Ah, evidence that sometimes you’re just further ahead NOT posting to your blog 🙂 Who knows what drew 600 views on Sunday, then 800 yesterday? Certainly not new content.
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Equinox, we sense you on our skin. Whichever hemisphere, whether north or south, the light level has changed. Clearly the sun now climbs to a different point in the sky — different enough that finally we notice it. The birds tell us, too, if we haven’t been paying attention ourselves.
So many thing bark for our attention these days. And a range of responses are still open to us, in spite of the insistent and distorting messages behind the barking — that only one choice remains open, that we’re a small and single step from disaster, that Evil walks bodily among us, that the Dark Lord has risen again, soon to place the Ring on his demonic hand once more, and usher in a final darkness.
More than enough real trials and struggles merit our attention that we needn’t twist our creativity and imagine more of them. To choose just one challenge from my own country as an example, widespread fires burn on the west coast of the U.S, taking lives and property.
We know bad news sells. Rather than feed our nerves and anxiety with servings beyond our ability to digest, though, it’s spiritually prudent to focus on what we can do with love and attention. Rather than prescribe what form that might take, it’s the part of wisdom to leave that to the discernment of each person.
I know I need to keep reminding myself of all these things — one reason I’m writing them here. You, my readers, are part of my practice.
A “Triad of Triads”
Last Saturday a friend offered a “spiritual form” to several of us, a “triad of triads” he does as a monthly rite: three things he’s grateful for, three requests he has, three things he’s learned or discovered that month (sometimes in response to his requests from the previous month).
These three can also form prompts for the core of an enacted monthly ritual as well. Sometimes we need that larger gesture to reach our own awareness more concretely, to realize what we know, quite literally to make it real to us. For the three things I am grateful for, a small offering for each. For the three requests, a lit candle, or incense tossed into a fire, or a small individual fire kindled for each. For the three requests, three nuts or seeds placed on the altar — potentials to be manifested. (Adjust to fit your need, style and inner guidance.)
Often he writes these down, as a way to record his spiritual journey, the long trajectory it takes, the shape of his life. We think we’ll remember, but any time spent with such a record reveals we forget by far the greater part of such things. Even reviewing this kind of personal track-record can re-ignite hope and provide concrete evidence of participating in something larger than what passes for news these days. The real news that is always happening pours onto us out of silence, as Rilke says in his Duino Elegies. The silence when we greet the dawn and the trees, and the world ever new each day.
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A Druid Way 