Samain Thanksgiving Moon
Earlier in the fall when I got up to feed the dogs Orion stood over our fence between the house and the garage, in the southern sky. Still in the southern sky he has moved on since then until he now resides over Black Mountain, several degrees further west. As he moves, he serves, as many constellations do, as a celestial clock of the Great Wheel. The further west he goes, the deeper into winter we are. Weather doesn’t always synch up with his movement any more, but that’s our fault, not his.
Orion and the mountains are permanent (well, on a human life scale anyhow) reminders of the brevity and true context of any human life. Some might not find that reassuring, but I do. Rabbi Tarfon’s succinct injunction: “It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it.” fits. During the lifetime of any of us we may not see an important work to completion, say, in our generation, the curtailing of carbon emissions; but, if we see as ourselves as participants in a relay race, we don’t have to run the final lap. We just have to run as hard as we can while on our lap, then hand off the baton.
Deer Creek Canyon and Orion will continue as the race is run. They represent, and are, the material context in which we live out our life, the larger frame within which our individual efforts come to rest.
To put this reassurance to work is to remember that on a geologic or cosmic time frame Donald Trump will come and go like the flicker of a flame. This does not mean that what he does while here is unimportant or insignificant. It is neither; but, it is fleeting. We have time to counter him if we act, if we don’t cripple ourselves by despair. As the famous English conservative Edmund Burke said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
