Every season invites us to mirror its verve, its behavior, its Nature. And in this month autumn sinks its verve deeper into the warmth and gloom of the underworld.
November is, for me, a time to descend ever deeper into the spiraling web of my own shadows. It’s a time to get intimate with the sticky threads of my often-atrocious darkness. These are not threads of my choosing. These are threads that catch on me. These are challenging strands that summon me into intimacy, that I may know them well enough to hear their whispers and learn their hard lessons, that I may express gratitude for them, and that I may weave them into the light of my world.
It’s a time, too, that I honor the ancestors, and this year it is the ancestors of Nurture and Knowing – the ancestors of earth, and of sky – that summon me. The Nurture ancestors invite me into their underworld so I may be witness to their deep, dark stories. In turn they invite me to share these stories – when the time is ripe – with the Knowing. Together we spin and weave the stories of misery and turbulence with those of wisdom and healing, to manifest the evolving Medicine mantle that comforts me in this life.
This practice of diving deep and honoring the ancestors has been a conscious ritual for the past 24 years, and you’d think it would get easier over time, but it doesn’t. This year's challenge feels harder than ever. The shadows are whispering the arduous stories of Nurture, and so I sit in the darkness, still and quiet, to hear them and hold them in my heart, that I may have them when I reunite with the Knowing.
I adore these dark days of mystery, and the ancestors I meet there, travails and all. Together we make Medicine.
Embrace the mantle of darkness that comes with the lengthening nights of this season. Wrap yourself in it, Feel its embrace, for it is the challenging and comforting embrace of the ancestors of Nurture.
Peace.
