We've just come through the old festival of Samhain. Whether we celebrated it as such, or as Halloween, the attempt at Christianising it, or deferred it to the 5th of November, a peculiarly British way of politicising it, it remains a fire festival: all bonfires and smoke and gunpowder fireworks.
As it turned out the day was wet in these parts, raining steadily. The sky was low and solid. The clocks have gone back. What a peculiar expression that is, as if they have all somehow pulled up sticks and headed back to wherever they came from. I wonder what the world would be if that happened. I wonder if maybe it might.
For now I continue to enjoy what I have while it lasts.
The evening before Samhain, after dancing myself back into my "self", I was introduced to the concept of grief rituals. They sound like a beautiful thing, but not something I am called to at this time. I am grateful to have progressed through my own grief via my own rituals and our previously shared ones. I will always love Clive. He will always be part of who I am. I honour him by being happy which is what he always wanted for me and for himself: that I be happy. I have no need to sit in grief. I will sit in the sadness as and when it arises, but more generally, now is my time for new rituals for my new life, a life that he gifted me in his passing. I love him for that too.
In this new reality, I am grateful to the friends who allow me, encourage me, to continue to talk about him, about us, and how it really was: the good, the bad, the indifferent.
I am grateful to the teacher and the healer for all of the blessings (and the challenges) he brings with him.
I am grateful for sleep, even when it comes in fits and starts as it does some nights.
Grateful for my practice of journalling.
Grateful for close friends and distant friends, and acquaintances, and friends in the making, for the family who are still an important part of my life, and indeed for those to whom I was once closer. I listed names and deleted them, they may not appreciate my posting them. They know who they are.
Grateful for people who read my work.
Grateful for the sun and the rain and all the things that grow, even the weeds that I choose to call wild flowers.
Grateful for moods that vary and, in doing so, indicate that I am still alive and sensitive and paying heed.
Grateful that there are more good moods than bad ones.
Grateful for pens and paper and words and pictures and books and teachers.
Grateful for morning coffee and evening wine.
Grateful for water.
Grateful for Sam & Mal and their beautiful home.
Grateful for a star-filled sky.
Grateful for the pauses and the silences.
Does it count as a prayer, this list of things and people and experience that I value and treasure?
Does it need to?
It is self-nourishing. Like comfort food. Or wrapping oneself in a soft blanket. To take a moment to look at all of the marvels and wonders present in one's life and to say: I see you. I value you. I cherish your presence. It brings a smile to my face and a calm sense of wonder. How lucky I am!
I could continue…I am grateful for the quiet of the morning. Grateful for the loan of hi-tech equipment. Grateful for fairy lights. Grateful for brooms to sweep the floor, and for the floor to be swept. Grateful for this new day that is open and empty of plans. Grateful for the breath and the air. Grateful for hot showers and salt baths. Grateful for the sea and the shack, and the present of a picture board yet to be installed. Grateful for stories and poetry. Grateful for the soft carpet beneath my feet.
Grateful. Grateful. Grateful.
For clothes and shoes and pillows and duvets. For central heating and refrigerators. For the garden. For the lake and the river and the woods. For the prospect of a return to the hills. For my health. For the pool. For music. For the dance.
For all that I know, and all that I have let go, and all that I have yet to learn…
I give thanks.
~ / ~
Having read what I've written I find how much it sounds like a solstice prayer. As I step from Chronos into Kairos, maybe my rituals will also shift. And so I wait with curiosity to see what the next turning of the year will bring.
~ / ~
Go gently and however you feel your life to be right now, take a moment to acknowledge the abundance that lies within it.
