The earth does not stand straight in the sun. It leans backwards away from the light, or forwards towards the light, as it works its way through the year. This is what gives us seasonality. Spring growth, Summer abundance, Autumn harvest and Winter rest.
We also tend to lean towards or away from the light as we walk through life. We also, therefore, have seasons of growth, of abundance, of harvest and of rest. Unlike the earth our personal seasons are not time-bound, not regular. We can never know how long any particular life-season will last. Like those of the planet though, we can be sure that they come and they go. We will have seasons of growth and development. We will have abundant seasons of joy, seasons in the sun as an old song has it. We will have Autumns, which are full of mists and mellow fruitfulness according to the poet, but are also times of withdrawal, die-back, fall. The beauty of Summer wears thin and starts to look scruffy in fields and hedgerows and gardens. Then comes the Winter: dark nights, and equally dark days at times, a time of cold frosts and biting wind and a need to withdraw to the hearth and home and pretend it’s not happening, a time to rest and recover and plan and think about possibilities come the Spring. Because the Spring does come around again.
The 2021 Vernal Equinox in the northern hemisphere technically occurred at 09:37 GMT / UST yesterday morning (Saturday 20th March) – but I am not overly concerned with technicalities. I’m human. And I live in a city. So my sunrise is somewhat later than it might be if I were surrounded by desert. I’m not going to fuss about degrees of light refraction and the fact that the sun we see rising isn’t really there. I’m not going to fuss about the fact that days are actually always longer than nights because daylight creeps in before the sun crosses the horizon and lingers long after it has gone. I am not going to even try to postulate where the lines are between daylight / dusk / dark.
Instead I am going to take it on trust that in principle the Equinoxes mark the points at which the sun shines equally on the northern and southern hemispheres. Twice a year the light and the dark are in balance. Equal day, equal night. A time of balance.
I accept this quarter day as a time to think about the balance in my life. No life can be joy alone, we would exhaust ourselves in unceasing adventure. Nor can it all be growth, or we would starve ourselves in grinding work. We need our own seasonality. We to grow; we need to rest. We need to bloom and be abundant; and we need to retreat into ourselves to conserve and replenish. We are more wayward than the planet and our seasons may not follow the traditional order, just as they may be long or short without a calendar or the movement of the starts to adhere to. None-the-less they come and they go. And we do well to observe them. To notice the blessing of whichever one we are in right now, and to know that it will pass. Good or bad, it will pass. And what follows will be necessary and healthful and helpful.
However, outside of ourselves at this moment, on the planet, in the northern hemisphere, we are experiencing the Vernal Equinox, the Spring Equinox…so let us celebrate that. It is a time that marks the beginning of Spring. We move from ‘greater night’ into increasingly ‘greater day’. More daylight, warmer weather, plants coming into their own, mammals and insects and birds and fish all heralding the urge to create and procreate. Even the trees, if you listen in the wildwood, speak their solemn slow language, groaning with the rising of the sap, the stretching of the wood sinews.
It is a time for optimism. A time to connect with regrowth, resurgence, renewal. It is no coincidence that the Christian festival of Easter (although it is a movable feast, the last one dependent upon the phases of the moon) never strays very far from the Vernal Equinox. I see that as a new religion simply celebrating an old idea: that of re-birth. Pre-Christian faiths honoured Ostara or Eostre both goddess variants of fertility. In the Norse traditions, Freya who abandons the cold earth of Winter returns in Spring to restore its beauty. The Hindu goddess of the arts and wisdom and, importantly, of learning (personal growth) Saraswathi has her own Spring festival.
Our religions vary in their detail, but we recognise Spring when we feel it. We notice balance. We notice when the balance starts to shift in the favour of light and growth.
Feel it now. Go outside. Stand in the air and notice the subtle shifts.
During this on-going time of isolation and working from home or furlough, many will have missed the cue of leaving the workplace in daylight for the first time in the year, that first hint that there will indeed be another Spring, another Summer, that the world continues to turn. So pay attention now. Notice how quickly it has come around again. Look at the skies, shifting and changing in the March winds. Look at the trees slowly budding. The first flowers already showing off. Listen to the birdsong returning to the woodlands.
Feel the shift beneath your feet. Pause. Acknowledge this tiny moment of pure balance. And know this: it will shift again. The days must lengthen, and then they will shorten, but these moments of pure balance also keep coming around. Spring & Autumn, the world for a moment holding between the in-breath and the out-breath, between the breathing out and breathing in. We simply need to pause and notice.
So maybe you missed 09:37 GMT / UTC… maybe the minutiae of the atomic measurements is beyond human comprehension. Maybe if it’s a week or so later that you realise, maybe that doesn’t matter. Most of us are not that attuned. All we need to know is that right now, for these few days or a couple of weeks (maybe) days and nights will be in balance, and the balance is shifting in favour of growth, and abundance. Breathe it in. Embody it.
Pause to feel it, and pause again to think about where your own life may be out of balance, and what small steps you can take to re-align. Small steps. Nature works slowly, you’re allowed to do likewise.
And then, like the plants in the Spring, sink your roots deep into the earth and draw up its blessings. Lift your head to the sun and feel its increasing warmth.
Breathe deeply.
And grow.
~ / ~
To our friends south of the equator I know that you are now heading into the period of rest. Store these thoughts for when your own next Spring comes around. In the meantime, feel the Autumnal balance and the letting go.
~ / ~
