We are at the beginning of autumn with the remnants of summer still lingering here and there.  The weather may change from year to year and our lives have different seasons, but the cycle of the year is steady.  We passed the equinox 10 days ago.  I remember when younger being fascinated that there were two days in the year when the whole world was the same with 12 hours light and 12 hours dark, the spring and autumn equinox.  I told a friend recently and she didn’t believe me.  Now our nights are longer than our days with the dark increasing by about 2 minutes each morning and evening until the solstice at the end of December when it starts to decrease again.  It is inexorable.  We build our lives around a pattern of uniformity and change.

Autumn is coming

The wind is on the go again, the breeze is on the blow.  It is shifting time, shifting smells, shifting seasons.  Autumn is coming.  It’s not hurrying, it’s making the most of the remnant sun, sneaking in on the back of summer.  How strange that the fullness of summer, the crops of fruit and grain and memories, should mature into roundness and ripeness, not at the height of summer but at its end, a prize given to another season, the taste of summer long after summer has gone. 

The leaves are lazily counting the days ‘til they fade and spin falling to the earth as the earth spins silently to face its back towards the sun.  There was so much preparation for this, so much greening and growing, so much opening and flourishing, so much light and hope and expectation and now it is falling away, fading with the leaves, closing and completing like the credits running over the last feet of film.

And did we do it?  Did we live the life we dreamt of last winter, did we surf the days and tie-dye the shorter nights into new creations, did we capture this year’s magic, the flavour and savour of it?  Did we mount the beast and run at the open door, arms wide, yelling for more?  Are we ready yet to finish with the froth and spin, and settle for the subtleties of greying days?

Could we capture the wind and send it back to harvest the unused days, or would they ferment and rot like over-ripe fruit?  There is no gainsaying it, the world has turned and we are sliding down the dark side grabbing blackberries and nuts to cheer our way.  I will find the new rhythms of conserving and warming and planning, I will welcome the energies of earth and grounding, but at the moment I can feel the loss and the turning as summer droops to fall.

This is the season of harvesting fruit.  We have cooking apples and Victoria plums in our garden, plus runner beans.  It is a delight to eat produce you have grown yourself.  The runner beans were a marvel as we almost didn’t have any due to squirrels and slugs, and they then required a lot of attention with watering and tying up.  The apples and plums were a marvel as they just did their own thing. 

But what about blackberries?  We pass hedges full of them on our dog walk every day.  I love the strength and colour of the larger canes, a bold cerise set off by the green leaves. I love their vigour and energy, renewing themselves each year although cut back hard.  I love the way that the fruits don’t all ripen at the same time and you can have green, red and black on one stalk.  And I love the way they seem so out for themselves with their pushing stems and their prickles, and then offer sweet fruits to anyone passing by.  But oh, they are such a problem in the garden.

You can’t easily get rid of blackberries, especially if they grow among other plants and shrubs as mine do, and if hidden an exploring stem will find soil and grow new roots, so multiplying the number I have!  But I no longer complain about or to them, or other dominant weeds that I don’t want.  I treat them with love and respect as I cut them back, and talk to them, such as: ‘Hallo my lovely, I am just going to cut you back as this isn’t the best place for you’, or ‘Come on, you know you are not meant to be here’.  It helps my heart, and the ecosystem of my garden, to interact with love.

Blackberries

Cooking blackberries
in my porridge
they leak their taste and colour
leaving a bright carmine streak
as I stir.

As I walk this earth
I leave myself behind,
I am part of its colour and flavour.

I can choose what flavour I leave.

It hasn’t always felt like summer this year.  We have had a cold June and not as many days of sunshine as we expect. And others are having heatwaves.

Weather is one of the ways we relate most to our planet, something it is hard to avoid.  It can be a challenge not to live in expectations but to embrace what each day brings.

Packets of weather

The summer has packets of weather that it deals out each day, packets of rain and sun, packets of fluffy white or thickening grey cloud, packets of wind.  It is like a conductor in an orchestra – now percussion, now strings, now brass.  We are the choir, accompanying it all with our umbrellas or sunscreen, our rushing or lingering, our moaning or rejoicing.  Even the weather forecasters don’t know which packet will arrive when and where, can only predict ‘sunshine and showers’.  We are at its mercy and must keep our eye on the sky.

How wonderful in the twenty-first century to have something we can’t control, where we are not in charge and must learn to notice, to accommodate, to be flexible.  Weather affects us all, even if shut up inside it determines the clothes we wear, the heating we add or remove, the lights we use.

Weather can be a reminder of the Spirit filling our world, beyond our prediction or control, offering challenge and nurture, something we can ignore but not avoid.  We can complain and put up our barriers or we can enjoy the rich, moving life force that fills each day.

I love that recent science now shows there is a unitive field connecting everything.  We are not separate from our planet, we are linked in a unity despite our many differences, and living in the reality of this relationship benefits us as well as our planet.  For me, looking after the planet stems best from loving and appreciating its wonders rather than from fear of climate change or biodiversity loss.

The culture when I was brought up stressed my individuality and separateness, not an awareness of this unitive reality, so I have been finding ways to realise and experience it.  I now look at the trees and plants that I pass, not just appreciatively but more open to them, almost like listening.  And when I do that, I nearly always get a sense of welcome back from them.  I often talk to them, and sometimes sing!  And I switch my perspective from seeing them as something out there, to realising that my sight and hearing and touch bring their presence inside me.  I breathe the air that they give out and they breathe mine.

What helps you to relate more deeply?

Welcome

I can walk past
the trees that I pass
as backdrop to my thoughts,
or I can notice
their beauty and form.

Or I can remember
that they too
have a level of consciousness
that I can relate to,
and so see them differently,
aware of their inner nature,
as if they, too,
are aware of mine.

And then it is as if
I can sense a smile,
their welcome and enjoyment
of our interaction together.

It is like a hug
from a friend.

I have recently read ‘Sacred Nature: How we can recover our bond with the natural world’ by Karen Armstrong (Bodley Head 2022).  She includes quotes and teachings from religions and philosophies that highlight our interdependence with the natural world.  Here are some insights from China.

The golden rule is found in all religions in some form.  Jesus said ‘Do to others what you would have them do to you.’  Confucius first promulgated it as ‘Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire’ in the 6^th century BCE.  The Chinese view was that human beings together with all the myriad things of nature (the wanwu) formed one body with the universe, and people were not seen as distinct or superior, a view that science is now endorsing.  So the Chinese philosopher Mencius (3^rd century BCE) insisted that the golden rule applies not only to us but to all aspects of nature as we are inextricably connected; we share the same vital force.  Such a simple but effective way of enhancing our relationship with the natural world.

And Zhang Zai (11^th century CE) from the Western Inscription:

Heaven is my father and Earth is my mother
and even such a small creature as I
finds an intimate place in their midst.

Therefore that which fills the universe
I regard as my body
and that which directs the universe
I regard as my nature.

All people are my brothers and sisters,
and all the things in nature are my companions.