Studying Earth’s times and marking her timeless holy days was once something that was disguised for me by grown-ups within the Christian liturgical year. In falling away from those imitative seasons and out of sync with organized religion altogether I began a process of deep remembering. Now each passing season brings me a more multifaceted understanding of Nature’s teachings about the interconnection of all life and life’s events. Brigid’s CrossI find the seasonal holy days are more personally profound with no priest standing between me and the source of all life. I feel well loved standing in that awesome place and more eager to make whatever contribution I am capable of to life. I have noticed that paying attention to the seasonal shifts and marking the seasonal holy days helps me understand and order my own life more appropriately.

Going forward I look to ally myself more and more closely to the spirit of the equinoxes, the solstices, and the cross-quarter days of Imbolc or Candlemas (or St. Bridget’s Day) when we welcome the return of longer days, Beltane or May Day the celebration of all fertility, Lamas or Loaf Mass the midsummer harvest festival, and Samhain the ultimate end from the developing routine, the right period whenever we honor our useless and what provides passed away around us, and we give ourselves to the annual mini-death of wintertime reluctantly.

Sunday was the Summer Solstice, that energetic zenith of our four seasons. This year it coincided with American Father’s Day time. Walter and I met with a beautiful young family interested in Floyd and possibly living in Jubilee. We spent some of that blazing sizzling afternoon together walking down through the woods and up through the fields sharing who we are, why we are drawn to the Floyd community, what makes us tick.

I had been surprised by the number of items we had in common. We share an excitement for home birth/home ageing, both of us women were professional modern dancers in our past, both couples lead “handmade” lives dependent on aligning having a soul purpose. As fresh parents they indicated many of the same underlying reasons that people, as parents, had for considering and moving to Floyd eventually. Like me, they will have looked to simple and intuitive assistance systems like astrology to validate this impulse and help them determine territory energetically aligned with their work and family purpose.

One thing that tends to occur for me at these notable seasonal crossings is that whatever is about my life table at the time gets thrown in the reflection hopper. Once in the hopper all the people and conditions I am currently living with, challenged by, taking pleasure in or looking forward to, letting or mourning move of, and attempting to integrate or seem sensible of become jumbled and connected magically. Thus giving me some sort of remix-big-picture-reflection, useful to me for seasonal program establishing and tweaking.

No matter what season it is, there are some conversations I don’t choose to start or even participate in. You’ll by no means hear me request someone, for instance, “Hey, how much money did you make last year?” “Are you currently in favor of stronger gun control?” is not one of those cans of you know what that I treatment to open. And “So, reverend, where do you stand on abortion?” will never cross my lips. But because I hang out with other human beings I sometimes am within earshot when those subjects are being talked about.

Similarly, I do not talk about (or even spend time thinking about) what my plan is if “terrorists” manage to bring down our electrical and satellite communications grid. But, as you may know, people are talking. It’s not that hard actually to get an unsolicited earful.

Recently I attended a rare and really terrific family reunion where someone who is very dear to me began citing a novel called One Second After simply by William R. Forstchen. This cherished one was cautioning all of the rest folks about how this may drop, and informed us that he’s prepared.

It seems folks who are centered on the possibility of the type of assault have to help to make plans. They hope their actions shall take the edge off a number of the fear. They purchase and store products. They arm themselves. They’re fond of stating, “It’s not really if, it’s when.” AFTER I hear this I question anxiously, How possess we prepared for just about any big catastrophe, natural or man-made? It creates me believe (why would I believe this?!) about clinging to some package of Cheerios with one hands and waving a weapon with the additional. Heck, I don’t consume Cheerios even! But that’s not really the point. The main point is how secure are we?

Security is a very relative term, a loaded word. I’ve been learning to think of mine as not related to how my body fares or whether I retain or am robbed of my items. Other people’s values about what may be the worst that may happen don’t frequently match mine. I’ve arrive to trust that we now have things method worse than loss of life and scarcity really.

Just what exactly have we got set up as “protection measures” should we arrive to those desperate, even more desperate or most desperate of that time period?

Well, pausing in the zenith from the seasonal season, reflecting on my hopper filled with characters, conditions, and problems, I recognize that this small trail with the woods that I’ve particular to follow even though wholeheartedly living my almost invisible handmade life is veiled to many. Some look and simply cannot see it. To them it does not look as a life is supposed to look, nor does the path look like the right path.

For me, each step along the way is a practice in listening to inner guidance, trying to align myself better with an overall plan, a plan I don’t see or understand very well clearly, but that i feeling is bigger than one person/one life time way. I don’t imagine us to be here and then shedding our bodies and passing through a tunnel/birth canal for some kind of scorching or heavenly eternal relaxing place. Personally, I believe we have a significant amount of to understand and workout here to accomplish it in a single lifetime.

Along this trail I have already been extremely fortunate to camp out with generous individuals who have taken plenty of time and energy to teach me considerations they find out about love, issue, effective communication, group and justice decision building. And in addition these lessons revolve around cultivating interest (instead of wisdom) and allowing move of (instead of amassing) things such as my old, no useful ideas longer, pesky lingering resentments and impenetrable ego defenses. Yay, these ordinary factors could be trained, can be discovered. Next to nothing delights me even more that meeting a one who also pursues the obscure path, includes a practice of their very own currently, and enjoys considering how exactly we can reinforce each other.

I actually’ve particular some community success abilities to spotlight and cultivate. They are all skill-works-in-progress.

How do we quite our worries and still our minds?
How do we listen and respond to each other’s best needs?
How do we make appropriate containers for our neighbors’ deepest grief and anger?
How do we nourish our bodies and our spirits?
How do we deal with birth, health and death crises in the absence of the American healthcare conglomerate?
Just how do we navigate in unidentified territory (inner and exterior)?
Just how do we figure out how to end up being trustworthy and personal governing?
Just how do we like and forgive those people who have wronged us?
How do hopefully?
Just how do we develop a new story?

For years, every full day, I have requested an unshakable faith earnestly, and the kind of compassion that no adversity can break down. I just am not capable of believing that there is any amount of insulation, bunkering or separation that can make sure survival for humans. Rather I intuit that it is by realizing, teaching, validating and celebrating our interdependence that people shall, probably, move from a damaged story to a captivating one. The most difficult part of the global world is ways to get along.

And, unhappy when i am created by it to acknowledge this, as I view it our planetary devastation continues to be contracted for currently. Even when environment transformation isn’t straight due to individual folly, geology and archaeology have shown us we don’t live on a stable world. There are snow age groups. Polar shifts. Oceans become deserts. Whole varieties and civilizations become bone piles. There are no guarantees for all of us.

We inhabit and so are a correct section of this living, changing world. It goes under us, but among us also, phoning us to try harder with this hearts, behaviors and minds. Earth’s omnipresent tone of voice reminds me to believe beyond my instant gratification and believe more in what is best for all those over time.

Any tiny work I help to make offers me a cooperative, nonviolent method to participate when i continue steadily to face those elements of myself which are so easily pumped through to selfishness and self-will. I’m appreciative in our developing music group of Jubilee close friends who also make these mindful efforts to change to cooperative tradition. They are close friends currently very skilled in many ways, yet now they apply themselves to learning healthy group work. Individually we have skills in farming, healing arts, medicinal plants, teaching, coaching, engineering, building, fixing, crafting, record keeping, finance, parenting, child and elder care giving, animal training and care, and how to care for our homes and the land. These are all precious gifts in fair weather or foul, and timely in every season. But, No man is an island.

“In India, the tropical sun dries up almost all vegetation during the hot season, and a shade tree is a precious shelter from the deadening heat. The leaves of the tamarind tree are very small, however they are loaded so closely collectively that they provide better color than the huge leaves from the banana tree. … a lot of little bit of people carefully operating collectively, can accomplish a lot more when compared to a few big people.”

Welcome summer season, this special period, these small people, our interact!