Meet me on the equinox; meet me half way… as we walk through the dimming light, oh darling understand that everything, everything ends.
– Death Cab for Cutie, Meet Me on the Equinox

The alt-pop song played in my head (and on my iPhone) as I prepared for Winter Finding (Mabon, equinox, Witch’s Thanksgiving – pick your name), and I was struck by how much it got right. The equinox, the half-way point between light and dark, summer and winter, is a paradox for pagans. It’s the middle harvest festival, a day for thanksgiving and for feasting. It’s also a day of preparation for the dimming light and the growing cold, a day when animals are slaughtered and crops are pulled and rotated to provide us with food for the winter.

Life from death. Nature that shifts, killing old to make room for new, with the cycles of the seasons. The autumnal equinox is both the fruition of the spring’s promise, and the moment when we recognize that what has flowered now must fade.

I see this as a good and necessary thing. We cannot spend our lives dragging everything along with us. We must learn to let go of the past – both the success and the failure and the piles of things that go along with them – to make room for what comes next.

This year, what are you letting go? My list includes the following:

  1. The notion that my house will magically clean itself… to be replaced with an hour of effort every morning from me.
  2. Some eating habits I have that are not healthy (I wish I could just let go of a few pounds, but that sentiment goes right up there with the magically self-cleaning house!)
  3. All the unneeded STUFF that doesn’t fit in my house – Scott and I have added an addition onto our house, and we’ll be moving up there soon. If it doesn’t fit with all that new space, it’s gotta go!
  4. My dabbling study to focus on heathenry. I may change later, but my spiritual wandering feels as if it has found a calling, and I need to let go of a few other things to focus and learn more deeply. (Isn’t it strange how you have to give up learning to gain learning? There certainly isn’t time to do it all!)

Big things! But somehow as summer turns to winter, anything seems possible to me again. I can start again fresh, the slate can be (mostly) clean, and I can release all the expectations I’ve built up (that somehow became a cage) and grow into someone better.

Blessings on you and yours for the changing of the seasons!