Balance

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Spring came early this year.  I’m not talking about Punxsutawney Phil, but rather the fact that a leap year shifts the vernal equinox a day forward.  According to experts, spring begins today.  In The Wicker Man (it’s about oh so much more than the movie!) I discuss the seasonal holidays of the Celts.  The vernal equinox was surely known, but the beginning of spring was understood to be Imbolc, around February 2.  Since their summer began on May Day (thus the eponymous Wicker Man), the equinox was halfway through spring.  Modern paganism traces the equinox celebrations back to Ostara.  The day takes its name from the germanic goddess Ēostre, who also gave her name to Easter.  The holidays were intertwined, just as Christmas was entangled with Yule.

I find the equinoxes and solstices times for a spiritual pause.  Sure, there’s the simple astronomical fact of equality of light and dark, but there’s also something more.  Something that feels cosmic and that helps direct our destiny.  From now on there will be more light than dark.  But only for six months.  Even with Daylight Saving Time, our capture of light is of limited duration.  It makes sense to make use of the light while we have it.  Of course, those of us who rise early end up falling asleep before dark, but even so it’s starting to get lighter in the mornings again.  The equinox is a time for reflection.  And like most times for reflection, business doesn’t recognize it as a holiday.  Who ever heard of a holiday on a Tuesday?

The thing about spiritual messages is that they often come to you rather than the other way around.  At certain times, however, conditions are just right for something to break through.  It does require some listening, however.  So today, as nature holds everything in balance, try to take an unrushed moment to ponder.  For some of us it may come before the fury of work tears through our peaceful meditations, while for others it may come with the calm that five o’clock brings.  However we find it, this is a special time because this day is unusual.  It is a time of balance.  We all know how rare such things are in life in a topsy-turvy world.  The earliest flowers are already blooming around here, suggesting that as light increases so will hope greet us, if we watch for it.  The world is full of wonder, and an equinox is a time to look for it.

Being Equal Again

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Things creep up on you.  Like the equinox.  It really should be a holiday, but then again today’s already Saturday.  And from today, for the next six months, there will be more light than darkness.  It was an occasion ancient cultures marked and celebrated.  For us, unless it happens to fall near Easter (it’s still a couple weeks away this year), it’s an item in the news feed and nothing more.  It is, however, an opportunity to celebrate our place in nature.  The temperatures are beginning to warm just a bit around here, despite the flecks of snow in the air just three days ago.  The more tenacious of the spring perennials have already begun to shine green.  Things have begun to come back to life.  That’s why Easter is always in the spring.

Today it will be light as much as it is dark.  Balance.  Our old wobbly earth strikes this metaphorical fulcrum twice a year, giving us a glimpse of what lies ahead.  Birds, those great prognosticators, have been showing up to let us know things are about to change.  Finches, robins, starlings, and mourning doves have been conspicuous the last few days.  Even as the dirty, icy snow piles continue to hold on in their private mountains, they too seem to know time has come to be moving on.  Change is the way of nature.  This just happens to be the half of the year when we can see what we’re doing.  At this great balancing point of the year we should take the opportunity to ask if we like where we’re heading.  Do we welcome the light?

Soon enough we’ll begin to take it for granted.  Life will continue its busy ways even as we tell ourselves summer is the time for vacations.  Perhaps so.  But let’s linger in this moment.  Take a few minutes to ponder what it means to be in balance.  Equality.  It feels like something worth celebrating.  Corporate American parsimoniously counts days that might be considered grudging respites from trying to cop a profit.  Although we’re given Christmas off it can’t abide that moving target called Easter, which always comes on a Sunday anyway.  Here in that calendrical holiday barren zone between Presidents’ and Memorial days, we’ll always find spring, if we look for it.  It’s evident in the changing of the light, even if there’s still a chill in the air.  Even as our bosses ignore it, the red buds begin to appear on the trees.