Seasonal Awakening

Seasons, rhythms, patterns, celebrations, melancholy

Yesterday I was reminded of the power seasons have upon me, and how the change in seasons has a bodily and emotional impact, stirring conscious and unconscious memories and feelings.  

In pre-modern times, and in many parts of the world today, the seasons are not something to be noticed, they are life itself. Life is organised around and with the seasons. The rainfall, sunshine, heat and cold, the time for planting and harvesting, the seasonal fishing, hunting and gathering are essences of how we live on this planet. The sensitive interdependencies and collaborations between humans and our non-human companions, and our collective relationships to the seasons have shaped our worlds for millennia. Yet since urbanisation and industrialisation, these deep connections to life itself have been marginalised.  The clock took over and work was organised without reference to light and darkness or warmth and cold and we became alienated from nature’s seasonal rhythms.

Collectively in the industrialised world, we have forgotten who we are in relation to the seasonal planet.  

Seasons are marked by weather changes, lunar cycles and also by social seasonal markers. Festivals, rituals, and celebrations mark environmental seasonal changes. Social seasonal markers of times in the year are a way that human culture recognises its needs for patterns and rituals. In a recent Edgy Ideas podcast, my guest Liz Rivers discussed the importance of nature in her life and her belief that organisations should pay more attention to seasonal patterns. She discussed the seasonal organisation drawing on the Celtic Calendar as a way of connecting our workplaces with the rhythms and cycles of the natural world. The Celtic calendar marks times in the year when the light changes, when we have the shortest and longest days, which in turn mark the beginning and end of seasons.

Each religion has its own cultural seasonal markers (often laid over nature’s seasons). The Christian calendar is filled with seasonal markers, Easter and Christmas being the main ones; but if you followed the rhythms of Christian life as closely as the monastics do, each day becomes part of a season, which becomes part of a yearly cycle, which becomes a life.   Thomas Merton the famous Cistercian Monk writes about this:

“the harmonious structure of regular observances… the monk lived by the sun and the moon and the seasons but all nature was elevated and made sacred by liturgy which gathered up all the monks acts and all his experience, ordering and offering everything to God”

He describes the monk working in the fields, making bread, tending the animals, alongside reading scripture and taking part in the liturgy and communal prayers five prayer times each day.

“In this way not only did the monk live in the midst of nature, and the joys and beauties of the woods and mountains, but his whole life was steeped, besides, in perfect poetry and music, his life was filled with with fascinating stories and images, symbols and pictures” Thomas Merton The Waters of Siloe p 297

This description beautifully captures a world filled with meaning, a world following the seasons of nature and the seasons of culture.

Secularisation has robbed us of these cultural seasonal rhythms, as industrialisation has robbed us of these environmental seasonal rhythms. 

Without the anchor points of collective and communal rhythms and patterns, we become detached and separated from reality itself. We then make up our own realities, telling ourselves that we can exploit natural resources without consequence….. no surprise then when an environmental crisis takes place or when post-modernism announces a post-truth world and the end of the grand narrative. What logically follows is climate disasters, conspiracy theories, and fake news as there are not enough reality markers to anchor us to the greater truths that transcend individual will (sorry Nietzsche, you were wrong).  

Personalising the seasons

This week is the end of the summer holidays for the children and school starts on Friday. In my garden, the children and I harvested our crop of runner beans.  For me this is a traditional family marker of a seasonal change; the beans are harvested and the chutney is made.

My garden with the runner beans  with the red flowers climbing the bamboo sticks on the right

As I walked to the shop with my dog Peach to buy the vinegar, onions and sugar for the chutney, I looked across the misty, rainy Galway Bay and saw a cruise ship leaving port, perhaps the last one this summer. The cool rain and the ship sailing away seemed symbolic to me marking the end of the summer, and Autumn/Fall arriving early this year.

That evening I returned to a family pattern. I listened to the BBC Prom classical concert on the radio and set about making the chutney, as my mother did every year, using the beans my father grew.

The process of harvesting, cleaning, and carefully cutting the beans is a meditative process, and the spirit of my mother (who has passed away) comes to me. The smells of the boiling chutney, spicy and vinegary sweet, returns me back to my childhood home. Melancholy, love and beauty fill the kitchen, as Peach, my dog sleeps in peace.

The old jam jars have been cleaned, then sterilised in the oven and filled with the rich, hot spicy chutney…… Autumn we welcome you! The final jar of last year’s chutney has just finished, as Winter heads our way the new chutney will be ready for the feasts of Samhain, celebrated these days as Halloween.

How do you recognise the change in seasons? Do natures seasons speak to you?Do you have family or cultural traditions, emotional responses, or are you finding new patterns? Are there certain smells, sounds, tastes, or activities that alert you to the change in seasons? We’d love if you’d share your personal thoughts and experiences in the comments below.