The turning of the calendar – the man-made calendar, the calendar that was superimposed on the earth.

The new year in the celtic world, from which my ancestors come, would be Samhain, the end of October. The year begins with the last harvest and the descent into darkness.

It’s only a couple of months difference, but ideologically much farther away from our modern calendar which seems to indicate an end in the darkness.

It says something, to me anyway, about the relationship my ancestors had with the natural world and the acknowledgment or maybe reverence of the wisdom and potency of the darkness.

The darkness is the beginning, it is that from which everything comes.

There’s dark shit that no amount of creativity and light can undo or make not have happened.
There’s darkness that doesn’t need to be filtered or burdened by an expectation of a healing to come.

Darkness happens. It exists.
And sometimes it is part of a cycle of emergence. And sometimes it’s unbearable.
And sometimes we find ways to bear the unbearable anyway.
And sometimes in the bearing, something else comes forth.

Whenever we sense our beginning, our personal turn of the year, may we be held by something or someone or somewhere that helps us bear the unbearable. And may we be mirrored and uplifted in our joy and radiance.

I don’t live on the edge in the same way. And yet, if I were to honor whatever edge might be present for me in this modern age, it might be one between light and dark, between activity and stillness, and a turning from outward orientation to inward orientation. Can I follow the guidance of the land and its cycles, lean into the fallow ground, the quiet and the dark to listen for a different kind of connection?

We’ve only been living in our current home for a year now, but I distinctly remember how quiet it was walking on one particular street last winter. When the snow was on the ground, early morning, cocooned by trees, evergreens and bare branches both, it was the silence that I noticed and enjoyed. I felt alive in a different way than when the spring birds are singing. It felt like the environment, the air, the land was right up close to my skin, and that I was right up against it, willingly intimate, no place to hide.

I am getting ahead of myself a bit here; we are still another month or two away from that kind of winter, but it’s coming. And likely if we pay attention enough to ourselves, we will notice some kind of response to the shift, whether we are longing for it, anticipating it, resisting it or even ignoring it.

Can we make a conscious noticing, even honoring, of whatever our experience is of this time of year? Even though the answer may not always be comfortable or pleasant, can we ask ourselves what the darkness makes us feel closer to in our lives? And what nourishes us as we head into the dark still cold night?

Three poems in the elevenie form:

Dark
Deepens knowing
In places ancestral
No need to fear
Transformation

Being that we are in the height of summer here in the northern hemisphere, I thought I would share a poem that I have worked with recently that expresses “wild love” for the sun. I was born just after the summer solstice, and I love swimming in the summer ocean, but my body and temperament struggle with the hot humid heat of deep summer. It feels a bit more tolerable living outside of a city right now, but I still find myself counting down the days until I can enjoy a cool fall breeze. In light of that, I am working on expanding my capacity to appreciate the summer, and I share this poem by Mary Oliver with that inspiration in mind.

What would your poem to the Sun say?

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance –
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love –
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

I’ve decided to share a glimpse of what I imagine will be the kinds of creations we are exploring together in this space and in upcoming workshops.

The first is a free-write poem that came from a collage workshop I participated in last year. I have included an image of the impromptu collage and the poem itself.

The second is a free-writing piece that came out of a guided visualization I participated in using the imagery of a lily pad.  The experience happened just after Imbolc, so my psyche was already in the space of seeds rooting down and beginning to make their turn up towards the surface come spring.

Embrace the Bardo
The in-between
Not here, not there
The crack
The fissure
The formless, yet to be formed 

At times quiet
At other times chaotic and wild
Untethered
Unanchored
Unmoored

The space of potential
of unknown
of yet to be and always has been

Let your wildness roam free
Unencumbered
Limitless
Without bounds

The roar of aliveness rippling out through the layers of Earth and the dimensionless Sky

Announcing
I am Here
I Matter

I can’t tell
If you grow up from the bottom
Or you reach down from the top.

It seems in some way you’ve always been both, suspended between the worlds of dark soil and sunlit blossom.

Holding the tension, while softly flowing with the water’s gentle current, like seaweed but rooted. The freedom to go wherever you want doesn’t exist as it does for seaweed, washing up on shore, drying out on sandy landings. For you, the freedom is held in the tension, the movement and unfolding can only happen between the earth and the sky, cradled in the nourishing water, forever growing both down and up.

Some might think it’s a shame that you don’t get to travel to other pockets of place, go on adventures or explorations; some may see your life as limitation, even in its beautiful blossom. You may not ever know the salt of the ocean or the heat of the baking sun on the earth. But what you do know is how living both rooted and sprouting allows for a different emergence, one of surprise, one of cycles, of birth and death, of dark and light.

It isn’t as limited or boring as the roaming seaweed might imagine. Instead, the world is continuously opening to new worlds, deeper worlds; the soil gets richer, darker, more alive, and the reach upward to blossom again in a different way each time brings renewal. The petals never take in the sun the same way twice.

And so, it is also, tethered to the places and the history of family, while also face-turned up to the sky, growing towards a new warmth, ready to unfurl uniquely and singularly.