The Autumnal Equinox

Today is the autumnal equinox. It is a day of balance, of harvest, of fulfillment.

The equinox provides a universal experience regardless of your faith, race, or class; day and night are now the same length, providing an observable and tangible sense of balance to your world. The summer solstice brings the heady highs of days that never end and the winter solstice brings the needed relief of waning nights in our darkest times, but the equinoxes instead stray away from the mania and provide a levelheadedness to our days. This equilibrium of day and night should inform you and cause you to reflect on your own balance. Are you toiling too much? Lounging too much? Partying too much? Not celebrating enough? What is out of sync? What scales in your life need to be influenced by a steady hand? We live in what feels like a world of increasing imbalance and asymmetry. Abject poverty and ludicrous wealth, lawlessness and tyranny, tragic famines and manic feasts. There are too many extremes. This fine day in late September provides a natural balm, a salve for our wounded world; it is a day of celestial symmetry in what seems like an ever-increasing asymmetrical time. You can turn off the news, the talking heads that demand your attention, your rage, and walk amid the hedgerows with their final berries of the season, under the leaves now reddening with a crimson blush. Everything about this time of year invites you to slow down and to reflect, to reclaim your sense of balance in an imbalanced world, and to ponder how to better champion and embody these notions of balance, of equilibrium, of parity. The procreant surge, urge, and rush of breathless summer is over and the very old truths of the natural world silence the neon static hum of our modern world; there is a ripeness now amidst the balance, a fruitfulness, an abundance that must be reaped.

The rampant summer roses give way now to the frothy purple aster along every old back road here. They are white, lavender, pale blue, and purple. From afar, at the edges of ponds and in rural ditches, they appear almost as smoke or sea foam. The goldenrod which has been so integral to the honey bee for the last month begins to fade, but Queen Anne’s lace continues to mark the places where the fields and forests meet. It makes one nostalgic for the daffodils and dandelions of a past equinox, the spring. That was a time of promise of what can be. Now is a time of fulfillment, of what has been. It is a time to slow down, take stock of what is in both your larder and in your heart. Is there enough? Is there enough food to nourish you through the long winter? The animals are taking stock, they are hoarding. The insects too pack the pantry full this time of year; the honey bee puts the final touches on the goldenrod nectar, capping it with a thin sheet of wax to turn it into the honey we crave. The bees have not changed; they continue as they always have. We are further from the seasons than our forebears were, however. The fires of industry and cheap immigrant labor have allowed us to take food for granted. For our ancestors here in the northern hemisphere, this would have been a time of fruition for the year’s work, a time to get the last harvest in before the long dark and the long rest. The fruits of your own garden are canned and the woodpile is straight and high, but that is not your only harvest. Take a breath today and reflect on everything you have accomplished this year, of all the intangible goodness and light you have harvested and of all the progress you have made since the spring when you sowed your intentions. The crickets have quieted their revelry, the bees are slowing their industry, and the aster floats on the roadside like a purple cloud, weightless in the warm autumn breeze. You deserve a rest too.

Today, as the season shifts and day and night become equal, you find yourself at a moment embodying fulfillment. The long summer days with their hard work are through. Here the turkeys are wandering the fields, fattening in anticipation of the cold, the geese are leaving, and every morning we wake to see more red on the trees through the mist rising off the field. It is a time to defy the relentless rush of modernity. We live in this age of constant urgency, of “we are experiencing higher than normal call volumes”, of one emergent blaring need after another. The reddening of the hills calls us back to an ancient rhythm, the old good pattern. Just as the goldenrod fades in the field and the old maple tree drops a useless rotting limb, so too can we let go of our unnecessary burdens, making space to reflect on all the good so far this fine year. The neon modern world may press on with its incessant demands, its notifications and static feedback, but here at the threshold of summer and autumn, we are invited to pause, to acknowledge the fruits of our labor and the lessons learned. Consider all you have cultivated since sowing your intentions back in March: relationships nurtured, skills honed, milestones met. As you lean into the darkening days ahead in this seasonless modern world that demands your constant rage, let this be a defiant time of fulfillment, of harvest, of balance.