RCG-I Seasonal Salon Fall Equinox 2009

Autumn Joy

I have never written a poem about autumn. When I sat down to write this piece, I thought—it will be easy—I’ll just look through all the poetry I’ve written in the last 40 years, and surely one of them will be about this season. But no—not a single one. Hymns to spring, odes to summer, and even a sonnet or two about winter—nothing, nada, zip about autumn. Why have I never noticed this omission?

Perhaps because my relationship with this time of year has been less than amicable for most of my life. As a child, I hated to see the end of summer. It meant no more bare feet, endless play outside, swimming, reading exactly what I wanted to read, and long, hot sunny days. Worse, it meant wearing dresses every day to school, and worst of all, actually going to school every day. Even though I had no language for it at that young age, I was aware of the world slowing down and coming inside, and the transition was not a pleasant one for my little adventurer soul. I still had wild territories to explore—I wasn’t ready! Not even the thought of Halloween’s unfettered sugar-seeking or Thanksgiving’s turkey-driven gluttony could make it better.

And that, of course, was the crux of the matter. I wasn’t ready for this utterly predictable change, and no matter how often it happened, I was always surprised and dismayed by the arrival of the season. Since I am fundamentally an optimistic and cheerful person, this mood change was never appreciated.

Of course, autumn was not without charm and beauty. I can still recall the first time I saw the Catskill Mountains in full fall regalia—it literally took my breath away. Mile after mile of those ancient, rolling hills clothed in every imaginable shade of red, orange, rust, yellow, and brown. And in the mornings, when frost gave shape to every blade of grass in the slanted sunlight, the wild strawberry leaves wore diamonds on their deep crimson dresses. In the Flint Hills where I grew up, the tall prairie grasses took on their lovely russet and golden hues, and it was amazing to watch them sway in the wind under the blue and endless sky.

Yet even this wondrous beauty was clothed in loss. It seemed to me that it was all about moving toward unavoidable and unwelcomed endings. The philosopher Martin Heidegger had an apt description of this--he called it “enframing”. In his view, we always see our world through frames built of (mostly) unexamined experience. While he was writing about how technology enframes and entraps us, I think the idea explains much about life in general. We can’t really escape the frame, and we usually only notice it when something in life breaks down. Those who experience violence, or serious illness, or the loss of someone or something important often are pulled outside their frames and experience events very differently. Life changes for them, and so does the frame. And yet, every experience is not only seen through the frame—it becomes part of the frame. Experiences, and more importantly, our interpretation of them, build up and become the way we see our lives and our worlds, and we are mostly unaware of this.

And so it was with me—my childhood sorrow at the loss of summer became my frame for autumn, and every later experience of change and loss reinforced that frame. Further, every experience of change was interpreted as loss and movement toward death, even if it subsequently turned out to be a change that opened other doors in my life. Such is the power of the frame.

So what has happened to change this sorry Greek chorus of woe? In short, the Wheel of the Year. How often does it happen that we can’t quite describe a feeling or an experience, and someone comes up with exactly the right language—and that light bulb illuminates over our heads? The frame opens and life is different.

I was introduced to the Wheel at a series of women’s spirituality workshops in 1996, and like many of you, it opened my eyes to the possibility that spirituality and religion were not the same thing at all, and I could give up resisting the latter and still have the former. This way of experiencing Spirit/Mother Earth/the Goddess/Pachamama was life-giving in so many ways. While I was learning (or re-membering) this herstory of our deep connection with the Earth, something was happening to my experience of time, and of the seasons. It was so subtle that I didn’t really notice it until the year after the workshops were complete. This relationship of changing light, and time, and the spiritual work that came with each season began to come together for me. When it was coupled with the reclamation of song and chant and ritual, it brought a new sense of balance to my experience of autumn. Suddenly, what I felt as a child was given language, and life, and deeper meaning. My sense of slowing down and going inside was totally natural—and now I understood that it served an important purpose, that it was absolutely necessary for balance and for attending to the work of that particular place on the Wheel. In the past, I tolerated autumn, waiting impatiently for it to pass, and for that rambunctious energy of spring to overtake me again. It was empty time, lacking focus and substance.

I began to appreciate this slower pace, and what seemed like permission from the Earth to leave the garden, and the yard work to attend to my inner landscape—which apparently always needs pruning and planting and re-potting, and watering. And so we have arrived at a rare and precious place in time when light and dark are in perfect balance—the Autumn Equinox. Like a ballerina poised in midair at the top of her leap, there is a moment of absolute stillness available to us, a moment to step outside our frames and see our lives in a new light. This is the gift of autumn and of the Wheel of the Year. And every year, we are given it again.