Cycles & Seasons
Leaf Pattern, watercolour on paper, by Rami Schandall © 2021
In the part of the world where I live, today is bright blue and cold. The air sparkles with ice crystals lifted by the wind to glint in the sunlight. A week ago, we passed the half-way mark between Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. I feel this subtle turn, a quickening. The indoor plants stretch toward the south-facing window, leggy and bright green. We are in the coldest time, but the plants and I can believe again in spring.
I am more aware of seasons and their nuance this year. I am comforted by the clarity of pattern that emerges in close observation of time, as measured by nature. I have always been interested in these things — someone said poets keep time by the seasons, and maybe it’s like that. The sense of comfort in attuning to the rhythms in nature is new to me. It feels good to anchor into that rhythm, deliberately, ritually,* where the pandemic has so disrupted the patterns of institutional, industrial, scheduled time.
I am thinking still of the ways that nature can point the way to rest, to surrender, toward a kind of active peace. The inescapable, inexorable quality of nature is change. Presence with this truth can release us from the suffering that comes when we go against that grain. This is a buddhist argument: all is change. Resistance to change, fear of it, attempts to control it, are the root cause of suffering. It’s one thing to read and think this, another to experience it. And it is another matter entirely to remember, moment to moment. This is what practice is for—attuning, remembering—whether in formal meditation or long walks in the woods or gazing at the glorious, ever changing horizon. Mind and body and nature are not separate, after all. All is change, and this can be its own comfort.
I draw this seasonal, cyclical sense into somatic practice in our classes. Join me this Monday for Attune Body+Mind at noon, with a fresh approach to standing poses inspired by my beloved yoga teacher, Susan Richardson. Come to Tuesday Sangha for community meditation and shared inquiry. (See notes about the format, below. Register once for the Winter session.) Our next retreat will be March 15–19, aligned near Spring Equinox.
* I use ritual to mark transitions, and find it most meaningful when the ritual is developed creatively, beginning with the question: What qualities of this time do I want to invoke or celebrate? I have begun celebrating solstice, equinox, and the holidays half-way between, with candles, bells, cleaning, and special foods. February 2-3 was Imbolc in the Celtic calendar (which became Candlemas in Christian times). We ate braised leeks by candlelight, and a sponge cake, bright yellow with eggs, flavoured with last year's summer lavender, and decorated with seeds. All symbols of pre-spring!
