This post was sent to my newsletter at the new moon, as part of the Word of the Moon series. If you'd like to receive this when it's fresh - as well as insights and announcements about other creations of mine - please do sign up!
On the eve of equinox, the air came gusting across the grass in rolls and billows, scaring up the last warm pockets of summer. Branches answered with dropped leaves and yellow edges, a silent nod to the waning of the light.
The abundance of summer slacks, and each breath hints at the impending leanness of winter’s chill. I feel an urge to call all those friends scattered like seeds with the exuberance of the past season, to establish again the songlines of community.
Though few of us feed ourselves with our own hands in the dirt, and fewer still seek to save that summer flavor in a pantry full of jars, fall is a time for gathering in. Projects call for resolution, and our focus moves inward, condensing.
It is a time to prepare for the slow season, the dark nights, the quiet hours. We must decide what to take with us from the days of plenty, and to what purpose, and on which shelf it will live.
And so, the spirit of the dark at the turning of the leaves is
order.
When we look outside, we see anything but order. Squash vines linger, collapsing into a half-dried miasma atop our weedy garden paths. Creeper vine has overtaken the limb that fell in last month’s storm, and our calendar is a mess of last-dash trips to our favored splashes.
It is chaos. Yet this chaos has a cadence, and that cadence is your own.
Order is not - as we are wont to believe - synonymous with control. Order arises from our personal perception of rightness and relationship, forming from the liminal shade of the in-between. Through the prescient pruning of our individual life, we craft connections of meaning across the webs of time.
This heartbeat of meaning feeds every choice and unfolding we face. This meaning becomes clear not through the static structure of things, but through the harmony we bring to its flow. Listen to the pulse that is present in your own wildness and flourishing, and allow it to teach you how to shape your joy. Clear around the strong vines of your values, and let the rest fall back to dust.
What scaffolding emerges from the fading of your flush season? What patterns hold the light as you look to the coming dark?
I am gathering the plants, their numerous seeds, and a dream of what is yet to be.
