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Reflections

Category: Cycles and Seasons

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Preparing for Autumn

The equinox is in a week, one of the two dates when the sun hovers above the equator and day and night are equal. In the solar calendar it is also the beginning of autumn.  Here in Seattle we are starting to get hints of autumn’s arrival — cooler days that are getting noticeably shorter from their wide expanse of summer, plants and leaves just beginning their process of decay and letting go in preparation for winter.  If I walk slowly and look closely I see the signs all around me. Autumn is a season of change, reminding us that

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Delight Under a Cloudy Sky

“O shy moon don’t give in to the pushy clouds you are above them” -one of the Haiku read aloud at the end of the evening written by a fellow moon-gazer (I apologize for not catching the name) We attended the Moon Viewing event at the Japanese Garden last night and I was entranced the whole evening despite the fact that the moon never fully appeared from behind the cloud cover.   This is an annual event to celebrate the autumn moon (which will be full on Tuesday).  There was beautiful music (I am now entranced by the koto), dancing, singing, launching

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Endings and Beginnings

Yesterday my sweet husband started back to work.  It was faculty meeting day and today he gets to meet all of his students.  I am always a bit sad at the end of summer–we get to spend so much time together and he truly is my best friend so we have a lot of fun, a lot of time to play and be.  This summer felt especially rich with treasures to explore together.  He really enjoys his work, the school where he teaches, his students, his co-workers, but it is hard to transition back to waking at six a.m. while I roll over

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Another thought on time. . .

  One other thought that occurred to me about clocks and time is the shift we have had to use of digital clocks.  Pretty much every clock in my home is digital, reading out those numbers in their glowing faces. What we lose with the shift away from analog clocks is a sense of the circular nature of time, the cycles and rhythms we participate in, and the relationship of the time of day to the rest of the day as a whole. I think I am going to buy myself an analog clock to put in my prayer corner and

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Summer

Tomorrow is the feast of Beltane, the first day of summer according to the Celtic calendar.  Like its sister feast of Samhain on November 1st, it is a time when the boundary between this world and the Other world is believed to be especially thin.  It is also a time of lighting bonfires for rituals of purification and bringing livestock out to summer pastures.  I find the Celtic dates for marking seasons make more sense to me, by the Solstice we have already reached the longest day and then we begin the slow turn back to darkness.  I realize some of you are just

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Groundhog Day

Celebrate this unlikely oracle, this ball of fat and fur, whom we so mysteriously endow with the power to predict spring. Let’s hear it for the improbable heroes who, frightened at their own shadows, nonetheless unwittingly work miracles. Why shouldn’t we believe this peculiar rodent holds power over sun and seasons in his stubby paw? Who says that God is all grandeur and glory? Unnoticed in the earth, worms are busily, brainlessly, tilling the soil. Field mice, all unthinking, have scattered seeds that will take root and grow. Grape hyacinths, against all reason, have been holding up green shoots beneath

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Quickening

Listen. Can you hear it? Can you hear the gentle quickening beneath the earth? Tomorrow on February 2nd is the feast of Imbolc, Candlemas, the feast of St. Bridget, and Groundhog Day.  It is a cross-quarter day meaning it is the midway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox.  The sun marks the four Quarter Days of the year (the Solstices and Equinoxes) and the midpoints are the cross-quarter days.  In some cultures this is the official beginning of spring. As the days slowly lengthen and the sun makes her way higher in the sky, the ground beneath our

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