Review

29.  Week of October 17.   

Independent, I light

The fire of my own thinking.

By its illumination bright

I gaze at life unblinking

I see and understand

My life journey’s land

This insight is the gift of summer

Autumn’s peace, and winter’s drummer.

Oh good, we get to spend some more time hanging out on that ridge, watching the sunset, looking over the journey of the past year and all of the years rolling out behind us into our past. It’s good, because I usually feel too rushed to take the time to reflect on and review anything that I’m doing. It’s like I’m out in heavy surf, and I need to keep looking ahead at the next wave that is looming up on the horizon - look, they just keep coming. I can’t take my eyes off them to look at what has just rolled over me, or reflect on what I should do differently.

So…maybe we could take some time to do that this week? Take a look back over the past year. What new intentions did you set for yourself in January? How did they grow in the months from February to April? How did you re-assess, weed, feed, nurture and grow them in the bright summer months of May, June, and July? And finally - what is coming to you as a harvest in August, September, and October?

We are into the last two weeks of the Celtic year, which ends on the holy evening of October 31. Traditionally, all must be harvested and stored away by then - what is left belongs to the spirits of nature, to be reconfigured as potential energy for the coming cycle.

“Winter’s drummer…” I chose these words because they rhyme with “summer,” but also because a drum is a kind of a herald, a call. Winter - the months of November, December, and January are the time of letting go of what is no longer necessay, of releasing these energies into the dreamtime, of resting and renewing and preparing for another foray.

What seeds are you saving for next year?