Awakening Spring: A Meditation Retreat
Spring Imagined, watercolour on paper © Rami Schandall 2021.
“This strange time” has been ours for one year. It is an odd kind of anniversary, a pandemic “birthday.” When we move past an accute moment of change — birth, death, and the significant dramas between — the next cycle around the sun is full of firsts, to compare against “before.” Now we are into another lap, still adjusting, still in it.
I wrote a few weeks ago about ritual, and how I have been marking holidays, seasons, and half-seasons this year. Ritual helps us to connect more clearly to the passage of seasonal time, and our movement through the cycles of life we are never separate from. I do not remember how, in the haze of last year’s uncertainty, I took note of the first day of spring. This year I will mark it, with conviction, at the end of a week of retreat that I hope you will join.
March 15-19, 2021
8:00 – 8:30 a.m.
With this seasonal change I will call upon an archetype of earth, the fecund and great Mother, in all her lustiness and intensity. She brings us the flowers and honey, the sweet colours of spring, and the terrific force of birth. She is one who will not be denied, and we do not control her. In many belief systems, the Mother goddess is worshipped as a beloved energy — and in many, often the same, she is terrifying. Personally, an archetype who holds both fearsome rage and boundless love resonates very strongly. Both are necessary energies in a world beset by struggles that require powerful focus, great resilience, and enduring dedication to that which affirms life.
Our Spring “mini-retreat” is in itself a form of ritual — collective practice, simply coming together with dedication, for a duration of days, is significant and affirming. Consider what spring means to you, what energies you want to cultivate and draw forth in your self and in your life during this season. Although our daily session together is brief, I encourage you to consider how you might protect a larger sense of retreat through the week, if possible. I will provide readings, somatic practices, and thoughts on intuitive, creative ritual during our time together, and share the texts and references by email for further reflection.
