Welcoming Autumn {in my own special way}

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The shorter days are bringing cooler weather. A chill is in the air. What is it about Autumn we love so much?  The bountiful feasts and seasonal food favorites?  Or the changing guard of color and shades of the outdoors giving our spirits a much needed recharge?  We get excited because Fall represents so many renewing energies.  Celebrations are planned around the globe, including Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah and the Festival of Lights, and  we gather with loved ones to share our blessings.  We get crafty around the house, our closets get a makeover, and our kitchens get infused with the aromas of the season.

Photo by James Jordan

Autumn officially starts with the equinox, which this year enters around Sept. 22 in the Northern Hemisphere.  It's a day of balance, when the day and night are closest in length. At the equinoxes, the sun appears overhead at noon as seen from Earth’s equator, the moment when the sun crosses the celestial equator.  In fact, you might notice the arc of the sun across the sky each day now well into the Winter, because it's shifting toward the south. From now on, Nature begins its yearly withdrawal and rest in preparation for Winter. Birds and butterflies are migrating southward, too, along with the path of the sun. This arc is one of the signposts for wildlife to head to warmer climates. 

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This year I'm feeling more attuned with the seasons and want to celebrate the beginning of Autumn by aligning myself more with Nature.  It's how people lived in the past.  I started by bringing a little  Fall into the house. I hung a canvas bag filled with green, red and orange eucalyptus branches in the hallway, infusing a nice fresh piney scent around the house.  I'm planning on celebrating the Moon Goddess (and Goddess of the Harvest) by creating a corn husk doll (more on that later). Also, I'll be eating some pomegranate seeds and sharing them with Emilu in honor of Persephone, the virgin goddess who is abducted by Hades (her husband) to the underworld, leaving her mother Demeter to grieve her absence during Autumn and Winter. But here's a few things we can all do to celebrate the Fall:

• Give thanks: Look around you now and reflect on the past blessings bestowed on you and your loved ones. If you feel inclined, you can bestow gifts on Mother Nature (the Moon Goddess or Goddess of the Harvest) by pouring some wine on the ground, or feeding the birds seeds, even recycling, if you never do.

• Seek balance:  Create balance in your life now.  Pay attention to your thoughts and your feelings.  If you are outgoing and love to be among people, seek time alone, to reflect, to plan, to feed your soul.  If you are the opposite, call a friend, or write her a letter.  

• Create and nurture:  Just like Mother Nature, this is a time to withdraw and rest.  But if you look closely you can begin to nurture yourself and those around you.  This time is perfect to create new projects, concentrating and nurturing a seed that will blossom once Spring makes its entrance. We have more or less six months to nurture our projects. See, Nature is already working with us!

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Monday reflection

Happy Monday everyone! Let's get ready to accomplish things. Doesn't the change of seasons re-energize you a bit? In most ancient cultures, Autumn was the time to collect the harvest, to gather and the preserve the goods, and to prepare the bountiful feasts of the year. And this is still is the case for most cultures, isn't it? But it's also a time to reflect on the behaviors and attitudes that require our attention, as well as the blessings we are endowed with.  I will officially welcome Autumn later on this week.

Prologue

My family is as big as they come by modern times standards. From my mother’s side we are 9 grandchildren and 5 great grand children. From my father’s side, we are 13 grandchildren and 14 great grand children. It could be overwhelming and sometimes not so harmonious. But we miraculously coexist, and family gatherings have their own unique spark, an autonomous light source filling the vast, dark branches of our family tree with its transient beam. As a big family we have experience the entire range of human emotions, including loss, joy, offense, misunderstandings, guilt, negligence, bliss, adultery, reconciliation, divorce, mourning, abuse, faith, new beginnings, disease, forgetfulness and forgiveness.

As a married young woman whose life is carried out far away from this familial disarray, it sometimes can be trying to confront life’s twists and conundrums without the loving guidance and sometimes, annoying meddling of relatives living close by. My husband and I live 1,000 miles away from our respective families, and the journey to start our own family has exposed this in exponential terms.

But we will go forward with no choice but become one of those 21st Century families who live in the city with a toddler, without relatives nearby, except a canine companion and our urbane sensitivity. I didn’t ask for this, but I believe we will be ok, because in the end ife miraculously serves up those in need.

And if by any chance later on, you, our baby, read this, know that your parents have many doubts and great concerns about bringing you into this world. Yes, we are hesitant  because we are practically alone in this, but we are specially endowed to provide you with a wholesome existence because your parents, like many people in this world, are good, decent, sensitive  people with a palpable conscience of both, the pain and joy this world imparts.