Celebrating the Seasons
Fall with its cooler temperatures and spectacular leaf colors has arrived in the northern hemisphere. Spring with sprouting plants and warming temperatures has arrived in the southern hemisphere.
Noticing these changes and taking the time to celebrate them is as natural to human rhythms as the various daily rituals we each have for rising with the light or retiring with the darkness.
Why not celebrate the change of seasons? At our home we mark seasonal changes with a bonfire, drumming, and using our garden lavender as prayer sticks.
Ann harvesting lavender for seasonal celebrations Photo by Sarah MacDougall
It’s not a complex celebration—something we design spontaneously that various neighbors have joined us for over the years.
Ann and Sarah drumming at opening of Fall Equinox celebration, photo by Christina Baldwin
The point is noticing the seasonal change and marking it by stopping to be outdoors in some self-designed ceremony. We are lucky enough to have a fire pit in our yard, but a person might just as easily walk to a city park collect a few colored leaves and take them home and arrange them on the dining room table.
Notice. Pause. Appreciate. Share your appreciation with a celebration of your own design. You and the natural world come more closely into alignment. It is a form of activism.
Placing dried lavender sticks into the fire with each prayer, photo by Ann Linnea
Hi Ann,
The bulbs have sprung up and flowered here on the other side of the planet. My daffs and snowdrops were a welcome sign of the end of Winter and the beginnings of Spring. We’re all gearing up to begin planting tomatoes and a crop of basil here… just as you are putting your beds to sleep. It is lovely to stop and acknowledge the movement of the seasons.
🙂
Lovely to hear your voice on the other side of the planet, Linette!
Having moved to Duluth,Minnesota in time for the Summer Solstice and the passing of the Autumn ???? Equinox, I seem once again at home ???? in Minnesota. Simple ceremonies with spontaneous adapting seems to fit the flowing of changes????. We have had our third frost, each less gentle, quite different than the NW, although about the same latitude.
Just speaking this morning as I was walking about the multitude of forms activism can take. Thank you for this grand and necessary ceremony. Thinking of you a lot here on the Camino.
Beautiful, Ann.
A curious change of seasons this year as before the last day of summer we had snow, the second time in September, and today, Canadian Thanksgiving, it is white again! But I see underneath to appreciate the vibrant, unabashed beauty that is autumn. And as I write this, suddenly struck by the gift of wisdom in this odd season, these remarkable, despairing times – to see underneath to the abiding vibrant, unabashed beauty, truth and goodness that is Life. Much love.
I love that you caught the face in the flames in the last photo!
Nature. We may not be treating her well but she still gives back, and generously! Your story was beautiful, good reminder and well taken. Thanks, Ann for your wonderful teachings.
Thank you Ann – love the photos, and the reminder of the importance and joy in stopping and listening to the natural rhythms.
Notice, pause, appreciate- good reminders to gift ourselves each day.
Thank you, dear one.