Honouring the shift into Autumn

Some mornings feel extra cozy, do you know the days I’m talking about? This morning I just wanted to stay wrapped up in my duvet, wishing someone could bring me my morning coffee and I could just rest

A L L

day.

Alas, the morning routines called and I needed to get my youngest son to school, and prepare for my day in clinic, grateful for this little window where I get to sit with you now, take a full breath, coffee in hand and reflect before my first treatment this morning.

AND I know the nest of my bed will be waiting for me later this evening, dreaming about snuggling in already.

This time of year, the shift into fall, here in Ontario, Canada, seems to bring more cozy mornings into my awareness as the air cools and the dark deepens slowly around us.

The autumn equinox, in some traditions we know as Mabon, is the brief point in the wheel of the year when day and night come into a place of balance before the dark finds it’s place a little more in our awareness – we’re now in that steadying rise of darkness.

Seed heads have emerged from the flowers. Leaves are beginning their slow change, with yellows, greens, browns, reds, burgundy’s and the shriveling of some as they fall to the ground. A time of transformation yet again, and cycles ending.

The brightness of the flowers in my garden have fallen, petal by petal, and their seed offerings spread through the land. And dawn and dusk feel differently in my body, I know the season is changing.

When we’re sitting within the threshold of the equinox it feels like such a subtle dance where we get to soak in the balance of the gifts the light offers us, and also the sweetness in the slowing and the coming quiet.

I love the lines in Mary Oliver’s poem, A Song For Autumn, which are whispering to me as I write these words

And in the evening
the piled firewood shifts a little
longing to be on its way.

There is something comforting about these words, AND I honour the sacrifice of their lives to offer warmth and comfort. Wow, this brings up a lot of emotion this morning – the transformation of form, our mother earths children, the counsel of trees……. I have the deepest of gratitude for the wood pile outside my door, and each log that enters our little woodstove – choosing the logs that have already fallen onto the body of the earth.

Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now
how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of the air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees, especially those with
mossy hollows, are beginning to look for

the birds that will come—six, a dozen—to sleep
inside their bodies?

These words sing themselves to me of this change in season, beginnings and endings, and the potential in changing form, and a reminder of how good the slowing of the seasons feels deep in my bones. I just want to crawl into one of those mossy hollows.

Lessons for our lifetimes, and much to ponder…………….

So many tasks at hand; putting our gardens to bed for the winter, sweaters and wool socks reemerging from drawers, the dryer being called into action a little more. And in those same day to day wonderings and preparations, this time of year fills me with a quiet anticipation of lighting, and honouring, our first fire of the fall and all the magic this time of year brings.

Sending you love for the days ahead as you tend to what calls in this season of your life.

Love, Amber