Keeping in tune
There's something about the seasons that is fundamental to my sense of the world. The subtle shifts in the colour of the sunlight, the feeling of soft mud underfoot, tender green shoots poking tentatively through the snow, faint hints of warmth in the wind, the taste and the temperature of the air... these are the indicators of a great global shift, and they're wonderful.
But as we swing through the equinox and the days grow longer than the nights again, there's more to it than just little signs of spring. My whole being changes. I feel like a bear emerging from his den. I'm not a true hibernator, but I do tend to get hunkered down some. I've heard winter referred to as "the time of turning inward" and it certainly is that for me.
It's good to turn inward. It's good to explore the mountains and the crevasses of your own being. It's good to fumble in the darkness and get the shape of your innermost self, to test your own mettle against the valley of the shadow and all that. Plumbing the depths is de rigeur for a thoughtful person, a spiritual person, a creative person, and I accept that and respect it.
Yet trips to my innermost sanctum are hardly joyous occasions. They're more like being sent to the principal's office, and I feel like a guilty schoolboy, shifting uneasily on a big chair across the desk from a looming, stern authority figure, who doesn't even need to say anything for me to feel wrong and shameful and stupid about all the dumb things I do. And believe me, I do.
I accept the wrongness of my sins, as it were, and the necessity of checking my moral compass. I accept the need to have straightened out my basement this winter, metaphorically and actually. I accept and am grateful for the chance to take inventory of myself and to do the work within.
Still, the very best thing about using the winter to tune up, is that when spring comes, I can sing in some kind of harmony with the changing of the world. Now begins, in a slow and ageless dance, the time of turning outward. This is the time of the coming of the sun.
Happy Equinox everyone. I'll see you out there. I'll be the one with the light heart and the dancing feet and the slight wildness in my eyes, the unmistakable symptoms of the sweet delirium that is spring fever.
But as we swing through the equinox and the days grow longer than the nights again, there's more to it than just little signs of spring. My whole being changes. I feel like a bear emerging from his den. I'm not a true hibernator, but I do tend to get hunkered down some. I've heard winter referred to as "the time of turning inward" and it certainly is that for me.
It's good to turn inward. It's good to explore the mountains and the crevasses of your own being. It's good to fumble in the darkness and get the shape of your innermost self, to test your own mettle against the valley of the shadow and all that. Plumbing the depths is de rigeur for a thoughtful person, a spiritual person, a creative person, and I accept that and respect it.
Yet trips to my innermost sanctum are hardly joyous occasions. They're more like being sent to the principal's office, and I feel like a guilty schoolboy, shifting uneasily on a big chair across the desk from a looming, stern authority figure, who doesn't even need to say anything for me to feel wrong and shameful and stupid about all the dumb things I do. And believe me, I do.
I accept the wrongness of my sins, as it were, and the necessity of checking my moral compass. I accept the need to have straightened out my basement this winter, metaphorically and actually. I accept and am grateful for the chance to take inventory of myself and to do the work within.
Still, the very best thing about using the winter to tune up, is that when spring comes, I can sing in some kind of harmony with the changing of the world. Now begins, in a slow and ageless dance, the time of turning outward. This is the time of the coming of the sun.
Happy Equinox everyone. I'll see you out there. I'll be the one with the light heart and the dancing feet and the slight wildness in my eyes, the unmistakable symptoms of the sweet delirium that is spring fever.
Labels: equinox, morality, sins, spring fever
posted by David Newland at 20.3.06
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