Honoring the Season

Moments like equinox and solstice are great markers of transition from one season to another; yet we know the energies of transformation are always afoot, wearing different garbs and guises.

There’s the change we want. And there’s the change we don’t. Regardless, change IS. Sometimes it is sudden, or bold, like a storm or illness; sometimes it is too magical to fathom like caterpillar into sphinx hawk moth; and sometimes it is subtle, creeping up on us, inside us, until from some shapeshifting of color or texture or feeling we come to realize we’re living a new season, a new culture, a new life, a new us. 

I used to be one to want to jump over the seasons. Now I find myself immersing myself as deeply in each season as I am able, and on my better days, in each intimate moment. I call it honoring the season, whether that be an actual season, or a moment, a feeling, a birdsong, or a truth that is emerging.

When we think what season we are in with regard to the collective, we know we are in a challenging threshold moment. It is no secret that so many ecological indicators are going in the wrong direction, in various stages of collapse.

How can we be with these realties? I’m convinced we can, and we must. But none of us can be with them alone. It is just too big. Only together can we be WITH-NESS to the unfolding crises, and the complicated energies they evoke in us. Earth IS these energies in us. And We ARE the unfolding Earth. Only together can we dream what is coming next. I think that is our task now. I’m reminded of something Joanna Macy said, “The most radical thing any of us can do at this time is to be full present to what is happening in the world.”

We feel that aspects of the old are dying, & we are not sure what is on the other side. Or IF there is an ‘on the other side.’ Yet there are also countless regenerative actions and beautiful emergent unfurlings that don’t get in the headlines:

Dams are coming down (see previous post about the undamming of the Klamath), #LandBack is happening is many regions and in many ways, indigenous and black voices are finally being listened to by more, the people of Ecuador democratically rejected oil drilling in one of the world’s biodoversity hotspots, people are questioning more deeply than ever the systems and structures that got us here, and people are practicing and deepening their emotional, somatic, earth-based and other skills. And last week, tens of thousands of people of all ages showed up in NYC and dozens of other cities to demand the end of our fossil fuel based economy and the declaration of a climate emergency.

The beautiful and challenging thing about this moment is the utter uncertainty of everything inextricably intertwined with the radical possibilities seeding. We put our shoulders to the Wheel of the Great Turning as we learn to hold and cultivate both.