the liminal season
I’m beneath the purple twinkle lights sipping coffee while wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with a skeleton sitting in a crescent moon…drinking coffee.
A few nights ago, I sat in the trees with friends and drank hibiscus tea.
It is the season of mugs and herbs and skulls, but still warm enough that the summer people are still wearing their summer clothes.
The liminal season before the fall.
Early mornings, it’s still dark out and the clouds move across the moon, moody and dramatic.
It’s time to get the back yard ready for fire pits and put out the gossamer ghosts that shift with the wind.
in some ways, this feels like the perfect time to initiate things.
Simultaneously, it feels like a time for going inward, getting clear, engaging with comfort and pleasure as a way of listening to my heart.
As I’m getting out my black spider web tablecloths and little witches sitting on little pumpkins, I’m thinking about where I’ve been this year and what I’ve learned.
I’m thinking about the wounds that need salve and the seeds that have begun to grow, the dreams I’ve seen realized and the ones that have been dashed.
I’m thinking about the foggy instability on the horizon and the new stability that surely exists beyond that.
Some planets have multiple suns.
This is a season of sorting and evaluation that moves me into presence and gratitude.
Lately, I’ve been asking myself why I feel so tired, then I remember - we’re still in the midst of a deadly global pandemic and likely will be for another year or year and a half.
Everything else that goes on - everything we feel and deal with - everything about which we make decisions - it’s all going on with the pandemic as the backdrop.
And an ongoing coup attempt.
A collective dark night of the soul is exhausting.
Humans can find meaning in everything. Making meaning is one of the things we do.
Maybe you’ve found completely different meaning in the times we are in, but it seems to me that if there’s meaning in this, if there’s a message to be found, if God is speaking through these times, they are saying what they always say, love one another.
Expand out from your individual wants and needs and consider the greater good.
We’ve been given this opportunity to see in real time what happens when we focus only on our individual desires and what happens when we make choices that take the wellbeing of others into consideration.
We’re finding out what love looks like in action and what it looks like when we refuse to act in love.
And we are worn thin.
I’m mean, I’m worn thin and I think it’s a pretty good bet that you are, too.
I see it on the faces of the people I encounter at the grocery store, I hear it in my neighbor’s voices.
This is hard, what we’re doing.
It’s largely uncharted territory.
Fear and freedom are everywhere in the public lexicon of this moment.
But this morning, I’m thinking about how true freedom is a spiritual state of being, not a political stance.
Freedom isn’t license.
The only way I know of to be truly free is to be in integrity - listen to and love the self, love life, and radiate that love outward to the world and all of her creatures.
That’s the sort of freedom I’m thinking about as I savor the taste of bitter blueberries on the back of my tongue, sip the coffee that I brewed too strong, and listen to one of my favorite sounds, a murder of crows, outside my window.
The freedom that is inherent in divine love.
This is how I prepare for my work day.
This is how I prepare to be alive another day.
This morning, as I sit here in preparation, I remember how last year my neighborhood held a reverse trick-or-treat. The children dressed in the costumes, came out into their front yards, and placed bowls or tables or even large Halloween displays by the sidewalk.
The adults also dressed in costume. We walked around from house to house and deposited candy in the bowls by the street.
It was so much fun.
We got to tell one another Happy Halloween, express our creativity, and admire one another’s costumes. The candy eaters got candy. We enjoyed one another’s company and celebrated the holiday in a new way.
It’s a small example of how resilient and caring people can be.
I’ve seen pivots like that all through the pandemic, creative solutions, the forging of new pathways, figuring out how to do the things we want to do while limited exposure to the virus.
Love always finds a way.
That’s what I’m reminding myself this morning.
Even in the darkest times, even faced with the harshest realities, love is always there, rising.