Happy Spring Equinox everyone!
Gosh, Spring is here, equal days, equal nights, and the Sun getting higher in the sky. Those very first pioneers of Spring are already doing their stuff – Primroses of course, and Celandines bright yellow sparkle, and now Alexanders coming on strong, Muscari, Blackthorn white sprays depending on which part of the country you are in, Wild Garlic is also very profuse down here, much earlier than usual. We all have our favourite first signifiers of Spring, what are yours?
In some ways it feels hard, or ignorant to celebrate the arrival of Spring when there is such unimaginable suffering taking place in war zones around the world, and a sense that we haven’t learned anything as a species, we are as destructive as ever, and it is the most vulnerable that suffer the worst atrocities our darkness creates.
The majority of us will never experience these levels of trauma, fear, destruction and loss, and sometimes we can feel powerless to change the world, despite our protests and vigils and prayers, we may feel angry, or impotent, or distressed – a kind of secondary vicarious trauma. It is vital that we make time to go to Nature, to earth our feelings, to give thanks for breath, for relative freedom: to rejoice in new life coming through, the perennial promise of renewal and hope.
In a recent Guardian interview psychedelic musician Jane Weaver talks about dealing with the grief of losing her father and how she was “looking under rocks and stones for the happy things… and how she spent an inordinate amount of time looking out the window in the morning at the birds in the trees…looking at simple things in Nature, like motifs or signs that everything’s fine – it brought home to me that you still have to live, you still have to appreciate these things”.
Sometimes we may feel guilty that our lives are relatively safe, or settled, but I believe that Nature would want us to celebrate another dawn chorus, another day to offer ourselves to the healing of our lives and our planet, with joy and curiosity and reverence for Nature’s unconditional abundance and grace. Nature proffers us this place of acceptance, of peaceful solitude, and a silent expansive quality free of the demands and constrictions of our busy lives, supporting us to come back to our centre again, from where we can be most effective and authentic. Nature soothes us. Those symbols and motifs speak directly to the heart and to the ancient solid Self.
“Out beyond the ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. I will meet you there” Rumi.
