The Wild Reed: Brigit Anna McNeill

Showing posts with label Brigit Anna McNeill. Show all posts

Sunday, December 21, 2025

A Time of Descent and Rest

The winter solstice time is no longer celebrated as it once was, with the understanding that this is a period of descent and rest, of going within our homes, within ourselves and taking in all that we have been through, all that has passed in this full year which is coming to a close. Like nature and the animal kingdom around us, this time of hibernation is so necessary for our tired limbs, our burdened minds.

Our modern culture teaches avoidance at a max at this time – alcohol, lights, shopping, overworking, overspending, comfort food and consumerism.

And yet the natural tug to go inwards as nearly all creatures are doing is strong, and the weather so bitter that people are left feeling that winter is hard, because for those of us without burning fires and big festive families, it can be lonely and isolating.

Whereas in actual fact, winter is kind; she points us in her quiet soft way towards our inner self, towards this annual time of peace and reflection, embracing the darkness and forgiving, accepting and loving, embracing goodbye to the past year.

“Winter takes away the distractions, the buzz, and presents us with the perfect time to rest and withdraw into a womb like love, bringing fire and light to our hearth.”

. . . And then, just around the corner, the new year will begin again. And like a seed planted deep in the earth, we will all rise once again with renewed energy to dance in the sunlight.

Life is a gift.

Happy winter to you all.

~ Brigit Anna McNeill

Thursday, February 01, 2024

Today is Imbolc, the ancient Gaelic festival marking the beginning of the return to spring. To this day, people continue to celebrate Imbolc and its emphasis on the seasonal changes in the northern hemisphere at this time of year; a time of growing light and emerging new life. People also recognize and celebrate how Imbolc's promise of new beginnings is experienced in their lives.

Traditionally held on February 1st, Imbolc occurs about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It was widely observed throughout Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, and is one of the four Gaelic seasonal festivals – along with Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain.

Following are Brigit Anna McNeill’s wise and beautiful words on Imbolc. I especially resonate with her contention that Imbolc calls us “out from our inner worlds and into the light bringing the medicine of who we are.”

_______________

Imbolc is here, I love this beautiful time of year! The word imbolc means “in the belly” or womb.

This is the time where we feel the our energy shift direction a little, where the stirrings of life force and wild will are wanting to pull our energy up and out a little, where we may feel the want to stretch out of our dark fertile soil and just like the earth grow.

We are transitioning from winter and towards spring, and a whole new feeling begins to grow in the air.

The Celtic figure Brigit is always part of the story and representation of this day, as she was said to have come from the underworld today, stepping out from the dark inner places, carrying dandelions as the medicine she found there.

Dandelion helps people, by shifting inner stagnancy, to remember and feel again that wild life force that wants to live through us, it is the force and will that helps the medicine we are to flourish into our days, just as it does within the earth.

And Brigit herself, was a goddess of that life force and all it manifests; rebellion, rewilding, music, poetry, herbalism, plants, growth and recovery, and so dandelions are indeed her perfect beautiful flower.

This is the time bird song changes, tender shoots arise, our energy shifts direction a little and slowly slowly we too, just like Brigit, just like dandelions, snowdrops, nettles and bright garlic, are called out from our inner worlds and into the light bringing the medicine of who we are.

The snowdrops I see, the young nettles, the three cornered leek and the beginnings of wild garlic, are there not there as a sign of recovery, nor are they there because they have got over winter; they are there because of the tender way in which the land comes together, they are there because of these vital processes the wild moves through so life and medicine can thrive.

– Brigit Anna McNeill
via Facebook
February 1, 2024

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Imbolc: Celebrating the Freshness of New Beginnings
• Imbolc: Festival of Light
• Taking the High Road in Imbolc’s Time of Growing Light and Emerging New Life
• Farewell Winter
• Welcoming the Return of Spring
• Spring: “Truly the Season for Joy and Hope”
• In the Footsteps of Spring: Introduction | Part I | II | III | IV | V
• The Path Ahead
• Ed Simon on Why We Need a Pagan Theology

Related Off-site Links:
Leaning Into Imbolc: A Focus on Hearth and Home – Sheri Barker (The Wild Hunt, January 26, 2024).
February Is a Season of Purification and Rededication – Clio Ajana (The Wild Hunt, February 3, 2024).
Blessed Imbolc and Lughnassadh – The Wild Hunt (February 2, 2023).
Imbolc: The Gaelic Festival Explained – OghamArt.com (January 31, 2020).
How to Celebrate and Enjoy Imbolc, the Pagan Festival Marking Winter’s End – Kerry King (Metro, January 31, 2023).
The Magical Energy of the Great Celtic Festival of Imbolc – Colette O’Neill (Bealtaine Cottage, January 24, 2021).
Imbolc in the United Kingdom and Ireland – Liz Williams (The Wild Hunt, February 5, 2023).
Brigid and Darlughdach: Celtic Saint Loved Her Female Soulmate – Kittredge Cherry (QSpirit, February 1, 2023).

Opening image:Tijana Lukovic.
Image 2: Michael J. Bayly.

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Time to Go Inwards

The year has come to a close, summer and spring’s fertile energy of growth and productivity has decayed away; the energy of the land is no longer geared towards outward displays. A soft wet darkness has taken hold and it is time to go inwards.

Inwards into our soil, closer to our souls, the dark and non-verbal place of feeling, where the language older than words sings to us and we find the voice of who we are, the seeds that wish to be grown into our lives.

A threshold opens up on the land, inviting a whole new way of being, a way that is as ancient as the earth’s bones but which goes against the modern cultural narrative of busyness, youth and productivity. And because of this, many struggle with the invitation the wild gives us at this time.

For perhaps those that struggle have depended on certain ways of being that give them external validation, or perhaps they haven’t learnt how to sit in quietude with themselves and fear what they will find there.

Yet the wild shows us over and over that we are cyclical beings, ever changing and shifting so we can live a healthful life; that the inner journey is just as vital as the outer.

This time is an invitation to drop all that isn’t you or what stands in the way of your becoming, and like a heavy cloak, let it compost away, so you can come nearer to your own magic.

This is a death, a death of old ways, given up as a gift, so we can grow.

– Brigit Anna McNeill
via Facebook
October 31, 2023

Monday, May 01, 2023

Beltane and the Fire Within

As Beltane comes, roughly translated as “bright fire,” the fire within all is growing – the fire of vitality, passion, action, growth and creation.

Light, warmth and heat return and our days expand just as the petals, leaves and medicine also unfurl.

There is a deep calling that the increased light brings, there is a new energy and inspiration within many as we witness blossoming, vibrant greens and beauty . . all around us.

– Brigit Anna McNeill

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Beltane: A Time of Hope and Renewal
• Beltane: Casting Off the Darkness and Celebrating the Light
• Beltane Morning Light
• Beltane: Celebrating the Sheer Exuberance of May
• Beltane and the Reclaiming of Spirit
• The “People Between”
• Welcoming the Return of Spring (2018)
• Celebrating the Return of Spring (2017)
• The Enkindled Spring (2016)
• The Landscape Is a Mirror
• Photo of the Day – April 21, 2019
• Green Destiny
• In the Footsteps of Spring
• O Dancer of Creation
• Imbolc: Celebrating the Freshness of New Beginnings
• Imbolc: Festival of Light
• Morning Light
• Celebrating the Color of Spring . . . and a Cosmic Notion of the Christ
• O Breath of Summer

Related Off-site Links:
Sacred Fire: Beltane’s Indo-European Roots and Multicultural Connections – Elyse Welles (The Wild Hunt, April 30, 2023).
What Is Beltane? All About the Traditions Behind May Day – Jessica Sager (Parade, April 21, 2023).
Lucky Fires: Beltane Throughout the Ages – Tony Marshall Griffiths (New Eden Ministry, May 1, 2022).
In Largest May Day Turnout Since Pandemic, Workers Around the World March for Better Conditions – Olivia Rosane (Common Dreams, May 1, 2023).
Merry May Day! – The Wild Hunt (May 1, 2023).

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

Saturday, November 12, 2022

Brigit Anna McNeill on Hearing the Wild and Natural Call to Go Inwards

Our modern western culture has grown to value spring energy above all else – forever young, forever upward, forever producing, forever shining.

Yet when we look outwards into the heart of nature, we see that this is not only damaging, but unnatural. And when we also look into the heart of our own nature, we see this way of being is exhausting and also unnatural.

The seasons that move around us, move within us too, deeply affecting our psyche, our bodies and our spirit, with the way they shift and change the energy and scenery, they show us that the journey of being human is not linear, but cyclical.

Autumn and winter especially tell a very different story to that of our modern cultural narrative; they show us that to know ourselves and where we wish to head, we need to spend time tending to our roots, our dark matter, in order to tend to our future paths.

Yet we are often shamed for being different, for resting, for being quieter, for going inward. And if we depend on our spring energy to be pleasing, liked, approved of, or to fit in, then autumn and winter can be especially triggering both personally and culturally. People can end up thinking there is something deeply wrong with them when they don’t want to keep partying, being outward, being golden, being the same – day in, day out.

But maybe there is something deeply right with them instead. They are hearing the wild and natural call to transition, to go inwards, to descend, to quieten, to listen, and to feel; to compost away the old, to fall apart, to change so the seeds of becoming may thrive.

What if more people stopped gaslighting their inner autumn and winter, and instead allowed themselves to explore it rather than hide it.

What if they realised there is nothing wrong with them, that maybe they are more attuned to the wild’s way, to their human way, of embodying alchemy.

– Brigit Anna McNeill
via Facebook
November 9, 2022

Monday, November 07, 2022

Autumnal Thoughts and Visions

The material world is literally the substance and being of God. Every nanosecond, divinity births the world from its own essence, incarnating a profoundly sacred place. Look deeply into anything and you find God.

– John Robinson
“Only One Being”
via I Am God
October 24, 2022

The Green Man [is] an ancient pagan archetype of masculine connection with Nature. Depicted in image and stone with his beard and hair growing (or formed of) leaves, vines and boughs, the Green Man is the steward of the forests and the land. He is “husband” to the plants and trees, animals, and the feminine Gaia. An enlightened being who exists in conscious relationship and harmony with the living energies of Earth and the cosmos, the Green Man embodies a silent, gentle wisdom through his respect of all living things. Bearded and inherently masculine, he offers a different model of manhood and strength: one based on relationship, caring, and true husbandry or stewardship.

Far older than Christianity, the Green Man reemerged powerfully in the twelfth century alongside the Goddess as embodied by the Holy Mother, Mary. His bearded image can be found carved into stone pillars in cathedrals throughout Europe. At the sacred site of Chartres, France, the Green Man can be found at least seventy-two times within the great cathedral, and reputedly over a hundred of his stone faces can be found in Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland.

As an embodiment of the Sacred Masculine, the Green Man understands the hidden laws of nature and interconnected relationship. In a modern incarnation, he stands for environmental awareness and action, symbolizing cooperation with Nature rather than domination over it for resources, wealth, and power.

. . . For men today, there is much of value in this ancient, archetypal energy as a representation of the Sacred Masculine – an image of malehood entwined with Nature and mystery. He offers a signpost for a different way forward, a path of balance and wholeness through conscious relationship and harmony. The way of the wild soul.

. . . You have a deper purpose and your body holds the key. We need to unplug and, even amid the noise, begin to listen. Not simply with ears but with our senses. Feeling. Intuition. We need to “tune in” rather than “tune out,” and allow ourselves to be guided deeper into a tactile, sensual connection with life and the way of the wild soul.

– L. R. Heartsong
Excerpted from The Bones and Breath:
A Man’s Guide to Eros, the Sacred Masculine,
and the Wild Soul
White Cloud Press, 2014
pp. 31 and 50

All of creation is held in a delicate and sometimes precarious balance. My walks in [nature] put me in closer touch with that balance, reminding me that I am made of the same dust of the earth from which all creation was born. If only I could tune my own lumbering movements a little more often to the cadence of creation. Maybe then I’d feel more intensely the holy balance intended by the Creator. Only rarely have I known the peace of it settling into my body and spirit. Have you felt it? I can’t explain it, but I know it when it comes. Through it, God speaks.

– Jennifer M. Ginn
Excerpted from “Walking in Wonder”
Gather
September/October 2022

I love the beauty of life’s last dance with the above ground realm at this time of year, as each being turns inward, towards the darkness and the sweet embrace of quietude. How I love these golden displays, this fire that burns bright in yellows, oranges and reds, before descending to feed the ground below, turning to compost, dark matter, feeding and holding the seeds, the future.

And as winter takes hold of the land, if you listen, if you watch, you will feel, hear, sense the seeds, as they dream into being, held by their elders, nourished by their homeland. Dreaming, stretching, reaching tenderly, powerfully; growing into medicine, food, beauty and life.

Take a moment to listen on those darkening days, to feel the beauty, the becoming, being whispered upon the land. Use this as a mirror for your own soul, your own inner landscape. If you feel into the darkness, when all around you feels lost; if you listen deeply enough, compassionately, you will notice the seeds inside yourself, learning, stretching, growing; wanting to rewild the concrete, birthing your medicine, for you.

– Brigit Anna McNeill

NEXT:
Brigit Anna McNeill on Hearing the
Wild and Natural Call to Go Inwards

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• November Musings
• Awakening the Wild Soul
• Mystical Participation
• Autumn: Season of Transformation and Surrender
• Autumn . . . Within and Beyond (2021)
• Autumn . . . Within and Beyond (2018)
• Autumn . . . Within and Beyond (2016)
• O Sacred Season of Autumn
• “Thou Hast Thy Music Too”
• Autumn Psalm
• “This Autumn Land Is Dreaming”
• Autumn’s “Wordless Message”
• Autumnal (and Rather Pagan) Thoughts on the Making of “All Things New”
• Thomas Moore on the Circling of Nature as the Best Way to Find Our Substance
• Autumn Beauty
• Autumn Leaves
• Autumn Hues
• Autumn Dance
• The End Is Not the End

Photography: Michael J. Bayly.
Green Man image: Peter Williams.

Sunday, May 01, 2022

Beltane: A Time of Hope and Renewal

This is the time when sweet desire weds with wild delight. The Promise of Spring and the Power of the Waxing Year meet in the greening fields and rejoice together under the warm sun. The Tree of Life is twined in a spiral web and all of nature is renewed.

– Starhawk
Excerpted from The Spiral Dance
p. 188

Today’s ancient Gaelic festival of Beltane celebrates the renewing energies of spring and the coming summer. As Brigit Anna McNeill so beautifully reminds us, Beltane “honours the life force in all wild ones, the fertility of the wild, and the medicine that is abundant at this time. Beltane means bright fire, which for me is the fire that ignites life.”

Now, I have to say that, compared to this time last year, there isn’t much to be seen of spring’s emerging life force here in Minnesota. Indeed, for weeks now, the weather has been cold and rainy.

Undeterred, I chose to mark Beltane today by lighting a candle (right) and praying that all my be open to the transforming presence of the Sacred in their lives and in the natural world. I also began attempting to save a jade plant that my dear friends Noelle and John had given me a while back, but which has been slowly wilting away since being in my care.

This involved re-potting the few remaining parts of my jade plant that appear healthy (opening image). As I did so, I pledged to do my best to nurture them back into full life. I’m usually good with indoor plants, but I’ve discovered I have a hard time keeping any kind of succulent healthy and alive.

I also marked Beltane by spending time in the damp garden, seeking out and celebrating any and every sign of renewal I could find.

On this gray, soggy day I commit to continue to seek out and celebrate signs of the return of spring. And I’m going to do this as I seek to be, in my own unique and quiet ways, an embodiment of hope and renewal – in both my own inner life and the wider life of the world.

A Blessed Beltane to All!

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Beltane: Casting Off the Darkness and Celebrating the Light
• Beltane Morning Light
• Beltane: Celebrating the Sheer Exuberance of May
• Beltane and the Reclaiming of Spirit
• The “People Between”
• Welcoming the Return of Spring (2018)
• Celebrating the Return of Spring (2017)
• The Enkindled Spring (2016)
• The Landscape Is a Mirror
• Photo of the Day – April 21, 2019
• Green Destiny
• In the Footsteps of Spring
• O Dancer of Creation
• Imbolc: Celebrating the Freshness of New Beginnings
• Imbolc: Festival of Light
• Morning Light
• Celebrating the Color of Spring . . . and a Cosmic Notion of the Christ
• O Breath of Summer

Related Off-site Link:
Lucky Fires: Beltane Throughout the Ages – Tony Marshall Griffiths (New Eden Ministry, May 1, 2022).

Images: Michael J. Bayly.

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

To Dream, to Feel, to Listen

Your animal body is deeply affected
by the season that swirls around you.
Be gentle, for in these darkening times your animal body
needs to rest more, sleep more, and be still.
It needs to dream, to feel.
To listen to what is held beneath.

– Brigit Anna McNeill

The winter solstice of 2021 occurs today, marking the official beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. It's an event that brings good news as, from tomorrow on, days will start getting longer again, taking us out of winter darkness as we slowly move towards spring.

In marking this year’s winter solstice I share words of beauty and wisdom by ecotherapist and writer Brigit Anna McNeill. The two writings of McNeill that I share offer suggestions on how to most deeply respond to the darkness and cold of the winter season.

Things you can do in these colder darker days when away from the busyness, the hubbub and the crowds. Things that may be able to feed your wilder winter need for solace, rest, nourishment and connection.

• Be alone with yourself, finding caring ways in which to learn to love the company you keep in the alone moments. Let yourself taste who you are, let yourself hear the voice within.

• Sit, wrapped in jumpers and blankets, under a tree and watch, listen and discover.

• Draw yourself into your heart, let your heart call you home, let it catch you with threads of kindness and care, reminding you of the safety held within.

• Journal, let your unconscious mind spill across the page in inks of red, black and gold, without judgement or criticism.

• Make herbal teas made up of the green allies from the garden. Rosemary, thyme, mint, dandelion. Let them strengthen, nourish and enliven you, let them tell you stories of wild medicine that is threaded through and across the land.

• Light candles and fires.

• Sing, sing to the night and the moon, sing to the river and the trees. Sing to the seeds taking shape in the dark, sing to the roots strengthening, sing to the insects and fungi that compost down the leaves, creating life from death, sing to your own unbecoming and becoming.

• Rest, sleep early, dream.

• Mull apple juice with cinnamon and nutmeg, make chilly cacao.

• Warm oil with herbs and rub onto your body, showing your skin your love, whispering spells of boundaries, belonging and protection into your nerves, your muscles.

• Leave gifts of gratitude in the woods for deer, bird, squirrel and your other more than human family members. Whisper a prayer of their long life into the moving shifting winter air.

• Feast on foods that feed your bones, your flesh, your organs. Feed on food that reminds you of the care you receive at your own hands and the hands of the earth.

• Wonder and wander through forest, riverside and meadow, let the sound of crow, robin and squirrel call you home.

– Brigit Anna McNeill

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Brigit Anna McNeill on the Meaning of Winter Solstice Time
• Brigit Anna McNeill on “Winter’s Way”
• Wolfish
• God Rest Us
• Winter Solstice Blessing
• Beneanth the Solstice Sun
• Reclaiming the “Hour of God”
• Celebrating the Coming of the Sun and the Son
• Christmastide Approaches

Related Off-site Links:
Winter Solstice 2021: Where Modern Science and Pagan Traditions Meet – Forrest Brown (CNN, December 21, 2021).
It’s the Shortest Day of the Year. Things Can Only Get Brighter From Here – Rachel Treisman (NPR News, December 21, 2021).
Yule and the Winter Solstice – Justin Coutts (In Search of a New Eden, December 19, 2021).
Winter Solstice: A Time of Preparation and Learning – Amanda Takes War Bonnett (Lakota Times, December 23, 2021).
Magic of Newgrange at Winter Solstice Never Fails to Astound – Kate Hickey (Irish Central, December 20, 2021).
There’s a Light at the End of This Dark Year – Margaret Renkl (The New York Times, December 20, 2021).
Here’s to the Lost Art of Lying Down – Bernd Brunner (Aeon, December 21, 2016).

UPDATE: Winter Solstice 2021 Celebrations – in Pictures – Jim Hedge (The Guardian, December 21, 2021).

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

Thursday, November 18, 2021

Autumn . . . Within and Beyond

To some this might feel like the period of a Great End . . . but in fact this is the time of a Great Beginning. It is time to die to who we used to be and to become instead who we are capable of being. That is the gift that awaits us now: the chance to become who we really are.

And that is the miracle: the gift of change.

– Marianne Williamson
Excerpted from The Gift of Change:
Spiritual Guidance for a Radically New Life
Harper San Francisco, 2004
p. 12

Autumn is a wondrous metaphor for the transformation that takes place in the human heart each season. When we notice a subtle change of light outside our windows, we know the dark season is near. Everything is being prepared for winter. Autumn calls us in from summer's playground and asks significant questions about our own harvest: What do we need to gather into our spiritual barns? What in our lives needs to fall away like autumn leaves so another life waiting in the wings can have its turn to live?

– Joyce Rupp and Macrina Wiederkehr
Excerpted from The Circle of Life:
The Heart’s Journey Through the Seasons
Sorin Books, 2005
pp. 168-169

Sacred Mystery
in the guise of the Antlered One,
Come!
Come and take me into your wildness.
Show me the world through your soulful eyes.
Enrapture me with your scent, your touch.
Help me to come both back and forward
to myself.

– Adapted from a post
at The Sacred Circle of Cernunnos

Flaming September
What can you show me that is true?
My heart remembers
Do you remember, do you remember
All the life I gave to you?

– Flaming September
by Marianne Faithfull
(from the album A Secret Life)

The majesty of beauty is its gracious wholesomeness. The Beautiful unifies feeling, thought and dream. [This at-one-ment] coaxes the soul to the land of wonder where the journey becomes a bright path between source and horizon, awakening and surrender. Perhaps, through awakening our hearts to beauty, we can all come to know more intimately what John Keats meant when he wrote: “I feel more and more every day, as my imagination strengthens, that I do not live in this world alone but in a thousand worlds” (Letters, October 18, 1818).

– John O’Donohue
Excerpted from Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
Perennial, 2003
p. 9

Blessed be the longing that brought you here
And quickens your soul with wonder.

May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire
That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.

May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease
To discover the new direction your longing wants to take.

May the forms of your belonging – in love, creativity, and friendship –
Be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.

May the one you long for long for you

May your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.

May a secret Providence guide your thoughts and nurture your feeling.

May your mind inhabit your life with the sureness with which your body inhabits the world.

May your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.

May you come to accept your longings as divine urgency.

May you know the urgency with which God longs for you.

– John O’Donohue
Excerpted from To Bless the Space Between Us:
A Book of Blessings
Doubleday, 2008
pp. 35-36

There is something absolutely magnificent about walking in a full-growth forest, when light shines through the needles and leaves in great shimmering columns; the way our heads tilt up from time to time, almost involuntarily, pulled by the sway of the treetops like masts at sea. But it is the low-lying trees, the broken and dissolving, that often convey a deeper sense of what it means to grow into a true elder – to open up, to become emptied of ego.

Does the hollowing out happen invisibly and in private? And how do we age with an open heart when we are often encouraged to stay perpetually youthful? In a culture that values surfaces, how do we pay attention to what is unfolding within our depths?

I sit by an elder tree on the hill above my house. His body is slowly disintegrating, becoming fertile ground for new plants and trees. It is as if the tree is willing himself to be used up for the good of the Earth. I like to imagine that my increasingly arthritic hips and aging flesh are not an end unto themselves but a portal into a more generous and wiser time in my life.

After all, youth is the time for ego – a time to build up a sense of self. But true elderhood is a different matter entirely. Instead of worrying so much about staying young, perhaps we need to learn how to grow old. There is nothing more beautiful than an ancient tree with low branched that open like arms, embracing us. We need arms like that to hold us in these turbulent times.

– Mary Reynolds Thompson
Excerpted from Reclaiming the Wild Soul:
How Earth’s Landscapes Restore Us to Wholeness
White Cloud Press, 2014
p. 32

Blessed are you, Divine Mystery, who have made the entire universe your holy temple, spread out in the autumn evening sky. Sacred are the mountains and valleys, prairies and fields of this planet. Holy are the forests and meadows, the canyons and oceans deep, the cities and villages – all your sacred space. All who dwell upon this planet walk on holy ground, are priestly stewards of your earthly shrine.

Blessed are you, O Harvest of my heart,
Sacred Source of all life,
Delight of my days.

– Edward Hays
Excerpted from Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim
Forest of Peace Books, 1989
p. 65

Autumn, that universal symbol of change, gently suggests to us that winter is on the way as the leaves turn red, and somehow, equally gently and gradually, reminds us that nothing is permanent. . . . If the seasons change this way, then everything else probably does too, so holding the moment becomes important. Each event must be savoured for what it is, and nothing can bring it back. On the personal level, as Pico Iyer notes, we should “cherish the seasons inside us,” and “seek out changelessness in change.” Or, as the 19th-century French novelist and critic Jean-Baptiste Karr famously put it, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” [“The more it changes, the more it’s the same”]. Autumn somehow reminds us of this, too; it’s the season, Iyer says, “when everything falls away,” but at the same time it will be preparing to come back.

– John Butler
Excerpted from “A Review of Autumn Light:
Season of Fire and Farewells by Pico Iyer”
Asian Review of Books
June 8, 2019

I love the beauty of life’s last dance with the above ground realm at this time of year, as each being turns inward, towards the darkness and the sweet embrace of quietude. How I love these golden displays, this fire that burns bright in yellows, oranges and reds, before descending to feed the ground below, turning to compost, dark matter, feeding and holding the seeds, the future.

And as winter takes hold of the land, if you listen, if you watch, you will feel, hear, sense the seeds, as they dream into being, held by their elders, nourished by their homeland. Dreaming, stretching, reaching tenderly, powerfully; growing into medicine, food, beauty and life.

Take a moment to listen on those darkening days, to feel the beauty, the becoming, being whispered upon the land. Use this as a mirror for your own soul, your own inner landscape. If you feel into the darkness, when all around you feels lost; if you listen deeply enough, compassionately, you will notice the seeds inside yourself, learning, stretching, growing; wanting to rewild the concrete, birthing your medicine, for you.

– Brigit Anna McNeill

NEXT:
The Beauty and Challenge of
Being Present in the Moment

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Autumn: Season of Transformation and Surrender
• Autumn – Within and Beyond (2018)
• Autumn – Within and Beyond (2016)

• O Sacred Season of Autumn
• "Thou Hast Thy Music Too"
• Autumn, Adnan . . . and Art?
• “This Autumn Land Is Dreaming”
• Autumn Beauty
• Autumn Leaves
• Autumn Hues
• Autumn By the Creek
• The Last of Autumn Hues
• From the Falls to the River
• An Autumn Walk Along Minnehaha Creek
• Photo of the Day – October 29, 2021
• Photo of the Day – October 4, 2021
• Photo of the Day – October 24, 2018
• Photo of the Day – October 21, 2018
• Photo of the Day – September 29, 2016
• Photo of the Day – September 22, 2016
• Autumn Dance
• The Prayer Tree Aflame
• November Musings
• Late Autumn Light

See also:
• Winter . . . Within and Beyond (2017)
• Winter . . . Within and Beyond (2019)
• Winter . . . Within and Beyond (2020)
• Spring . . . Within and Beyond (2021)

Images: Michael J. Bayly.

The Wild Reed

Sunday, December 21, 2025

A Time of Descent and Rest

Thursday, February 01, 2024

The Call of Imbolc

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Time to Go Inwards

Monday, May 01, 2023

Beltane and the Fire Within

Saturday, November 12, 2022

Brigit Anna McNeill on Hearing the Wild and Natural Call to Go Inwards

Monday, November 07, 2022

Autumnal Thoughts and Visions

Sunday, May 01, 2022

Beltane: A Time of Hope and Renewal

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

To Dream, to Feel, to Listen

Thursday, November 18, 2021

Autumn . . . Within and Beyond

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