Spring Equinox occurs officially at 2:01 am PT on March 20th, 2025.
In some places, this is the beginning of Spring, but where I live, it’s more like mid-Spring.
In Port Townsend, Washington we haven’t had enough rain yet—the winter didn’t bring the normal amount and Spring rains have not settled in with their regular pattern… Luckily, we still have time as Spring can last through “Junuary” around here!
Even so, there are quite a few places on the land that are mucky! Down by the compost bins at the bottom of the mulch beds, I could lose a garden clog if I’m not careful.
There is standing water near the comfrey circle that the native Ninebark and basket willow I planted are very happy to drink in.
The leafy bower path that winds by Green Woman and down into the young alders is also quite soft in many places.
And walking the forks path on the nearby DNR lands, I have to dance around and carefully pick my way through very muddy pathways.
I lived in Vermont for a few years in the 90’s, out a ways from town on dirt roads. I remember a Spring where I had to drive really fast in between the muddy ruts up a hill, just hoping I’d have enough speed to make it through before the muck sucked me in! There we had 3 seasons: Mud, Construction, and Winter!
In general, I welcome the mud.
It’s a sign that the earth cannot take in all the water quickly, which indicates to me that, with this water stored, we will have enough water to make it through our droughty summer… So, the mud is a healthy sign at this time of year.
This reminds me of our small garden pond. It’s pretty shallow—just a foot or so—and just below the water you can see the mud (silt, watered-down earth).
And out of this mud grow the most beautiful pond lilies!
And right now, the skunk cabbage is popping up out of the mud at the bottom of the ravine path—that’s the picture at the top of this post.
Isn’t it amazing??
It will be up even farther when this is posted. I think they look like lanterns keeping vigil.
I wonder if remembering the lilies and skunk cabbage growing out of the muck can help me in these difficult political times.
Is it possible that just as we need to experience mud season to have a healthy earth, that we need to go through these times as a country to learn how to bloom and have a healthy society?
Maybe we can learn to be care-full of where we put our feet.
Maybe we can learn to trudge through the muck and keep going, maybe even dance?
Maybe we can watch for what is growing out of the mud and be reminded that the beautiful lantern or flower need the muck to grow.
Can we trust this muddy path? Trust that light and blooms will come again?
Fall Equinox falls on Sunday, September 22nd, 2024 at 5:43 am PT.
It marks the beginning of Autumn in the US, and in the Celtic calendar, which aligns more closely with where I live in the PNW now, it’s the midway point, with Lughnasadh in early August as the start.
Veggies and fruits are being harvested and finishing up ripening in the last warm rays of the sun.
The light is changing—more angled, shining later on the gardens, highlighting the coming darkness.
And the sun is rising later and setting earlier—I find it surprising to wake up in darkness again!
Nancy Paddock’s poem “Lie Down” is a wonderful call for this season:
Lie down with your belly to the ground, like an old dog in the sun. Smell the greenness of the cloverleaf, feel the damp earth through your clothes, let an ant wander the uncharted territory of your skin. Lie down with your belly to the ground. Melt into the earth’s contours like a harmless snake. All else is mere bravado. Let your mind resolve itself in a tangle of grass. Lie down with your belly to the ground, flat out, on ground level. Prostrate yourself before the soil you will someday enter. Stop doing. Stop judging, fearing, trying. This is not dying, but the way to live in a world of change and gravity. Let go. Let your burdens drop. Let your grief-charge bleed off into the ground. Lie down with your belly to the ground and then rise up with the earth still in you.
Now in Autumn, the busyness of summer is slowing and we are being invited, like the leaves on the trees, to drop, to return, to slow down, to lie down as we move closer to winter.
Sometimes this invitation comes from somewhere deep within and the bodysoul has no choice but to respond.
This happened with my pre-cervical cancer scare 10+ years ago. Receiving that diagnosis brought me right to ground and forced me to reorder my life to include more rest, more self-care, more lying down…
Or a client with a major depression who ended up needing mental health support in a hospital. She received a strong call to return to the ground of her being and to work on building a new way of body, heart, and mind in order to rise back up into living.
And sometimes we find ourselves out in the living earth, and the invitation comes from an other-than-human being.
Like it did for me on retreat last month. I found myself captivated by a big old Doug Fir stump who was obviously returning to ground, very slowly.*
Sitting, praying, singing, grounding with this stump being.
Breathing and opening the fronds of my heart with the sword fern at theirs.
Dropping thoughts, over and over, into the earth.
Taking in all the life growing in and around.
It was raining steadily so I did not physically lie down on the earth, but I did with the rest of my bodysoul, allowing myself to dissolve with the rain into the ground, with the decaying life.
Letting go of trying to know, letting go of being separate, letting the ground, the stump being, and the forest hold me.
And when it was time, I rose up with the earth still in me to return to the human world… and then returned to practice with stump being again and again over the rest of the retreat.
As the leaves fall and we move with earth deeper and deeper into Fall, toward Winter, may we find ways to lie down with our bellies to the ground—physically or not. The earth is always here waiting for us.
* On retreat, all electronics were off and stashed, so I have no picture of this being to share.
Summer Solstice occurs on Thursday, June 20th at 1:50 pm Pacific Time.
If you’re local to Port Townsend, WA, please join the Summer Solstice Celebration at Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship!
This time of year, the garden is coming into fullness. In summer, we tend to focus on all the flowers that are blossoming—and it’s amazing how flowers are coming into their own right now!
The roses began opening last week—the wild Nootka, the Red Rose I don’t know the name of, as well as the mature Floribunda bush mom planted years ago. And the Foxglove spires reach for the sky, their buds bursting into flowers as blooming energy travels up their stalks. The bright orange-red and the pink Poppies are smiling and the dusky white Astrantia is face-open to the sun. The Rhododendrons and the Korean Lilac are almost done, as well as some bolting, flowering Kale, Arugula, and Collards that I am still harvesting from overwintering in the veggie garden.
And so much more is still to come into flower as the weather continues to warm and the light is long!
What brings so much blooming forth?
It’s the natural unfolding of the plants’ inner instructions, for sure, but we can also look a little more widely at all the factors that help a garden to grow:
The space we clear for the plants,
The nutrients we add to the soil, be that mulch, compost, or specific amendments,
The work we do to clear the soil of impediments—removing rocks, slugs, rabbits, voles (all in my gardens), etc.,
The supplying of water and counting on enough sun and warmth,
The good wishes, prayers, and songs to feed their spirits.
Just like the blossoming of the plants, our blossoming is also supported by much-needed toil and loving attention. The conditions we create allow our inner and outer gardens to flourish and bloom.
Are there nutrients or other conditions needed in your life to support your blossoming into fullness this summer?
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.
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?
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:
Eairth* has awoken in flowers and flourishing plants and new leaves. She is bearing fruit and food and warmer days filled with light…
Here we are with the longest day inviting us out into the light, and many of us are still experiencing what I’ve heard called “cave syndrome.”
We are more comfortable inside, or at least, at home.
We have been staying home, sheltering from the pandemic. We have, if we are lucky, had the companionship of animals and family, but most of us have led circumscribed, smaller lives. And now this lack of outer contact feels normal… And safe… And secure.
At my last two Chant & Song evenings, we sang a number of songs about surrounding ourselves with protection. One of them was a prayer I set to music from the Carmina Gadelica, a collection of prayers, songs, and incantations from the Scottish Highlands and Islands.**
Sacred Three To save, to shield To surround the hearth The house, the household This eve, this night. O, this eve, this night, And every night, Every single night.
This is a prayer based on a practice from earlier times of smooring the fire for the night so that there will still be coals to ignite in the morning.
To smoor, the woman of the house subdued the flame by dividing the coals into 3 piles, one with the blessing, “the God of Life,” one with “the God of Peace,” and one with “the God of Grace” (the sacred three representing the Trinity). Peat was then placed between each pile and ashes on top with a final blessing, “the God of Light.” ***
We reflected as a group that we need these kinds of rituals in our lives to help us connect with not only the safety around us, but also with the inner hearth-flame. And especially now when leaving the cave can feel threatening, consciously or unconsciously.
I particularly like the image of keeping the hearth-fire lit because of the image of hearth as center of the house and household, which it truly was when this prayer was originally uttered. It kept the house and people within warm, protected, and fed.
Hearth—Heart
I can’t help but see this connection even though the words are not related etymologically.
Keeping the hearth warm keeps the heart warm.
The center of the home is the hearth. The center of the human is the heart.
Our hearts also keep us warm and fed. The heart’s capacity to feel, to love, to connect, to create meaning makes this possible.
Since that evening, I’ve been singing this song when I close and lock up the house overnight, feeling the circle of protection here in our home.
And in the morning, when I travel the same circle, opening up, unlocking, I sing a morning welcoming song.
These rituals provide a gentle holding in my life.
They reinforce a sense of sacred center, sacred hearth and heart, held in reverence and respect.
Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron explains the power of ritual in this quote:
Ritual is about joining vision and practicality, heaven and earth, samsara and nirvana. When things are properly understood, one’s whole life is like a ritual or a ceremony. Then the gestures of life are mudra [sacred gestures] and all sounds of life are mantra—sacredness is everywhere… Someone can have an insight, and rather than it’s being lost, it can stay alive through ritual. ~ from The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 77
I love that wisdom from earlier times can be passed down in this way—through a prayer of protection. I feel more deeply the connection to those who came before and those who continue to live closely with the land and cook and heat with fire.
So, as we find our way out of our caves into the light this summer, it may be helpful to practice or create for yourself some kind of ritual for protection.
In Celtic lands, the Irish call this a lorica and the Scots Gaelic a caim.**** A simple one is just to hold up an index finger and turn around, drawing a circle around your body. You are creating a circle of protection with you at the center. You could also add a song or prayer or mantra to the turning.
From my study with women’s work teacher, Sara Avant Stover, I also love the practice of feeling myself in my protected heart-cave as I move in the outside world.
Then as you leave your house, you take the gentle holding and flame of your heart-cave-home with you as you move out into the world.
Nourishing Wholeness 