(August 29, 2021)“It’s cooler this morning, but still very humid. There’s a misty haze in the air and our street is quiet and still. There are distant traffic sounds, crickets, and a few birds twittering softly, but that’s it. I’ve been out on the porch for almost an hour. In that time, three flocks of geese have flown overhead. Their honking and purposeful flight create in me a deep ache. A pull. A desire to accompany them in some way. A melancholy and anticipation all at once. A recognition that the season is shifting, the wheel is turning, the time of ripe fruition and bright growing is coming to an end. The cycle of harvest, decay, release and rest is coming.
In many ways, I welcome it, but there is also what feels like a deep cellular message that urges me to action in these days. To nest, to prepare for hibernation, to gather….things, people, ideas…..and store them, heaped with love, for the colder months. The days are noticeably shorter now. I have the desire to draw them out, to savor each one...and also this great feeling of urgency that I need to act NOW to prepare for the coming season.
As I look back across my life, I notice many large life changes seem to happen in this in-between time of year for me. Job changes, large purchases, moving, etc. And I wonder, what is it the season for now? At this point in my life, what is it that I am being called to do?”
Since I wrote that, I've been holding these questions in my mind and heart like smooth stones. Every so often, I turn them over gently, feeling the weight of them in my palms. I don’t have any specific answers, but even just contemplating them and holding them somehow brings me comfort.
How about you? What is this your season for? What questions are tugging at your own heart?
"Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart,
and try to love the questions themselves
as if they were locked rooms
or books written in a very foreign language.
Do not search for the answers, which could not be given to
you now,
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
you will gradually
without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
-Rainer Maria Rilke-