Rushing to slow down

Here it is, the first week of November and I feel I am way behind in experiencing the season of Autumn. How did the leaves fall overnight? I should have picked apples. The outside stuff isn’t all put away for the season. Do I have enough firewood? Am I provisioned for winter?  Where are my wool base layers?  I race up and down the stairs from cellar to attic, finding things, looking with disgust at stuff I really don’t need, and experiencing the strangely elastic sense of time that both makes me feel unready and also lets me procrastinate too much.  Then there is the clock change, which I don’t actually participate in, but that requires constant temporal gymnastics to relate real time with civic time. Add back the hour for appointments and scheduled things to experience them in my time.  Switch my devices to Atlantic Standard Time (From Eastern Daylight Time) so that I can see the same sunset around 5:44 as I did yesterday.

Get a grip on it. It’s still Samhuinn season. You don’t leave for your six-week journey until dark. The panic creeps in. What do I take and what do I leave behind? Every year, I feel lost and left behind at the beginning. And, every year, I hear the echoes of my mother’s voice guiding me, “The road is rough and long. You’ve never been there before.  Pack light, but wear sensible shoes.”I nod and feel the stress washing away, but I have always wondered why I must wear sensible shoes on an inner journey. She always said it that way, with a smile and no explanation. At least I understand why I have not been there before. The inner landscape changes like a river. Although I journeyed there last year, it will be new. It always is. My mother’s advice had been reliable in the past, so I’ll pass the message along verbatim.

This year’s journey is even more new that usual. So much of what I am used to turning my back on doesn’t really exist any more. I have turned my back on some things for so many years that I hardly know they are a thing.  Shopping malls? It’s been years since  visited one. Advertisements? I’ve finally tuned them out. The holidays that most people celebrate? I celebrate Samhuinn and Alban Arthan (Yule). I do not celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, or a New Year in January. Samhuinn is my New Year, and this journey that I am undertaking is called the Spiral Journey to the Heart’s Center. I hope to arrive on Dec 21, and I’m leaving late tonight.

This isn’t something that all Wiccans or all Druids follow. It’s a family tradition, something born in the Jolly Bungalow. Gran always said that the pace of farm life slows down at this time of year. We spend more time indoors, especially after dark. We seek refuge in the silence, away from the overwhelming messages of what many other people celebrate. It’s easy to get lost in the herd, playing their holiday music, eating their proscribed holiday foods, desperately attending party after party but never finding truth or peace, and spending too much time on things that don’t matter.

I always have  a choice. I can opt out of the journey, or opt out of the frenzy. I prefer to follow the season, which is one of rest and recovery from the harvest. It’s time to plan the first steps of the new year. What if you didn’t jump right in on the first day, like others do with their resolutions and other silliness? What if you slowly followed a spiral path towards stillness, leading in to the heart’s center? Once there, you might have some answers instead of a lot of questions. Truth lies within the heart, but you have to listen intently for it because sometimes it whispers, or sometimes it shouts, but whatever is distracting you is shouting louder.

This year I have questions I hope to have answered. Some years I don’t find the questions until I have relaxed into the journey, but this year they bubble up and overflow. What is the gift of the pandemic? How will it shape my life to be kinder, more earth conscious, and more active as an ally in gaining social justice for those who have been denied it? How does a hermit accomplish these things?

My journey looks a lot like my daily life, but I try to slow down more, notice more, and think about my questions each day. I try to eliminate distractions, and make more things than I buy. I think about how the ancient Druids might have lived and spent their days. I will study by the fire. I have a bookbinding project and some weaving to keep my hands busy and my mind free. I will spend more time in the woods. Soon, I will have tea in my treehouse.

I won’t give up the thin and often interrupted connection that allows me to post this blog. I take no vow of silence; it is not our way. I will take a vow of careful thought before speech.

I have packed lighter than ever. I have my questions and my curiosity. What more could I need?