Photo by Erik Witsoe on Unsplash
‘The desire to go home is a desire to be whole,
to know where you are,
to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars,
to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world,
that center called love.
~~ Rebecca Solnit
Greetings to all my precious people!
There’s a particular quiet that arrives in early November. The leaves are mostly down. The light retreats earlier each afternoon. Tomorrow, November 7, marks Li Dong in the Chinese calendar, the Start of Winter, when the year’s energy turns from the letting go of Metal toward the deep, gathering stillness of Water.
And the sky, it seems, agrees. Mercury is retrograde until November 13, a season many of us know as a time for review: revisiting, reconsidering, looking back before moving forward.
So this week, let’s look back together.
All year, we’ve been walking a path. In the spring and summer, we did the work of clearing, making room and noticing what had piled up in our bodies, our calendars, and our hearts. We discovered what was underneath: the parts of ourselves set aside for others, the dreams put on hold, the quiet knowing we stopped listening to. Through the autumn, in Surrender into Certainty, we practiced releasing, trusting the cycles of Nature to show us what is certain even when the future is unknown.
Now comes the part that’s both simplest and hardest: integration.
Integration is where what we’ve learned stops being an insight and becomes a way of living. In Chinese Medicine, this is Water’s gift. Winter is the season of storage, when the tree draws its sap down into the roots. Nothing looks like it’s happening, but everything that will bloom in spring is being gathered and held.
Solnit says the desire to go home is a desire to be whole. That’s what this season is for. Home is not a place we return to, because you can’t go back. Home is the self we come back into.
A practice for this week: The Gathering
Find a quiet half hour, a cup of something warm, and a notebook. Ask yourself:
What did I clear this year? What did I finally put down?
What did I discover? What surprised me about myself?
What did I release? What am I no longer willing to carry?
What do I want to keep?
Which one truth from this year do I want to bring home with me into winter?
Don’t rush. Mercury retrograde is a reminder that looking back is not going backward, the same way the tree drawing sap into its roots is not dying.
Tending your Water
The Kidneys are the organ of winter, holding our deepest reserves. To support them as the dark comes on:
Go to bed earlier. Winter asks for more rest, and that’s not laziness.
Keep your low back and feet warm.
Rub the soles of your feet before bed. Kidney 1, Yongquan or “Bubbling Spring,” sits there, the point where the earth’s energy rises into us.
Try cedarwood or frankincense oil on the soles of the feet or the low back, grounding scents for a rooting season.
What comes next
In the weeks ahead, our theme is Homecoming: returning to self, awakening, and the practice of carrying our inner life into our outer one. Gurdjieff, the Greco-Armenian mystic and philosopher, described it as living in two currents:
“You must now learn to live in two currents. There is the habitual current which is ordinary life in which you live, and then, in you must exist the other current, the second current, which is your interior life. Up to now, you have had contact with yourself only when you were alone, quiet, now you must learn with others. When you are with a person, remain in your own current, your interior current.”
Holding our own current in solitude is one thing. Holding it at the holiday table, in the crowded store, or on the difficult phone call is the real practice. That’s where we’re headed together.
Anam Cara Circle: What If Nothing Is Broken
If you’d like to walk this part of the path in good company, the first Anam Cara Circle begins Monday, November 16. We meet on Zoom for six Monday evenings, 7:00–8:30 PM, and close on December 21, the Winter Solstice, the return of the light.
The Circle isn’t a class or a workbook. It’s a small group of women gathered in presence, practicing a different way of responding to life, right now, as we are. Nothing is broken. We’re coming home.
The Circle is $597 for all six weeks, with space for just 8–10 women.
Click here to register: https://buy.stripe.com/fZudR24P9cCtczh75b6wE03
Until next week, be gentle with your looking back. You’ve come a long way.
With enthusiasm and relentless curiosity …
