The Season

Samhain- a threshold time

Sometimes, we consider the winter but a time to dig our heels in and push through the cold and the damp and the darkness. We wish it away, count the days until Christmas and then hold out for the relief of spring. We don't often cherish this blessed time. Ron Rolheiser tells us " Know that there are two kinds of darkness you can enter: the fearful darkness of paranoia, which brings sadness, and the fetal darkness of conversion, which brings life."

The Hallowe’en, all Saints and all Souls feasts celebrated last week, all have their roots in the celebration of the Celtic New Year festival of Samhain. Samhain was a time of death and the promise of re-birth, a time for stillness and reflection. It was also understood that in the dark silence come whisperings of new beginnings, the stirring of the seed beneath the ground.

Jesus tells us ‘Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’ John 12:24

In leading worship this week, I gave everyone a pine cone. My internet research tells me these cones took about two years to mature. In the summer months they dried out and opened, some fell to the ground. They released seeds which were taken by the winds. By now those seeds will have come to rest in another place to bring new life. The winter conditions will prime the seeds for sprouting in the spring.

In coming to this point in our lives, to this place and with these people, we each leave behind past journeys, are winding down certain projects in which we have invested significant time and energy. We leave behind our “pine cones” and enter into new phases, embark on new adventures hoping and sometimes without any great certainty that in these new spaces we will find nourishment, a sense of rootedness or stability in ourselves, that we will grow and maybe be able to offer something to the world around.

Turnint off the lights for a few minutes and in the silence and darkness of the winter, we contemplated the aspects of our lives we have been nourishing, those things which it is time to leave behind and let go and those things which have potential to be carried forward.

It's not a pine side- I couldn't find one of them but just goes to show that the seeds we plant can turn into trees we never imagines....