Tomorrow is the vernal equinox when your day and your night will be the same length. It is an event embodying harmony in what can often feel like an increasingly discordant world, a world that feels increasingly complex, wounded, unbalanced. Regardless of your ancestry, religion, or culture, you likely have rituals surrounding this period, surrounding spring. The recognition of birth and rebirth this time of year is universally acknowledged, celebrated with a riotous joy we so desperately need after a long winter. What is not universally acknowledged however, is the sense of balance the equinox brings. We overlook the harmony. Perhaps we are too distracted by our buzzing, beeping, flashing neon world and all its complexities. Perhaps we are too detached from the natural world to notice the gentle flow of new streams, the change in the wind, the days finally catching up to the nights. Let us stop for a moment then and reflect on all the good harmony this hallowed day brings in an attempt to find balance in our unbalanced world.
The fields are nearly thawed here. The only snow left now after a series of sun drenched days and one warm rain lies at the forest’s edge, in the gullies and deep ravines the light rarely reaches. We walk the field, the back roads, the village paths and we feel our winter-thick blood crack a little under the good light. We hear the burble of the little melt streams and smell the loamy warm-rot musk begin to bubble beneath the porch, behind the stone wall, beside the cellar door. There is a cleansing taking place; a thawing stretch and cracking of joints unused for too long. Water is flowing where it has not in months and our own blood is moving in ways for which it yearns. All this melt-water runs to the roads and turns them dire but what do we care? There is no place better to be than from where those grievous paths lead; the sugar houses are full of work-happy voices, clanging can be heard as tools are unearthed in garden sheds, and the hammering of new projects echoes through the hills. We are shaking off the frost from our shoulders, flexing our necks so our faces may feel the sun and rain, and all around us there is water, water, water bubbling, boiling, running to herald a good green riot.
The rain and the melt-flow cleanses the fields of the snow and roadsides of months-old dirt mounds kicked up by the plow. It moves us, and through this movement so too do we cleanse our winter-idle bodies. As we move, we become increasingly perceptive of our burdens. We take a queue from the natural world here; watch any barnyard and smile as the chickens find the new dirt in which to bathe, ridding themselves of parasites. Wander the forest and note which trees dropped useless limbs that were not gathering light. Everywhere around us, animals and plants are ridding themselves of the harmful and the useless. Like them, we engage in a bit of spring cleaning, but as you do so this year, consider what intangible elements are no longer serving you. Yes, you may donate the old skis gathering dust in the garage, but what else is taking up space, weighing you down? Are you ever scrolling, anxiously reading about war, global politics, and crises outside your control? It accomplishes little beyond increasing your blood pressure. Are you worrying about what may come to pass? Are you drowning in the complexity of your calendar? These things are much like the parasites on the hens or the heavy rotting limbs beneath the canopy: they serve only to weaken and to weigh. As you engage in your own spring cleaning, divest yourself of these intangible weights. Find more air, reclaim balance.
You are now halfway between Saint Brigid’s day and Beltane, February 1 and May 1, the start of spring and start of summer. Yesterday the night was longer than the day but now, little by little, the days grow longer. We have spent months planning what we will do with these days so now we must spend months acting upon those plans! No excuses now—the weather is warm and the days are growing longer. We hold ourselves back by saying “someday” or “next year” but the time to strike is now. All your dreams you dreamt in the long winter-dark of January and February must now become manifest, tangible, real. This too is a balance; if we spend all our days dreaming, no fruit comes to bear. If we spend all our days acting, we stumble without a plan. Here at the equinox you stand at the threshold between plans and actions. It is a thin place between dream and reality and it is time to step into the tangible again and strike.
We live in complicated times. We inhabit a wounded world. We change the clocks, get lost in our schedules, and are so easily mired in extremes. Now is not the time for the tyranny of extremes however. The heady highs and dark lows are better left for the two solstices when days linger languidly in tall grass and nights last longer than the candles can burn. Here though, you have the opportunity for a reclamation, for a tempered, prudent defiance against the electric current of the neon modern world that sweeps so many others away. Take a breath. Walk the woodline, tend your garden, wander by hedgerows and take stock of the water, the air, the light and all the good green harmonies therein. There you will find a little balance in our unbalanced world.
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