Such a sense of the year turning! The feast of the Holy Rood on the 14th is when the Passion Flowers bloom — our neighbour grows these along her fence, and they have been opening their faces to the sun these last weeks; the bees love them.
The last couple of days have been wild, as the barley set winds that come every year around the equinox have been tossing the trees. St Matthew shuts up the bees, and his feast, which was on Saturday, brings the rain and the dew — and so it proved to be. I'd been using our stored rain water for the parched fruit trees standing in earth like dust, and the fall of new rain was so freshening and welcome. I'm so glad we made a moment to go out and gather bags of fir cones and fallen twigs for the winter kindling; we got loads up at the burial ground, all as dry as bones, and I feel very smug about it now.
Then this Sunday coming is the feast of St Michael and All Angels, a good time to take note of the wind direction which will prevail from then until Martinmas on November 11th. St Michael sets the tune they say, so if it's fine on Sunday there's a good chance we'll enjoy mild weather prevailing in the main through to Martinmas. The Michaelmas daisies are blooming in the garden — we sent some up to the chapel for last week's harvest festival. Folk say the devil puts his foot on the blackberries on Michaelmas day, so pick them while you can if there are still any to be found on the bushes near you.
St Michael the archangel stands pointing down the year, towards the coming dark, and his word is "Prepare!" We had the same message from St John the Baptist, likewise a herald, whose feast is at high summer alongside the solstice at the xenith of the year's wheel turning. John, the herald, is there where the year is glad and the days are long, to point past the harvest to the winter coming, with the dying of the old year and the birth of the infant light. And now it comes again — "Prepare!" — at Michaelmas.
Michaelmas is also the proper time for harvest in my opinion. It begins with the barley harvest at Lammas right at the beginning of August when the men put the sickle in and slay John Barleycorn, and then Michaelmas concludes it, when all is safely gathered in. It's the time to think on the harvest of our lives and the work of the grim reaper, the gathering in of souls to God's garner.
This is one of my very favourite times of year, and in this turning of the seasons the wings of the angels brush the hair of our heads. A wild time, a golden time, a fruitful time. September is a blessed month.
6 comments:
We are starting to move towards winter here in northern Sweden. The mornings are cold and there is some frost on the ground but it is still warm enough that the frost is thawed by lunch time at the latest. The leaves are yellow on most but not yet all trees. It is beautiful but I always feel a bit sad when we get into this phase. It is a preparation for the dark and the cold of winter after all. I like winter but with small kids there are so many colds and other illnesses in winter and the darkness. We only have a few hours of daylight here and it is all during most people's work or school hours so it is almost like living in complete darkness. I guess I should be thankfully of the few hours of daylight we get, at least I don't live where the sun does not even rise over the horizon but it is hard to do that when your body is starving for daylight.
I try to love what is good now but winter does cast it shadow on the beauty.
I try to add vitamin D and go outside at the lunch but winter is always a trial for me. The snow is beautiful but the darkness... How many times have I mentioned it now? It is really the hard part though. Many people who don't live here ask about the cold and that is nothing, proper clothes sorts that out, but the darkness can never be sorted out. Yes, we have electric lights but it just isn't enough.
I know I sound gloomy here but that is what I feel when the autumn is getting colder as it is now.
Next Sunday will be a huge feast for us in my church. We will get visitors from our friendship congregation in Tanzania and we will have a big celebratory mass to welcome them. It will be fun I think and my daughter will be in the children's choir so she will be rehearsing the day before. It is also pride week in my town but I will most likely miss out of most of that due to the choir practice but I still like that it part of this weekend. I will wear my rainbow scarf all week.
Oh, thank you, Elin! That is such a vivid description of things just now in northern Sweden — I could just imagine it!
Here we don't have such long hours of darkness, as you know, though in northern England the light starts to go just an hour or so after midday in the depth of winter, and the sun rises at 8 o'clock or so then. I live in the furthest south of our island, so the days are not so short.
Year after year I found the darkness of winter hard to bear, and I stopped to really search inside my soul for what I missed. I realised I felt starved for *living* light — not just any light. So I began a practice of connecting with the moon and the stars, of choosing candlelight over electric light, and of sitting every single evening by the fire. I found it helped, because even though it wasn't sunshine it was alive.
Every other day I have a bath first thing in the morning. In the summer, I have my bath at 5am, but once the days begin to get shorter I move the time little by little so that I prepare the bath in darkness and starlight, but I am in the water as dawn lightens the sky and the sun rises. And I put salt in the water — seasalt or Himalayan salt — so that it is like the sea. I love that feeling of lying in the salty water with the day slowly rising all around me.
I love the idea of trying to preserve the living light. Stars are wonderful and I love the moon. Me and the kids have this little game where we howl at the moon and pretend we are wolves during the full moon which is fun. It has been a long time since I saw the northern lights but maybe I should actively try to see them this year. I will consider it, it is a very cool thing! As a child I saw one that was hot pink and lit up the whole sky once. It was so impressive we stopped the car and parked it and sat there and watched for a long time. Usually it is greenish though and does not cover as much of the sky as that one did.
Candles are great for feeling a bit more alive, I fully agree about that.
In the winter evenings as the darkness falls, on a frosty night under that stars I shall think of you and your children up there in northern Sweden, howling at the moon. I shall listen carefully, to see if I can hear you.
We will listen for your howl too. I know you didn't promise to join in but it is certainly appealing once you have opened yourself up for the idea. Yesterday we were at church for children's choir, church dinner and a short mass and we went home in the dark. We didn't see any kind of moon though so no howling.
Just padding home through the darkness on silent feet, shadows among shadows.
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