Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,
We live in times when it often feels like everything is coming undone. The Celtic hinge points of Autumn Equinox, Samhain, the Winter Solstice, and Imbolc offer the wisdom of living into a rhythm that honors the importance of times of rest as essential to our personal and collective wellbeing.
This Friday, October 31st begins the Feast of Samhain. Simon de Voil, Jamie Marich, and Polly Paton-Brown will lead us in a mini-retreat to deepen into the wisdom of the season.
Samhain marks one of the two great doorways of the Celtic year. The Celts divided the year into two seasons: the season of light and the season of dark. Some believe that Samhain was the more important festival, marking the beginning of a whole new cycle, just as the Celtic day began at night. In the silence of darkness comes the whisperings of new beginnings.
The Celtic feast of Samhain coincides with the Christian celebration of All Saint’s Day on November 1st and All Soul’s Day on November 2nd which begin a whole month in honor of those who have died.
Two significant features of this feast are the beginning of the season of darkness and the honoring of ancestors. Crossing the threshold means welcoming in the dark as a time of becoming more closely woven with the spiritual dimension of life. Winter invites us to gather inside, grow still with the landscape, and listen for the voices we may not hear during other times of year. These may be the sounds of our own inner wisdom or the voices of those who came before us.
In the ancient Celtic imagination, this was considered to be a “thin time” when the veil between heaven and earth grew more transparent and the wisdom of our ancestors was closer to us. We are reassured that we are not alone, that we share the world with a great “cloud of witnesses” and “communion of saints” just across the veil. These next several days are a threshold space and in thresholds we are closer to the other world which is always here. The communal honoring of the dead continues for the whole month of November.
This season also calls us into the grace of descent. We spend so much of our spiritual lives trying to ascend. Descent is the path of having everything stripped away that offered comfort. In the mystical tradition, the descent is also the slow revelation of the true face and incredible mystery that is God.
Join us Friday for our Samhain Deep Rest retreat as we break open the invitations of descent and connection with those who walked before us through music, poetry, teaching, meditation, and reflection.
With great and growing love,
Christine
Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE
