Seasonal Reflection

The days (and weeks) that lead into late December are not easy for me, and this spiraling segment of my seasonal journey seems to get more challenging with every passing year.

Yet, as winter solstice draws near I can feel its sacred Nature reaching for me (and me for it) until, eventually, I am able to feel myself disconnect form the madness of my contemporaries and the reality we share, so that I may receive the holy mantle that Nature wraps around me as I sink the roots of my spirit into what truly nourishes and sustains me, the earth, our Nona Gaia. All life.

This is a Medicine Time for me.

And every year I am more and more grateful for this deeply personal and transient respite from the world of my fellow two-leggeds, a world profoundly relinquished of ingenuous meaning and indelible value, a world that overflows with mindless consumption and heartless waste, denial and disregard, golden calves and false faces, vacant voices, abstracted gestures... a world that starves and depletes us, Nona Gaia. All life.

For me, it is a dark time, indeed.

Yet, no matter how dark, I look forward to this Medicine Time every winter, for the reflective sparkles discovered in the darkest pits of the season, and for Nature's sol renaissance. I appreciate it more and more each year, no matter how ephemeral the Medicine Time may be.

~~~

I grew up with this thing called christmas. For me it was a holiday of extreme stress. It most often meant carsickness in travel to a place called "home" that was not, where being the invisible child or the prey seemed my central role. It meant odd comfort extracted in dim solitude with a black and white TV and a black and white dog. And when it wasn't this, it was in the place I did call home, with a raised 'n' raging voice of disappointment, and of secret expectations unmet, countered with cold 'n' steely demeanor best left as is, until a switch flipped to smiles and cheer that perplexed and distressed those in its intimate wake. I did not care for this thing called christmas. And I still struggle with this piece of my story, and the reflections of it that I witness in the world around me.

And then some.

~~~

I do my best to pause in these final autumn days of waning daylight to acknowledge and honor my years of dedicated efforts in nurturing my relationship with the Nature of my multi-faceted challenges of the season, to offer gratitude for the reciprocity of that relationship... and the spiraling verve that cloaks me in the familiar succor of exploring the nuances of that reciprocity, of night 'n' day, darkness 'n' light, lower 'n' upper, outer 'n' inner, self 'n' all, death 'n' life... and so on.

The things I do - and don't do - in this season support me in so many ways. They offer glimmers of reflective, healing light in the darkest of places. And in this moment I can offer gratitude to the harshest of reflections, for without them, I might be following the crowd and missing the experiences of deep roots in dark places... the spaces that prepare me as an integral part of the turning of the wheel toward the waxing of daylight and the perpetual promise of spring.

And with that, I sink my roots deeper into what's left of the waxing darkness of the season that I may draw up the perfect Medicine as the daylight begins its waxing at the winter solstice.

I make ready. For me, for Nona Gaia. All Life.

Peace.