Fall Falling Leaves Moon
A brief interlude of high 70’s and 80’s disappears starting today. It’s 50 and rainy. Better, in my opinion. And more fitting for Michaelmas anyhow. The springtime of the soul.
St. Michael, the Archangel, is God’s general, the militant leader of the warrior angels, chief strategist in the war against the rebel angels and instrumental in ejecting Lucifer, the Morning Star, from heaven. His mass day, today, September 29th, honors him and the other archangels, Gabriel and Raphael, and often, Uriel.
Michaelmas was one of the four English quarter days which celebrated equinox and solstices on set days rather than on their astronomical occurrence. Thus, Michaelmas celebrates the autumnal equinox, which one author called the day of the “darkening.” It is the start of the English university first term and a day when rents were paid for the year, contracts settled and festivals held.
Michaelmas is the springtime of the soul because it presages the coming fallow time. It emphasizes the darkening aspect of the fall equinox when the hours of nighttime begin to exceed those of daylight. When the plant world faces the long dark cold, it turns inward,
goes down into the ground either as seed or as root and gathers its energy, readying itself for emergence in the spring when lightening begins and temperatures warm.
Just so with us. As a cold rain falls here today on Michaelmas in Andover, the joy of sitting inside with a book, or meditating, writing, sewing, quilting comes. Our inner life can begin to blossom, the richness in the soils of our souls feeds projects and dreams and meditations.
This springtime of the soul has only begun today and it will follow, over its time, the fallow season. I welcome you to this nurturing, deep time. Blessed be.
