The shape required by the season.

Why welcome Spring, when it will come anyway? It takes effort to attune, and it’s seemingly not productive - so why bother?

X marks the moment.  In Baltic (and Slavic, and Celtic, and several other) traditions, the symbol for this cross quarter season - mid February - is two lines, crossed into an hourglass…like arms opening into a much needed stretch, with feet still firmly guiding the energy downward.  We stand at the gate of growth, gathering our strength for what will become this year.  Often this gate busies my mind with ambitions of toning up and preparing myself to make something happen.  Where does this idea that we have to muscle our way through life come from? Most of us rarely trust our autonomic systems to keep us ticking, though if you apply thinking to a steady heartbeat it often ends up off kilter.

A flock of snow geese pass overhead in a perfect V, heading North…perhaps along the very strip of sky they passed 6 months ago, heading South. 

There is simplicity in this shape, which makes it a building block to create the most complex patterns, but it begins modestly.  Bring to mind an intricately woven cloth, perhaps the one you are wearing: threads interlacing over and over to create a fabric to take cover in.  It makes sense to begin weaving here, with the heart of winter just behind us, but also inside the knowledge that it will come again.  We’ll need layers for the return of darkness, though who wants to think about that in the lengthening light?

The dance hall is full of sweaty bodies weaving back and forth, linking arms, swinging from East to West as the snow comes down sideways outside.

We have to start somewhere, and often that place can be isolating, unconnected, without root.  A hanging X in space is nebulous, abrasive, a bit unclear.  But, it is stable.  Unlike a traditional cross that stands on one precarious foot, an X welcomes the wave of life to challenge its balance.  The work is to remain upright, arms out, reaching outward and inward with equal effort.  This is what leads us to our joy, our blossoms, future fruits to share. As I stretch into the shape of an X, greeting the first light of this cold day, I feel heat beginning to build in my center, and welcome the inner warmth as it spreads outward, welcoming Spring.  This stance is hard to hold, but nothing ever really holds, we are all arising and resolving in every moment. It’s easy to know this, harder to accept it. Later in the day, I lay down in the rays of warmth coming through the window, arms flung out and up, legs long and yielding to the wool rug.  This too, is welcoming Spring; sometimes surrender is the only sincere stance.

Out of the cold mud the skunk cabbage is rising in the creek beds, just in time to provide a warm pocket for chilly bees to take refuge in.  They dance inside these little temples, looping round and round, crossing in the middle. Do bees sweat when they dance too?

Why welcome Spring, when it will come anyway?  It takes effort to attune, and it’s seemingly not productive - so why bother?  Synchronicity only arises when we are in conversation with our landscape, and every conversation requires participation.  Living out of sync is like trying to live outside the body (which is perhaps the dominant guiding story of past two thousand years).  Any body else tired of that story too? Embodiment is a measuring tool to gage our own harmony in accordance with the place that is holding us.  It is constantly accessible, and constantly necessary. 

In the late afternoon light, I sing a little tune to the meadow as I weave through the red dogwood and willow, gathering sticks with frozen fingers. Later, after a long hot soak with the willow sticks, my fingers find the beginnings of a crimson basket.

Like countless others throughout history, I spend precious energy looking for the symbols that are arising from deep in the landscape.  Then, and this is the important part that is often missing in our culture - even in “Embodiment” circles - I practice welcoming these shapes into my own personal landscape…my body.  In doing so, Spring gets to arise and resolve in me too, without any application of muscle or ambition.  The conversation has begun. To take the shape that is required by the season is to weave our inherited stories with our inevitable revolution.

Near the bird feeder, old deer tracks cross with even older squirrel prints, slowly melting in the snow.  A cat walked here too, after countless birds touched down.  Who knows how much time has passed between their weaving – right now, they are all singing the thawing story of Spring. 

thanks for reading, looking, listening. XXX