Pagan Godspell

Many blessings to you, Beloveds, as this Harvest Home day folds back into the grass and gives up its apple-cheeked ghost.   It is the first day of fall.  The crickets don’t know that – they’re belting it out as though summer has no plans on ending any time soon.  But the maple has started to turn just a bit, and the beekeepers are up to their gloved elbows in the golden sisters’ autumn wealth, and I have begun to make designs on the kitchen in full and round thoughts of crusty breads and thick soups.   The summer was full to bursting and I am worn a little more each year, seeking silence in deeper ways all the time.  I am ready for the spectacular glamour of fall and the empty meditation of winter.

I have spent the balanced day half in tears and half in joy – fitting, maybe, but exhausting all the same.  Before I go to bed I will steal a little more time for prayer.  And I will give thanks for the equinox and its rare gifts:  Today, I ate two peaches.  I listened for silence and it came, but it was hard won.  I read this poem:

The Moths

There’s a kind of white moth, I don’t know
what kind, that glimmers
by mid-May
in the forest, just
as the pink moccasin flowers
are rising.

If you notice anything,
it leads you to notice
more
and more.

And anyway
I was so full of energy,
I was always running around, looking
at this and that.

If I stopped
the pain
was unbearable.

If I stopped and thought, maybe
the world
can’t be saved,
the pain
was unbearable.

Finally, I had noticed enough.
All around me in the forest
the white moths floated.

How long do they live, fluttering
in and out of the shadows?

You aren’t much, I said
one day to my reflection
in a green pond,
and grinned.

The wings of the moths catch the sunlight
and burn
so brightly.

At night, sometimes,
they slip between the pink lobes
of the moccasin flowers and lie there until dawn,
motionless
in those dark halls of honey.

-Mary Oliver 

Harvest Blessings.