It's Harvest Time!

Whatever it is you've been feeding and nurturing, or starving and avoiding, it's harvest time. This is the week to do it, in the glowing ritual of Halloween.

It's been one trying 2009. Inspiring news has been scarce. People everywhere are underwater in all aspects of their lives. It has most certainly been the year of our collective discontent.

If you are like me, you may have been stressing out at the beginning of the year but you made a choice, you stopped watching the news, stopped believing in the doom and gloom, and claimed the downturn as a marker. A marker that this would be the best thing that could ever have happened, that winter would give way to spring awakenings, and the I of our illness and distress would give way to the We of wellness and abundance.

Through the winter we stayed in and took stock, we held tight to our loved ones and as often as we could we remained grounded in the truth. We commiserated with neighbors, we huddled on facebook and we jumped into the vast ocean of anxiety moving out into the deeper waters.

When spring started thawing into place we found space and breathing room to take tepid steps forward. Remembering that even though it required effort, we could grow a new way of being, we could plant new seeds and those seeds could bear fruit.

In our new paradigm, Spring unfolded and those seeds took root and burst into seedlings, as we tipped our toes into summer they matured and we watered what needed watering and weeded the crap that was running amok in our environments.

Over the long hot summer they grew thick and strong, and now, as summer roars to an end, our troops stand waiting. Glistening in the sun, a brilliant answer to the spring plantings promise; offering the opportunity for a feast.

The roots of Halloween are fascinating in that they come from the ancient Gaelic festival known as Samhain, translated as “summer's end, which is super cool, but, the even cooler fact, Halloween represents the switchover from the “lighter half” of the year, to the “darker half.” The approaching winter and it’s darkness as Goethe put it allows us “to hold it all” to enter the rich conversation with mother earth and go inward, to gestate the next planting.

As Halloween blows through this weekend, as the traditions rage, as we switch from light and move into the dark, take this moment to seize the opportunity to own what you need to own, to fearlessly step into the darker part of the year, and to grow into the grounded darkness of your truest self.

Mark Halloween as your harvest time, and absolutely reap what you have sown. If your harvest is sweet, treasure your efforts. If it is sour, treasure your efforts. Remembering the lesson. In the planting we learn, in the harvest we grow and no matter what, there is absolutely always a new season to begin again.

Sourced from The Bare Melcessities newsletter written by Melanie Lutz.