll get done eventually. And maybe we slow down enough to think about whether all of those things are really all that important, or whether we can delegate them. Maybe they need to get done, but they don’t specifically need our attention. “No” is a word that might come in handy.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I will repeat that the most important thing that we all incarnated here on this planet to do is work through our shit so we don’t have to come back. That’s it. Parent stuff, kid stuff, partner stuff, authority stuff, poverty stuff, and every shade of every emotion that there is. Your most important job is to become ensouled.
Past is past, future doesn’t exist yet, now is what we have. And “now” is when everything happens. We never plan for an accident–it just happens “now.” We never plan for our loved ones to surprise us–it just happens “now.” Ready or not.
The great slowing down is going on all around us while we continue to rush and race.
I’m going to throw out a radical idea here. We evolved and adapted on this very planet. Our deep ancestors adjusted their lives to fit into the seasons so they could survive another circuit around the Sun. Just because we have digital alarm clocks and artificial light doesn’t mean we have to be active for 18 hours a day no matter what. Screw that nonsense. Winter is a time of renewal, not a curse or a punishment to endure. We’re dumbasses when we try to fight Nature. She always wins, even when we’re the ones cheating.
We don’t have to “have it all,” and anybody who thinks we do can have it, cuz I sure don’t want it. I’d rather have enough to be comfortable and cozy and secure, but not so much that keeping up with it interferes with me living a full life. Having things is way less rewarding than doing things. Making memories is way better than making money. Hell, you can make money any old time, it’s really nothing special. But having time with precious people, building a community of loving folks around you, being so present for your family and friends that love grows and grows — that’s the stuff, right there.
Take the time, and take your time. Don’t hurry through the slow-down. Enjoy it. Allow it to soothe and nourish you. The Earth knows in order to support the life that sustains us She must go through a period of rest. Why on Earth wouldn’t it be the same for us? There are seasons in our lives, big ones like birth, childhood, youth, maturity, parenthood, aging, slowing down, and dying; small ones like waking and sleeping. We go through changes all through our lives, big and small. But through it all, the important work is the work we do to become ensouled.