Spring has been quietly and not-so-quietly growing since early February in the Pacific Northwest. Spring Equinox marks the middle for us, and for some areas, the beginning of Spring.
In 2024 Spring Equinox falls on March 19th at 8:06 pm Pacific Time. This is a time when the day and night are close to equal, with the days becoming longer and longer until summer solstice is here!
The living earth gives us so many ways to participate in Spring—aligning with the growing light, practicing balancing, making way for the invitation to new leafing and budding and lengthening…
This year, I’m drawn to the invitation to join with the aliveness happening all around us, to enter into the movement, the vibrancy, the joy, even the noise of Spring.
The varied thrush is calling her long high whistle, the peepers are returning to the pond to call to their mates, and the robins and migrating songbirds are showing up to sing. Life is awaking!
Wintertime called us to rest and be quiet so we could be ready for Spring’s energy, and now Spring is here calling us to more!
This poem by the poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer showcases a bird we know well here, the Kingfisher. We are always excited when Kingfisher visits us with their distinctive call!
“Beyond Quiet“ From bare branch to bare branch kingfishers weave the dry tick of their call through morning— as if sticks are rattling, as if stones are clattering— and whatever part of me that is longing for quiet is invited into the racket. I say I want peace, but what the heart really wants is to know itself as part of everything, to belong to the world of grinding and trilling, scolding and chattering, to knit itself into this raucous day, strident and so alive.
Winter’s rest and peace give way to Spring’s aliveness!
Of course, we need to carry rest with us and still make time for it, but the invitation is always is to knit ourselves into the day, even one that is strident, in order to be so alive!
How will you participate in the invitation of Spring?
How will you knit yourself into Spring’s fresh, new aliveness?
Winter Solstice occurs at 7:27 pm Pacific Time on Thursday, December 21st, 2023.
In the US, we usually think of this as the beginning of winter, but in the Celtic tradition, it’s midwinter, the depth of darkness. The winter season begins after Halloween (Samhain) and ends at Imbolc, February 1st, the very beginning of Spring. This way of circling through the seasons aligns well with the Pacific Northwest climate we live in now.
Regardless of when winter begins, we can learn its rhythms and invitations by noticing what the living earth and her creatures are doing and practicing this in our own lives:
Go dormant, hibernate, lie fallow.
Root, return to ground, compost.
Go within, turn inward, introspect.
Listen deeply and listen some more.
Welcome darkness and night.
Slow down, stop, rest.
It’s hard to do this in our go-go culture. And it’s harder yet during December when we have created a light-filled holiday time. It feels like time speeds up between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Parties, Christmas lights, celebrations to drive the dark away… just when the living earth is inviting us to go into a slower, darker, more inward time. It can feel quite paradoxical.
I am practicing with this paradox in a few ways…
Like the collage at the top of this blog, which spirals from Fall to Winter (bottom right, earthwise and ending in the middle), I find the quiet, dark spot in the center of any moment. I take that moment to land, to feel held, to quiet and rest. Even though the 10,000 things are clamoring for my attention (and often succeed in getting it), I practice returning to the darkness, the stopping, the slowness.
I am also practicing the following mantra I learned from Miranda MacPherson. I start by just sensing my body, returning to the moment in this way. Then I slowly recite it inwardly with my breath. This has been a beautiful, restful practice for me. I do it at least once a day and sometimes more, repeating it as many times as I can before moving to the next thing on my plate.
Be nothing.
Do nothing.
Get nothing.
Become nothing.
Seek for nothing.
Relinquish nothing.
Be as you are.
Rest in God. (Sometimes I say, “Rest in the dark.”)
This is the breath practice I am finding nourishing:
Inhale: Be nothing.
Exhale: Do nothing. Get nothing.
Inhale: Become nothing.
Exhale: Seek for nothing. Relinquish nothing.
Inhale: Be as you are.
Exhale: Rest in God (the dark).
How do you hold the paradox of light and dark?
How do you find a place of rest in the midst of the busyness?
If you would like to practice with others and you live locally, I have two opportunities for being in community in these dark times:
Winter Solstice Celebration, December 21st, 7:00-8:00 pm Outside, in the courtyard at QUUF. Bring a chair and dress for the weather!
Wild Church Port Townsend, December 23rd, 10-11:30 am At Fort Townsend under the big Doug Fir. Bring a chair and dress for the weather!
For those who live too far away to join in person:
Chant & Song for Community, Healing & Hope will start up again on zoom in January on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays from 7:00 – 8:00 pm PT.
I clothe my soul in the mantle of creation, heavens of light, earth of life, seas of love, surround and support my Autumn-wakening soul. Preserve my soul in compassion, may it shine forth with the rich Autumn sunlight.*
Autumn Equinox occurs on Friday, September 22nd at 11:49 pm PT.
I grew up thinking that Fall Equinox marked the beginning of Fall, but in the Celtic circle of the year, Fall Equinox is the midway point, with Lughnasadh, August 1st, as the beginning and Halloween (Samhain) being the end.
This year, living here in the Pacific Northwest, I got it. Even though we can still get some summer heat in August, there is a change in the air and the nights begin to get cooler.
If I think of it as the beginning of harvest season, it makes more sense—in August, the summer fruits and veggies are beginning to be ready for harvest—beans, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, grains, plums, apples…
The same elements that are growing and ripening the plants are also growing and ripening us—earth-air-fire-water—creating the tissues and bones of our bodies, breathing us, firing our digestion and heartbeat, moving nourishment and flushing out toxins and juicing our cells.
We, like the plants, can also turn towards harvest. We bloom and fruit, shapeshift, and mature.
Autumn Equinox invites us to consider our harvest:
What is maturing and coming into fruit?
What is still ripening?
What harvest abundance can be shared with others?
One thing that is ripening in me is the ability to not push against life as much. The gardens and all the tending asked of me, the support of my parents as they age, our dog Sammy’s dying process… it all has its own timing which I can participate in, but I’m learning that I don’t need to push any of it.
Pushing—trying to do too much all at once, moving too fast, thinking I know the right way—just creates anguish and pain. I’ve done that too much and it’s finally beginning to shapeshift…
What about you? What will your harvest be this Autumn Equinox?
I go forth under the mantle of earth: clarity of glaciers, silence of deserts, beauty of mountains, sweetness of valleys, mystery of forests, flow of rivers, depth of oceans, equity of plains, homeyness of hills. Earth-Mantle cover me, keep and preserve me, from strike of spark till fall of dark.
* from Celtic Devotional, Caitlin Matthews, p. 98 & 104
Leaves in full verdancy–lady, bracken and sword ferns, hazelnut, birch, witch hazel, asian pear, cherry, apple, mountain ash, vine and big-leaf maples, nettle, cleavers, herb robert, violets, kale, cilantro, lettuce…
And so many more that I did not name… Not to mention the birds!
As Gunilla Morris says in A Mystic Garden, you can almost hear the earth humming with growth.
Breathing out, I rest in the stillness.
And the stillness?
It’s as if all this verdant and vivid growth is held in the stillness–in the ground of the living earth, in the rays of the sun, in the vast vault of sky.
Without this holding, nothing could grow–without the earth the roots root in, without the light of the sun that creates life, without the air to breathe…
Breathing in, I take in the fullness. Breathing out, I rest in the stillness.
Isn’t this so like our lives?
I can get so caught up in the fullness–in answering its call to tend, to enjoy, to jump in–that I forget about the stillness holding me.
Sometimes I can get a visceral sense of the holding by just lying down on the floor to do some somatics or by stepping outside into the living earth or by just sitting with tea. I used to take 5 minute “Do Nothing Breaks,” too.
This summer, let’s savor the fullness–revel in it (not just work!)–and also take time to rest in the stillness. We need both to be whole.
Breathing in, I take in the fullness. Breathing out, I rest in the stillness.
Which part of this gatha do you need to be reminded of most?
As I walk out the door, I begin to move and breathe differently. I slow down, notice my body, start noticing what’s around me.
I’m going on a wander, one of the main practices of eco-spirituality workshops I’ve attended and a core part of Wild Church.
I let my feet, not my head, guide me toward the entry I’ll take today into one of our forest paths. As I step in, I cross a threshold and consciously mark it. Sometimes, I say a few words about my intention; sometimes, I ask for guidance; often, I ask just to be present and receive what the living earth wants me to know.
Today, the sunlight is slanting through the forest at just the right angle to catch all the spider webs. I’ve never noticed them before. I see three different active webs with spiders in the middle and lots and lots of old webs in the branches of the cedar. The old ones are collecting things—twigs, moss, fronds, needles, bits and pieces… They look like little hammocks of support. I am surrounded by support and grandmother spiders weaving the world.
The synchronicity of this? Not only is support something I am opening more to these days, but I pulled the Spider Medicine Card this morning!
In my desire to feel like the earth being I am, I have been practicing, wandering, singing, reading, attending eco-spirituality workshops…one of the books I devoured in the last year was by Victoria Loorz called Church of the Wild. This book describes her path from traditional Christianity into Wild Church, a way of meeting in community to practice being and communing with creation, outside in all weather.
Others at QUUF, the UU fellowship I belong to, had also found this book and a small group of us met to explore how to bring a live experience of Wild Church to QUUF. Given that this practice feels vital for my soul right now and since I have been leading Winter Solstice rituals for 15 years and am ordained as an Interfaith Minister, it seemed like a good fit for me to get trained to guide. Our first Wild Church was in late February as the earth was turning more toward Spring here in the Northern Hemisphere.
Speaking of turning toward Spring, Spring Equinox is today, Monday, March 20th!
The earth teachings of Spring are about new beginnings, fresh energy, awakening from slumber, new growth. Think of the seed, dormant in the soil, surrounded by earth and other tiny beings, feeling the call to wake up, to use the compost surrounding it to put forth new life.
We’re seeing this all around us here in the Pacific Northwest. If it’s not visible where you live, know that the stirrings are happening under the ground. Life is arising again!
As humans, we can follow earth’s call to fresh awakeness, too. We can clean out, clear up any old, stale habits, energy, or belongings that keep us from awaking, from growing. We can simplify to make room for this new growth.
Of course, Wild Church is not new. It is an opportunity to relearn what native peoples everywhere practice:
Communion with earth as our primary place of belonging.
If you’re in the Port Townsend area, please join us on 4th Saturdays (next one 3/25/23), and if you’re interested in finding a Wild Church near you, check out the growing list of gatherings.
The other fresh, new work in progress in my life is this new blogsite. I have downsized and simplified my online presence to reflect my simpler, downsized life. Even though I’m still cleaning up blogs that didn’t transfer over perfectly, I’m very happy with the change! You can still find calendar listings and practices, including my real-food recipes. I hope it will serve you as well as it’s serving me!
How will you welcome in the “leaping greenly spirits”* of Spring into your life?
* From the e.e. cummings poem “i think you God for most this amazing”
The circle of light within a vast ocean of darkness?
Leaving the fire and how the darkness swallowed you up as you felt your way to your tent to drop into the darkness of sleep?
Our bodies were made for darkness just as much as they were made for light.
For the darkness that invites non-doing and rest, slowness and dreaming, waiting and hope.
For the darkness that allows our bodies to heal, to regenerate, and rebalance in sleep.
Before electricity, we lived with, in, and by the dictates of the dark. In addition to fire light, there were candles and grease lamps, but they weren’t abundant, so they were saved for necessary tasks.
In the winter, we slept earlier in the evening and later in the morning, in accordance with the sun’s light.
And outside of our homes, it was dark—no street lights, car headlights, lit-up buildings…
Now, unless you live away from other houses in the country, it’s hard to experience total darkness.
Have you seen those maps of the world showing the light at night? It’s called light pollution and has become a health hazard to our bodies and to the creatures we share this world with.
Sea turtle hatchlings can’t find their way out to sea by the light of the moon because the city lights confuse them. Lack of darkness interrupts the predator/prey relationship, and even frog and toad breeding cycles. Birds that hunt or migrate at night have a hard time following the moon or stars, and seasonal migrations may even get knocked off their regular patterns due to light pollution.
Light pollution has taken away the dark. It has taken away the night sky.
One Secret by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer Not the brilliant stars But the infinite dark What I wish on
This time of deepening darkness that reaches its peak at the Winter Solstice is an invitation to allow the dark to affect us, but not hold us captive.
It is an invitation to adapt to the living earth like all other creatures.
It is an invitation to allow ourselves to slow down, to dream, to rest.
It is an invitation to let old patterns, polarities, and problems that aren’t serving us dissolve as fresh, new life is rewoven in the growing light.
Holiday parties break up the darkness, bringing us together to feast and share in the coming light.
But then let us return to the darkness. To the unraveling, the unwinding, the making ready for the new.
Let us connect with the living earth and her rhythms to wait and trust that the sun will return again.
And then let the light find its way, day by day, from the midst of the darkness, growing, shining, bringing new life.
This is the promise of Winter Solstice.
In 2022, Winter Solstice arrives at 1:47 pm PT
on Wednesday the 21st of December.
If you’d like to mark this time on your own, I have a few suggestions for rituals in past blogposts here:
If you would like to be in community, I will be guiding an outdoor, earth-based, family-friendly ritual at Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in the courtyard from 7-8 pm on the 21st. Read more.
My winter dreaming is bringing changes…
Since we moved to Port Townsend, Washington in the summer of 2019, life has changed a lot!
My main focus, when I am not working, is tending the land (growing as much edible, medicinal, and native as possible) and tending my family (husband, dog, aging parents, myself). And I am still singing–how could I not?
Because of this, I have not sought to build a coaching practice, even though I do still see clients from time to time. And now, I need to simplify more, so I’m going to let this big website go. I plan to create a blog site, so you will still hear from me from time to time.
Happy Winter Dreaming and Winter Solstice! I wonder what you will dream into?
I arise facing East, I am asking toward the light, I am asking that my day shall be beautiful with light. I am asking that the place where my feet are shall be light, That as far as I can see I shall follow it aright. I am asking for courage to go forward through the shadow, I am asking toward the light! ~Mary Austin
Normally for Fall Equinox (September 22nd, 2022 at 6:03 pm PT), there is talk of the waning light, but I want to start with this beautiful prayer poem of light.
I have been praying it every morning recently, facing East, asking toward the light.
I love how open this phrase is, asking toward the light.
The prayer poem asks for some general things—for a day beautiful with light, that light will be where I am and that I shall follow it aright, for courage to face the difficulties of the day…
But it’s not asking for specific outcomes, for how my ego thinks the day should turn out.
It’s really more about setting an intention to align myself with the light, no matter how late the dawn comes and how early the dusk arrives, no matter how cloudy or sun-filled the day is, no matter how the day goes…
It’s almost as if I am aligning with what our plant brothers and sisters know how to do naturally. They know how to follow the light, how to bend toward it, how to store it, how to create food and seed and strength with it.
And then as the light becomes less and less, they know how to take that light in and send it into their roots or to release that light and let their bodies fall to the ground.
This is an important teaching of the Fall:
we can keep receiving the light,
having filled up with light, we can release it like leaves that fall,
and we can store the light for nourishment and give it away to others.
So, on this Fall Equinox, may we be asking toward the light and allowing the growing darkness.
May we be asking toward the light and storing it up, not only for ourselves, but for all beings.
Summer Solstice falls on the 21st of June, 2022 at 2:13 am Pacific Time.
By honoring the solstice, we are participating in earth time, marking the changing of the seasons not by imposed, human-made calendar time, but by following the rhythms and natural changes of the earth as she changes from the new growth and freshness of spring into the full on blooming and vibrant growth of summer.
It’s a time to really lean into and enjoy being embodied, being the animal body that we are, experiencing everything that our bodies enable us to sense, to feel in this amazing and beautiful living earth.
You’ve probably noticed that over the last few years since we moved to the Pacific Northwest, my deep interest is about learning to live with earth, learning to be a responsible, ecological citizen of earth. But this doesn’t quite catch it… there’s also a very deep spiritual yearning to come back to what is my birthright, what is all of our birthright, communion with the living earth.
Mom calls me over to see and listen to the yellow grosbeaks that have returned. I notice them, but I’m not really touched. I have other things on my mind.
My sister follows the call at an early age to spend as much time as she can outdoors, to explore and eventually take up outdoor sports and camping, even training to guide others. It all seems like so much work to me, and expensive, and dirty. I have other things on my mind.
It took me many years to begin to understand the importance of reconnecting to earth and to find my own ways of coming home. It’s not that I didn’t have moments of deep connection, but I didn’t prioritize them, and I’ve lived my life in my head a lot.
In my teen years, I spent a lot of time believing and being a good born-again Christian.
As an adult I studied a lot and traveled abroad, learning German and Swedish.
I was always singing, and trying to be a better singer.
I’ve read a lot of books about how to heal and grow and develop myself, and coached and taught others about this.
But living my life in my head, even though I studied and taught helpful, spiritual things, hasn’t been enough.
Though I have often found solace and beauty in nature, it was almost as if I have expected nature to be there for me when I needed her. I didn’t realize that there could be some kind of reciprocal relationship.
As Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds us—the land is not broken. It is our relationship to it that is broken.
It’s hard to have a relationship with the land when we as a culture move around so much. The average American moves every 5 years—that certainly makes it hard to have a sense of belonging to the land… Instead of a sense of belonging to the earth, we move to a new place and bring our belongings with us.
We experience nature as a thing, something outside of us, an object that we can use—a resource to use to grow our food, for water to drink, for building materials to make homes and shelters, for fuel to drive our cars and fly to see our friends and family and visit new places, etc.
In his book Biology of Wonder, Andreas Weber invites us to swap out the word “nature” with the phrase “the living earth.” You probably noticed that I introduced the blog with this language. This reminds us that we can enter into a living relationship with earth rather than a one-sided for-human-enjoyment-only experience.
Take a moment with me: Close your eyes and take a few breaths. And then just open your awareness to your body, noticing any sensation, any aches, any pains, any tingly, bubbly, electrical, flowy, or other sensations. Any warmth, any ease, any relaxation… Just notice this aliveness in your body.
And if you’re having trouble feeling anything, try shaking one hand for a minute and then stop and sense that hand compared to the other one, noticing the extra aliveness.
Andreas Weber suggests that this inner aliveness you feel, this is the same aliveness, the livingness that is in the living earth. This aliveness is the center of our being and is our direct connection with the living earth. Feeling it reconnects us with our bodies, made of earth’s body.
Andreas Weber again: “Nature is about beauty because beauty is our way to experience aliveness as inwardness. Beauty is aliveness felt…”
No wonder beauty calls to us! The beauty we celebrate in the living earth, that we snap photos of, send postcards of, look at picture books of, travel for and long to take in… this outward expression of aliveness reminds us of our own inner aliveness, of our own connection with the living earth.
And we need these reminders desperately since our culture has created a lot of deadness.
At least since settled agricultural life, we have steadily and cruelly enforced a worldview of pillage and domination over the land and any beings—peoples, creatures, other-than-human beings—who stood in our way.
Whether we and our direct ancestors were involved in this or not, our bodies and our relationship with the earth bear the burden of this colonization. In fact, Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands, speaks eloquently of how white folk carry the trauma of being perpetrators in our bodies. In addition, most white folk are descendants of people who were treated cruelly in the countries we originally immigrated from. We also carry this trauma of being victims in our bodies.
Because we no longer can sense and feel our inner aliveness and that of the living earth, we overdo to try to get back in touch with it. Too much screen time, too much coffee or caffeine in any form, too much sugar, too much alcohol, too many drugs, too much work, too much play… And not enough contact with the living earth.
No matter how dark it is—the war in Ukraine, the fight for democracy in the US, the pandemic that never ends, the climate catastrophe… the living earth reminds us that there is always this:
And this:
And this:
The living earth reminds us again and again and again how to come back to life after the dark, how to send up new shoots and leaves, how to green, how to flower, how to take in and breathe out life.
Drink in the beauty, the fresh growth, the continuing
outpouring and wonder of the living earth!
If you’d like some practice inspiration, here are some ideas from past posts:
As we move into the Winter Solstice on December 21st, 2021, I am feeling so grateful for the darkness.
Darkness, cover me like a blanket of night, oh cover me lightly.*
I feel the growing blanket of night that holds me, our home, the land, the forest in a cozy embrace. It’s dark outside, but the fire is glowing and there are pockets of light inside.
The darkness all around has the effect of focusing my attention.Especially in the 12-hour power outage last month, the flickering flame from the woodstove and candlelight, the beam of our headlamps made me focus on what was to hand as we were gathered in by the blanket of night.
Shadows gather around me, deepening darkness, whispering softly.
These days, we have to take our headlamps to walk the dogs after I finish work, but our animal bodies still find the path in the gathering shadows. I keep my headlamp off as long as I possibly can and wear a light-colored coat my parents can see as they follow me up the path.
The cedars whisper as I walk among them. The ferns speak in frond-talk. The alders sigh with their loss of leaves. And I sing to them, pray with them, or speak quietly… depending on what is called for.
And the path in the deepening darkness leads us home.
Holy Maker of Moonlight, singing through starlight, Keeper of all life.
Standing in the darkness, under the fullness of the moon, receiving the darkness, the moonlight, the starlight. This is what I was made for. To stand vigil, to hold the sacred without and within—for who can tell the difference in the dark… to live the aliveness of the living earth all around and within me.
Hidden Seed deep in the dark soil of the earth, fertile ground, womb of the night, bring us new birth.
It is a time for waiting, hidden, claimed by the dark, claimed by the living earth. It is a time of slowing down, of resting in the womb of the night. Somehow, I seem to always need this invitation.
The ground has been prepared—by my heart and hands, by those of others, by the living earth herself. The fertile womb of darkness will bring new birth. It is my job to trust, to wait, to listen, to grow, to leave behind what has become too small and be welcomed into the growing light when it is time.
Winter Solstice falls on Tuesday, the 21st of December at 7:59 am PT. It marks the longest night of the year and the turning toward growing light.
I hope you enjoy these long nights and darkness’s cozy embrace so that you will be ready to grow into the light when you are called into the Spring.
If you would like to join in a Winter Solstice Gathering,
I’m leading A Quiet Winter Solstice via zoom from 7:00-8:00 on Solstice evening. It will be an evening celebrating the turning of the year. I will lead the group in song and sing a few pieces solo, weaving poetry and participatory ritual that invites us into the depth, stillness, and contemplative aspects of the season. Consider having a candle and matches available if you want to participate in the candle-lighting towards the end.
Nourishing Wholeness 