{This Moment}

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

joining in with  Soule Mama

The Feast of Life!

Many years ago, in those days when we were young and carefree, ha ha! my friend Lisa Dombek shared a book with me that was to become one of those books that resurfaces every now and then, and when it comes to my consciousness, I pick it up, close my eyes and select a page. That page always speaks to me deeply. I have perused pages throughout the book just to check and make sure that it is not every page that wants to speak to me in that moment and what I find is that the page that turns up is always the perfect page for the moment.

Does that happen to you with books? Does it work for you too, with the right message or information for the moment?

Yesterday I glimpsed the book and thought it was time for a pick up and peek. This is what came up, you may like it too.

I'll share it with you:

In your joy
you are celebrating God.
You are celebrating the feast of life.


This is not something to be denigrated
on the grounds that there is more to life
than pleasure.
Certainly there is more.
There is an infinity of more.
One is never finished
with the process of growth,
of seeking, serving, loving.
The delights of the physical world
are the delights of the spirit world.
It is all one.
Your human joy will not take you away 
from your love for God.
Love is love.
If you cannot tolerate human bliss
how will you withstand the bliss
of eternal Oneness.


If you were to check into the consciousness
of a rock
you would find a great deal of pleasure there.
You would find
a sense of Oneness that is comforting,
a delight in being a rock.
In the flow of its being
a rock in the state of ecstasy.


Ecstasy cannot be scaled
on a rating from one to ten.
It is ecstasy.
Why are you all so suspicious of joy and softness?
Is this not also God's world?
Joy is a natural ingredient of life.


You human beings tend to be hurried and pressured
and thereby deny yourselves the exquisite pleasure
of savoring your lives.
In this way, a great amount of joy
and sweetness goes unnoticed.
If life is lived with care and attention
it will give you the sustenance
and richness you long for.
Allow yourselves to renew your commitment
to your lives and to yourselves
many times a day.


You feel that because you yearn for the warmth
and the softness of life
that this will somehow lull you into inactivity?
Must there always be a harsh outer reality
to remind you of God?

If you cannot trust beauty where you find it
how can you open your heart
to Oneness with God
which is eternal beauty? 


Excerpt from: Emmanuel's Book: A manual for living comfortably in the cosmos, Introduction by Ram Dass, Compiled by Pat Rodegast and Judith Stanton, 1987, Bantam Books, New York


Thanks Lis!

Link Love

This week brings lots to mull over in the blog world. Here are a few links that I have been loving this week.

:: Over on Lynn Jericho's The Inner Year is a not-to-be-missed video, "Let Them Live in Your Heart" it speaks deeply to anyone who spends time with children, as well as to our own experience of being a child, do check it out.

:: Our friend Sparkle of Sparkle Stories now has a blog!

:: Kyrie of are so happy has begun a series on the ordinary arts

:: Catherine of the bi-lingual blog Catherine at les Fees has a discussion with Donna Simmons of Christopherus Home School Curriculum

:: My warm thanks to my friend Carrie over at The Parenting Passageway for sharing the two above links this week

:: My friend Liza needs a blog......hmmnnn Liza maybe...? (maybe I'd better say I'd love to read my friend Liza's blog if she had one ~ hint, hint)


Happy weekend dear friends!

Halloween is Coming!

Halloween is coming, then we'll see

Faces in the windows smiling at me

Pumpkins on the door step shining bright

Oh, we'll have a good time on Halloween night!

Bobbing for red apples tis such fun.
Then we’ll come a-calling on the run
All dressed up in costumes such a sight
Oh, we'll have a good time on Halloween night!
Oh, we'll have a good time on Halloween night!

I think I told you last year that Halloween is and has always been one of my favorite holidays. My Mom tells great stories of Halloween from when she was a child during the depression, of mischief and pranks and a night that belonged to the children. I have fond memories of bundling up and going out with our wagon lined with an army blanket though the crisp fallen leaves in our neighborhood in the dark night in Maine.

We are busy preparing for Halloween, working on a spaceman costume. Over the years, the boys have been a gnome, pumpkin, a Continental Micronesia airplane, a lamb, a cowboy, Harry Potter, a wizard, a ghost, baker, prince, knight, Robin Hood, and a hippie.

Do you know about the story of the Sugar Sprite? It's one I have mixed feelings about. 

On one hand, the candy load can be enormous on Halloween. On the other, it's one day out of the year, it's fun for children to collect their candy, return home, dump out their treasure trove and sort through it and eat from it. Often there are trades to be made that require careful negotiation between the children. 

Allowing children to eat their fill on Halloween day is one way they can learn to set some limits for themselves, and learn to appreciate moderation if they over indulge. Limits can be set determined how many pieces may be eaten each day and when in the days following Halloween. 

The Sugar Sprite

Halloween is coming and parents often want to avoid the huge consumption of candy that comes with trick or treat. I heard this story many years ago, tried it out with my children and it fell flat. We'd had too many years of trick or treat without the Sugar Sprite behind us. 

I like that is has the potential to create a satisfying picture for the children and helps to manage the sugar load. The gesture of helping is one I appreciate too. For those who are seeking such a story, here it is:

As the days grow shorter and the nights grow longer and darker, the Old North Wind comes to visit and brings gusts of cold breezes. They blow, they blow.

The buzzing bees have gone to sleep, in their cozy warm hives.

Mother Earth has tucked the Flower Children into their beds, deep in the warm earth. They go to sleep in the ground and no longer make sweet pollen for the Sugar Sprite to eat.

Father Sun is snuggled up in the clouds as the days get colder and darker.

We put on our woolies, caps and warm sweaters, to keep ourselves warm and we cover the flower children and bulbs with layers of warm earth and mulch to keep them warm.

The Sugar Sprite is cold too. "Brrrr… how cold it is," she declares as she wraps her arms around herself to her her warm. She doesn't need warm caps, and woolies, and sweaters to keep her warm for she is warmed by the nectar from the blossoms and bees.

She needs sweet nectar and sugar to stay warm through the cold of winter.

The flower children who offer the pollen from their blossoms have gone to sleep, deep in the earth, and the bees who carry it from place to place have gone to sleep in their hives.

Oh dear, the Sugar Sprite has no sweet pollen to keep her warm. Hmnnm…. "whatever shall we do, I wonder."

"I've got it!, we can help the Sugar Sprite. We can share our Halloween candy with her.

At Halloween, our neighbors and friends give us lots of candy, far more candy than we need.

So when we return from trick or treating, we may sample some candy and put aside our very favorites.  The rest we can leave on the doorstep for the Sugar Sprite with this verse:

 Sugar Sprite, Queen tonight

 Need sugary treats for your heart's delight?

Come to my doorstep, candy awaits,

Linger not at the garden gate.

Sugary sweets to warm you well,

to help you weave your magic spell.

Winter days are coming soon,

Keep warm 'til next Halloween moon.

During the night, when the children are fast asleep, the friendly Sugar Sprite comes, takes the candy and leaves a simple gift of thanks. The Sugar Sprite knows what all children like, but sometimes the children write letters or make pictures for the sprite about a week before Halloween so she doesn’t get confused as you can imagine she has to visit a lot of children to collect enough sugar to keep her warm through the coming winter.

We're holding off on carving the pumpkins because the rain disintegrates them if it comes after we've carved them.

What are you doing for Halloween? Any fun costume ideas you'd like to share? Say hello and leave a link below to your Halloween activities. I love to hear from you.

Blog Life

I am often asked to write more articles and post more photos of our homschooling, of the Morning Garden, of my children, with examples of their work. I don't do that. I offer little "eye candy" of that sort here. The reason I share few pictures of my children and their work are many. I'll share them with you:

1. They don't like it. My children do not like to be photographed and do not like to have their pictures shared on the internet. They are adamant about this and old enough to have an opinion. My teen unfriended me on Facebook for tagging him in a family photo. Some of the Morning Garden parents did not want their children photographed for any kind of public viewing, so I never considered doing it.
2. I want to be present in the moment. For me, it is impossible to be fully present in the moment and taking pictures at the same time. It also takes my children out of what is happening. With young children, the awareness of the camera takes them out of the deep absorption in their play. The camera alters the moment.
3. Memories that live within us are more real than the ones we embrace in a snapshot. Sometimes, at really important events, I leave my camera behind because I want the event and memories of it to live within us, not in a framed snapshot of a moment. I want my children to frame their childhood memories from within themselves, not by my eye.
4. Memories get rewritten every time we remember them. The long forgotten memory that creeps up after decades is more accurate than something we recall often over the years. I want my children to have their memories of childhood intact. From Jonah Lehrer over at The Frontal Cortex:“It reveals memory as a ceaseless process, not a repository of inert information. The recall is altered in the absence of the original stimulus, becoming less about what we actually remember and more about what we’d like to remember. It’s the difference between a ‘Save’ and the ‘Save As’ function. Our memories are a ‘Save As’: They are files that get rewritten every time we remember them, which is why the more we remember something, the less accurate the memory becomes."
5. It takes a good deal of time to take the pictures, upload them to the computer, review them, choose ones to publish and then upload photos. This is a good deal of time and energy away from things I'd rather be doing. For me, this is just pure and practical economy of time.

These are my reasons. I do not mean to cast judgement on anyone who does it differently but to explain my reasons for why I do what I do. I hope you'll stay with me.

   

{This Moment}

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Inspired by Amanda over at SouleMama

Rhythm ~ Waldorf Style

I wrote this article for my monthly subscription program Celebrate the Rhythm of Life ~ a living curriculum, when I did a test run. Because it has been viewed more than any other page on that site, and because rhythm is such a important and fundamental element of early childhood, I am sharing it with you here.

Rhythm is life! Rhythm is strength! Rhythm can carry you.

We often hear these words but what matters most.... is our relationship to rhythm. 

If we tend toward the precise and exact and well... maybe even rigid,  we might need to loosen up and have more fun, be more fluid, go with the flow, laugh more and get the children to laugh too.

If we tend toward the loose with little structure to our day or week, we might find that the day has slipped by and we have not had lunch or fed the dog or thought about dinner and we're out of milk and no time for breathing into the fun. We might need to tighten up our self discipline, set tiny goals for the day and meet them.

Balance

Rhythm is really about balance, finding our own, finding our way to breathe through the day, to be calm and present and bring attentive awareness to our lives with children. Rhythm is flow, a feeling that we are moving in and out energetically with the needs of the day. Rhythm is finding rest and a time for pulling back in after having been out in stimulating activity.

Baby Steps
We begin to find our rhythm by taking baby steps, one at a time. What is the structure of our life right now? Do we go to bed around the same time? Do our children? Do we rise around the same time every day? Do we have regular meal times? Do we set a pretty table?

It's helpful to let go of trying to make many changes at once, we might try for one small change, maybe rising first or dinner by five or bedtime by seven.

In the Moment
When we are running from behind, always trying to catch up, we find ourselves breathless and not in the moment. When we are too focused on the schedule and on what is coming next, we are unable to relax and be in the moment.

Flow
Finding a rhythm that flows is key to life with children, for children thrive on a rhythmic and predictable life and a strong rhythm can carry us all through the years with breathing time and time for grace.

For those of us who work with young children in Waldorf nursery and kindergartens, and at home as our child's first Waldorf teacher, we have a rhythm of the day, a rhythm of the week, and, a rhythm of the year.

The Daily Rhythm
is the flow of the daily activities, a balance between quiet inner focused ones and more rambunctious outer focused ones, an in breathing and an out breathing, all anchored in four basic activities for health and well being. 

Every day, every child needs these elements to develop and thrive as a human being, along with a strong relationship with a warm, loving adult and protection from too much stimulation and the adult world. 

By warm loving, I do not mean sentimental and gushing, I mean present, one who sees, hears and feels the child and responds accordingly with warmth and support. 

Once we master the flow of these, we have a solid foundation for our children's early years. They are:

1. Eating

2. Sleeping  

3. Free play

4. Fresh air

Sample daily rhythm --> Rise ~ Mama time ~ Breakfast ~ Chores + Outside Play ~ Morning Tea ~ Guided Activity ~ Lunch ~ Nap/Rest ~ Afternoon Tea/Snack ~ Outside Play ~ Dinner Prep/Play at Kitchen Table ~ Dinner -~ Bath ~ Bed

Consider additional activities, such as circle, storytelling, cooking, baking, painting, craft making to be transitions between theses anchors with the basic four taking precedence over all other activity. Cooking and baking help satisfy the eating need, so you might start with those activities. 

Circle, painting and craft making can wait until children are five years old, it is in the kindergarten traditionally that children first had some of these experiences. 

We need to ask ourselves if we want these activities for ourselves or for our children. If the answer is for ourselves, then consider how and where they might fit and respect the child's need for time and space and play.

If your child is four or older and you have time and space in your life for crafts, circle and painting by all means do them, just not to the detriment of eating, sleeping, playing and being outdoors and most importantly, not if it gets in the way of your sanity.

If you are a child care provider and have parents clamoring for activities and projects to take home, think about what the child needs to grow into a healthy human being and find ways to convey what is needed for healthy development to the parents with articles, parent nights and laying it all out in your literature and your interview. 

Free child initiated play is fundamental for healthy growth. Eugene Schwartz has a great article on play, From Playing to Thinking, in the kindergarten as the basis for scientific learning later on. It is the child's ability to take time to do small tasks in the early years, like putting on their boots, tying their shoes, wrapping a gift, collecting an egg from the henhouse, so carefully reaching in, that lay the foundation for math later on.

The rhythm of the week is the pattern or flow of activities set for the days of the week.

The nursery rhyme reminds us of how our mothers and grandmothers lived with a task for each day of the week.

Wash on Monday

Iron on Tuesday

Mend on Wednesday

Churn on Thursday

Clean on Friday

Bake on Saturday

Rest on Sunday

Homemakers have had a homemaking task for each day of the week out of pure practicality, the oven was stoked with wood to run all day on Saturday to bake the beans and the bread. The clothing that was washed on Monday, got ironed on Tuesday and mended on Wednesday. Butter was churned on Thursday, ready for Saturday's baking. The wheel went round and round, week to week and the chores got done. Everyone knew what to expect. Life had form.

Now, with all our conveniences at the flick of a switch, we are forced to carve out our own rhythm in the home.

On mending day we can add a day for mending of toys. We can darn socks, mend holes in the toes, replace a button. A toy with a broken part can receive attention on mending day. This is one way to care for things that get broken.

In the Waldorf nursery and kindergarten, a weekly rhythm often involves a grain for each day's menu based on Rudolf Steiner's work on nutrition and an activity for the child for each day.

The example below is a rhythm that has worked for me, with my own children and with the nursery program group of mixed age children. I have shifted it over the years to accommodate morning naps, mid day naps and noontime pick up. I find it flows best when it is consistent with the fewest transitions and just enough time with each activity to be satisfying - yet not get in the way of play, which is the real work of childhood.

What really fosters play in young children is an adult nearby engaged in productive work with tangible results, results you can see, sweeping, shoveling, folding, ironing. The computer and telephone do not do it for children. A weekly rhythm of home making tasks can help make a time for everything that needs doing.

They need to see us engaged in work and when they see us grapple with something, with mending or sewing or repairing a door frame, it brings a gift to them, that humans sometimes have to grapple in life for that is what growing can be grappling for children. They need to see us do it and persevere and succeed in our endeavors, even when they are hard. This helps grow children who will strive and get through the hard parts of life.

The Weekly Rhythm
 in the kindergarten or the home is a set pattern of activities, one for each day of the week. The more they can be integrated into the home life the better.

An example of activities of a weekly rhythm:
Monday ~ Visit farm or go for a nature walk, make soup stock

Tuesday ~ Make Soup

Wednesday ~ Coloring/Seasonal nature craft day

Thursday~ Baking day

Friday ~ Painting day

The Key
 to the Rhythm of the Day is to wake up before the children and

1. Get Dressed
2. Start the laundry
3. Think about dinner/organize it
4. Have mother time before the children rise ~ whatever it is that helps you put the spin you need on the day. It might be a quiet cup of coffee or tea, to read a verse, or say it aloud. Maybe it's meditation, yoga, reading, a walk, whatever it is that helps you orient yourself for the day. 

Something to think About
What is your relationship to rhythm? Does it come naturally? Do you have to work at it? What helps it? What gets in the way? Did you have a rhythmic childhood?

What does your rhythm look like? Where are your challenges? How do you move through the transitions? How does it differ in Autumn?

I love to see your comments and feel free to link to your rhythm below in the comment box.

xoxo
Lisa

Coming in January 2025

Rhythm in the Home

eCourse

::

Celebrate the Rhythm of Life 

Harmonious Rhythms ::  Parenting with Soul :: Waldorf Homeschooling

~living curriculum program to support parenting and homeschooling

La Balance

Here we are at the end of summer, moving towards the dark and cold of the year. The Wheel of the Year is turning and with it are we, within.

The autumn equinox comes along with the stars in the sky known as Libra, the scale to weigh in our deeds. The sign of Libra is often depicted as Justice holding the scales of balance, here.

We are back to school yet still holding on to the long, luxuriant days of summer. The Bleeding Hearts are brown and shriveling. The tomatoes have given up their fruits. The autumn lanterns are warmly aglow amidst the decaying leaves of the plants that grew them.



 Mother Earth is calling her children home where they have much work to do to conserve the concentrated energies generated over the summer into the deep dark days of winter ahead.

I've been enjoying Lynn Jericho's Inner Year class on Balance. My relationship with balance has demanded my attention this month with lingering dizziness that came from many spinning rides at the fair.

This is my third round of inner balance work with Lynn Jericho and each year it seems that life is way out of balance for me in September, those long, lazy days of summer are hard to compress into the shorter days of autumn, so much so that it is hard for me to find the balancing point to really focus on the class.

We want to stay up late and be out of doors and linger at the beach with friends yet school is calling, there is food to dry, freeze and can, the garage needs a good clean out before winter, the grass needs to be cut, the garden put to bed, and work beckons. Where is the balance?

Part of me is pulling in. I've made my first cup of hot tea and took out the crock pot for a long and slow cooking of beef to eat with chili and nachos. I nearly built a fire last weekend to take the chill out of the house yet wrapped us up in warm woolen blankets instead. I'm not ready to close the windows.

The woolen picnic blanket has become a robe to snuggle under to ward off the night chill at night time football games.

I was glad to find an e-mail from Donna Simmons with a recent blogpost in which she offers reassurance for all homeschoolers, new and seasoned, on what she refers to as the September Boom or Bust, here.

When I saw Carrie Dentdter's recent post over on The Parenting Passageway on the Balance chapter, from her book study of The Well Balanced Child, I decided to join in the conversation on The Well Balanced Child. This book has been on my shelf for a few years and is one I have picked up and put down many times. It is a blog post in progress. Thank you Carrie.

How is the balance of your life?

Daily Life is the Curriculum

Summer has drawn back its heat and light, the days are beginning to feel crisp and cool. We're feeling drawn back to some kind of order and fresh start in everyday life. It seems like a good time to talk about homeschooling also known as the education of our children at home. 

Since how to get started and what sort of curriculum to use is often a first question, I thought I’d address the curriculum for the young child in the world of  Waldorf education. By young child I mean children who are toddling up to until around age nine. These are the years when they are curious, open and enthusiastic to join us in these tasks, which in turn provide a strong foundation for life. 

It is already well known to us as daily life: eating, sleeping, play and household work to keep everything flowing. And with the daily work, it is our task to help our child learn how to be fully human.

This includes healthy rhythms of eating, sleeping, movement and play as well as the activities of daily life, art, time with others and most fundamental of all nurturing activities that build connection between the child and the parent. 

Daily Homemaking Activities: like cooking and baking and housework, setting the table, clearing the table, sweeping after the meal.

Playful, Artistic Activities: like singing, ring games, coloring and painting, beeswax modeling, simple storytelling, puppetry.

Being with Others: like meal times and playing with other children (for 3′s and older), being with mom at the grocery or post office and reaching out to others in our building, neighborhood, or community.

Nurturing Activities and this means physically nourishing like touch, whole food and good sleep as well as warm baths, and attentive hand washing, and drying, and dressing, and hair combing, and protection from too much stimulation of the media, adult world, colors and stuff. Soulful activities stories rich in imagination, time and space for free play are deeply nourishing on a soul level. We the adults need to nourish ourselves too for we are the source of the strength to keep the household momentum going. (You know the saying, "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy... well it is so, no?)

Stories are an artistic activity that are very important for children because they help create pictures of life and of what it means to be human. Stories connect us with humanity and bring powerful archetypal images that have lived within human consciousness for thousands of years. Adults love stories too.

Children will play out what they see and hear in their environment and stories are a way to provide pictorial images that the child will play out. This is why Waldorf teachers are always encouraging parents to protect children from the stimulation of the media, to protect the inner world of childhood, so rich with imagination, imagination for the moment and the future.

What is important with daily life as the curriculum is that it be filled with meaningful and purposeful work that is tangibly productive for a child. Computers and books and typing are not, they are too abstract for the young child to grasp but chopping and kneading and washing are, they produce something the child can grasp, literally and physically. So that is why it is the picture of little house on the prairie with making bread and soup and tending the garden and the animals that is found in the Waldorf kindergarten, a space tended with care and love for all the beings who pass by.

Children need real tools to work with as well, an apron, a sturdy rake, a strong snow shovel and a small version but strong adult garden shovel.

This is where the craft making and handwork in Waldorf come from, in having a relationship to the articles we need for daily living, wash clothes, pot holders, caps, mittens scarves and anything made by mom is so dear to the child, even if they do not outwardly express it, it is.

The what of the curriculum is life, eating, sleeping, caring for the child, caring for the family caring for the home and caring for others in the community. The how to get there in tiny steps is a topic for next time.

Celebrate the Rhythm of Life 

Waldorf in the Home
Guides, eCourses, Mentoring
Mothering, Homemaking, Home education

Sign up now for October Program

October's focus topic is The Rhythm of Food and Meal Planning ~ We'll focus on how food and meal planning can bring rhythm to our days, week and month and foster reverence within and without, in the child, parent and home environment.

We will set up an individual monthly plan for each participant and look at weekly and daily rhythms around food and meals with simple practical ways to tweak your days and weeks to find more time and peace in your days and home.

We'll make aprons for the children and design a meal plan as our practical activities.

Click here for more...

{this moment}

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

inspired by Amanda over at SouleMama

Michaelmas

September 29th is known in the Christian world as the feast day of the Archangel Michael.  Michaelmas is also an important season in the Waldorf community. It's the first festival celebration in the school year at Waldorf communities in the northern hemisphere. 

Michaelmas is one of what I call the “ Big Four" Waldorf festivals. 

The “ Big Four”  festivals are: 

• Michaelmas
• Christmas
• Easter and 
• St. John’s Tide

Each takes place near one of the cardinal points in the year - the solstices and the equinoxes.

Michaelmas takes place near the autumn equinox, a time of balance, with equal day and equal night. The word equinox means equal night, “equi + nox." 

The Archangel Michael is an important figure in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. In the world of Waldorf education, anthroposophy and medicine he is said to be the guiding force of our times. Michael appears in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.

Michaelmas (pronounced mikel-mas) is a season, the season of the final ripening and gathering in, the harvesting of the earth's bounty. It's the season in which the earth begins to inhale her forces, which marks the turning of the year from the long hot expansive days of summer towards the dark cold contraction of winter.  Plants wither, leaves drop, the last ripened fruits, nuts and vegetables are taken in, feasted upon and put up for the cold days ahead. The geese are heading south. We are in the season of Michaelmas. 

As parents we begin to bring out the layers of clothing for physical warmth, cook up warm soups, stews and roasts and imbue our stories for children with light and warmth to carry us through the cold and dark days to come. An afternoon cup of tea brings warmth to body and soul in that moment of the day of quiet just before the shift towards dinner, bath and bed. A fire, either outdoors or inside warms body and soul.

When our family lived on the equator, autumn heralded in a marked change in the year, the storm season began with high swells on the sea, strong winds, heavy rain and typhoons. It was the time of year when we avoided certain crossings across the waters for it was likely to be rough. That was a time for pulling in a bit - despite the heat. The days grew shorter by thirty minutes and we noticed it. 

Michaelmas is the first of the festivals typically celebrated during the new school year at Waldorf schools. It is celebrated with stories about Michael and stories of shooting stars, courage, balance and strength are told. The grade school students often perform a play with a dragon. The older child might use a scale to contemplate the balance of his or her deeds over the course of time, and take stock.

For the young child, Michaelmas is a harvest festival, a time to savor the harvest, roast vegetables, polish apples, cut them in half to discover the stars within and celebrate through song, story and food the gifts and  wonders of nature and all her beauteous bounty. Michaelmas is also a time for purposeful work.

                                      " My nice red rosy apple has a secret midst unseen;

You’d see if you could slip inside, five rooms so neat and clean.

In each room there are hiding two seeds so shining bright;

Asleep they are and dreaming of a lovely warm sunlight.

And sometimes they are dreaming of many things to be

How some day they’ll be hanging upon a Christmas tree"

For the adult Michaelmas is a time to recognize the seeds of our own capacities and the inner dragons that obstruct our own path as well as the outer dragons of materialism, greed, stuff...what is our relationship to the material world? How do we enliven the swords of our imagination? How do we imbue it with spirit? How are we becoming human?

It is so hard to talk about Michaelmas as it is not about words or intellectuality, but about our thinking imagination, our deeds, our capacity to become more fully human. Michaelmas is a festival of strong will, of inner strength and courage.

• From Rudolf Steiner, on Michael and the Dragon, here
• For Reflections from Lynn Jericho on Michaelmas, here
• For Reflections from Danielle Epifani on Michaelmas as the Festival of Human Becoming, here
• Reflections from David Mitchell on why we celebrate Michaelmas, here

From Garrison Keillor of The Writer's Almanac on Minnesota Public Radio:

"In the Christian world, today is Michaelmas, feast day of the archangel Michael, which was a very important day in times past, falling near the equinox and so marking the fast darkening of the days in the northern world, the boundary of what was and what is to be. Today was the end of the harvest and the time for farm folk to calculate how many animals they could afford to feed through the winter and which would be sold or slaughtered. It was the end of the fishing season, the beginning of hunting, the time to pick apples and make cider.

Today was a day for settling rents and accounts, which farmers often paid for with a brace of birds from the flocks hatched that spring. Geese were given to the poor and their plucked down sold for the filling of mattresses and pillows.

Michaelmas was the time of the traditional printer's celebration, the wayzgoose, the day on which printers broke from their work to form the last of their pulp into paper with which to cover their open windows against the coming cold — the original solution for those who could not afford glass yet had more than nothing — and the advent of days spent working by candlelight.

In the past, the traditional Michaelmas meal would have been a roast stubble goose — the large gray geese that many of us only get to admire at our local state and county fairs. Today, when most poultry comes from the grocery store in parts and wrapped in plastic, a roast goose can be a difficult luxury to obtain, but any homey, unfussy meal is a fine substitute — especially with a posy of Michaelmas daisies or purple asters on the table.

In folklore, it is said that when Michael cast the Devil from Heaven, the fallen angel landed on a patch of blackberry brambles and so returns this day every year to spit upon the plant that tortured him. For this reason, blackberries would not be eaten after today, and so folks would gather them in masses on Michaelmas to put into pies and crumbles and preserves. And they would bake St. Michael's bannocks, a large, flat scone of oats and barley and rye, baked on a hot griddle and then eaten with butter or honey or a pot of blackberry preserves.

Whether you recognize Michaelmas or not, you can still greet what comes with the symbols of today: gloves, for open-handedness and generosity; and ginger to keep you warm and well in the coming cold."

Blessings on your season of Michaelmas! May your dragons be met with grace.