“When Autumn Mists Gather…”
23 Week of September 5
Autumn is coming , the outer light dims
Mist and light mingle, I turn within
Winter’s time of rest draws near
Summer’s bright song in my heart I hear
My heat came on this morning. Yesterday when I was buying mums for the front porch, the lady helping me was wearing shorts. My household went back to school this week. Everything is still green, but the sky is bright blue and there is a crispness to the air, a brightness. The blurry hazy mood of summer is coming into autumn’s sharp focus.
Things are shifting, have been shifting towards autumn for a long time, but this is usually the week when we really notice. It’s later than you think.
I have this idea that there are summer and winter people. For those who love summer, this time of year can bring sadness. The sunset is coming earlier and earlier, it’s getting cold, another summer is passed and gone! These people feel the autumn mists, the gathering gloom and darkness in this week’s verse. May they be reminded that those sunny days live on inwardly, that we carry them into the winter season like the plants carry summer in their seeds. For Summer People, the coming winter can be a time of rest and renewal - and I’ll write more about how to create a season that really protects and nurtures this part of your annual process.
For winter people, the heavy oppressive heat and humidity (or the oven-like dryness and glaring sun, if you live in California), is suddenly gone. For us the mists have cleared. We can think again! Here in the East, the leaves begin to fall and that cage of green suddenly opens up and there is a horizon! We can see again! No more is our vision crushed into a tunnel of leaves - now there is perspective, there is topography in the landscape. We also carry summer’s gifts in our inner being but they were gifts given as if in a hazy dream, gifts that we may be unconscious of. The coming winter for us is often a time of bright, clear thinking, and a time to bring summer’s gifts forward into our lives consciously through our creative work.
Whether you are a Summer Child or a Winter Child - and we are all actually both - may you find joy in this transitional time and enjoy it for what it is. The spring and the fall are often the most beautiful seasons of all.
For the Winter Children,
here is Emily Bronte:
Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me,
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.