Once the weather turns in spring, it’s as if trees, knowing the growing season in Saskatchewan is relatively short, kick into high gear. The increase in growth from day to day everywhere I look astounds me. Everywhere I see greening.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about cycles and how they order our lives. The turning of the seasons is the most obvious. Here in Saskatchewan, there are four distinct seasons. Spring, a picture of hope as farmers take to the fields and begin seeding and, as I said, greening begins. Summer ushers in the season of growth. Autumn’s busy harvest, a time of gratitude and feasting. And winter, the time to rest.
In recent years, I’ve come to appreciate the cycle of the church year. Once upon a time, I knew little about the liturgical calendar apart from Easter in spring and Christmas in winter. Now, I follow the cycle of Advent, Christmas (which, by the way, is not just one day), Epiphany, Ordinary Time, Lent, Easter, and the second and longest stretch of Ordinary Time, and find deep richness acknowledging and observing various feasts and festivals.
I’ve been reading about the Celtic Wheel and it’s cycle of plow, sow, harvest and rest in the seasons of Samhain (Oct 31), Imbolc (Feb 1), Bealtaine (May 1), and Lughnasadh (Aug 1) and the solstice festivals of Yule/Midwinter (Dec 21), Ostara (March 21), Litha/Midsummer (June 21), and Mabon (Sept 21). This is a deep, deep well.
As a women, I lived according to a roughly 28-day cycle for most of my adult life. I follow a week-to-week cycle of washing towels on Friday and sheets on Saturday. Every six or seven weeks I visit my hair stylist. Cycles are a part of life both in quotidian days and our natural way of being in the world. To believe otherwise, or think we can live prudently in opposition to them, is folly.
According to Carl Jung, who likened life stages to the path of the sun sweeping across the horizon, I have cycled through childhood, puberty, youth, and middle age, and have entered, as he referred the ages between approximately 56 and 83, the “afternoon of life.” The intensity of mid-day has passed; light and warmth are diminishing and the the journey toward darkest night (or death) has begun.
“Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. Worse still, we take this step with the false presupposition that our truths and our ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie.”
~ Carl Gustav Jung
I find truth in Jung’s assertion that in the afternoon of life there may be a subtle shift in a person’s character, and that interests and inclinations suppressed after childhood return. With age, we become willing to challenge the status quo, throwing out a net deep and wide, discerning what to keep and what to discard, our better work becoming more spiritually focused. At least, that’s how it seems to be going for me.
I’m watching for guideposts, listening for whispers, and watching for synergies. Just this morning, Vivaldi’s concerto in G for two mandolins told me to “Pay attention! There’s something here for you.” It’s time for me to let some things go. As I do, other doors are opening. I’m excited about what I see on the horizon.
It seems a paradox that I feel a personal, internal sense of greening even as my afternoon begins to wane, but I don’t have to understand it in order to embrace it. It is that way with many things—I’m just now coming to understand that.