Knitting & pumpkins & long, hot Lugh

These are the days of waiting... and creatively so, as it is too hot to think and otherwise to move. So I knit and read and plot, and my son makes little roads of play-doh.

This time, now? Well, I hadn't quite expected this. Things have turned considerably topsy-turvy here on the farm, and where once I was harvesting fat, juicy red tomatoes, the it's the very weather that is fat, juicy and red. Not that I'm not still plucking those crimson wonders from the vine. But all around me, summer has exploded into this uber-personality, indeed a being all its own: air heavy with the rich sound of too many crickets and cicadas singing to a sunrise that is too bright and so very, very hot. Air heavy with humid liquidity, the clouds bellowing a threat that never comes due-- that indeed you wish would come, for the cooling rain would lighten things up. And the leaves, which yellow more each day, still stretch to the point that it seems the forest itself has reached full capacity; any more growth, and surely it will burst...

Which is to say, at long last I think I understand the Season of Lugh: the incredible brightness, richness, over-powering-ness that ascends to its apex and then exits in a grand swan-song of being.

It's a fine metaphor for where I find myself these days. Life has become overwhelming in this summer's end: the business venture we moved 3,000 miles to nurture for a family member has gone bust. Branches have tangled and the heat has risen and yes, it seems impossible to bear any more of this unexpected, unbearable summer.

But on we do, "not doing": wrapping up responsibilities, looking for new work, learning to rest in a very uncomfortable bardo. What will come? We are excited to know! For the pumpkins have harvested early, and each day the breeze carries more and more leaves upon it. To where will we follow? ...we are excited to know!

Not-doing. Nope.

"Not-to-do something is doing something. Good and bad are only in our minds.... Whatever we are doing, even if it is not-doing something, we should do it!"


So here are some leaves, just a couple of them in the whole tree, not-being green.

Two weeks ago, I held a memorial day of zazen meditation in honor of my teacher. Suzuki Roshi's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind kept me good company that day-- especially wondering as I was, still, about my last post. What is home?



What is this struggle? Here are some Cosmos, not-being flowers and yet not-being seeds. (And they are not-doing it so nicely, creating a sense of endearment in my garden it seems to me.) Do the seeds struggle to let loose to the wind that will come? Is that how we may find flowers in the spring, after all?



Just recently I celebrated Lughnasadh, the First Harvest. Clearly our corn struggled this year...but to me, it's a bumper crop. Those little colorful kernels are the 3rd generation born of a seed we saved and planted a couple seasons back, very reverently and ceremonially, from an Indian Corn cob I'd bought the season before then. The sense of continuity and nature's grace-- doing and not-doing-- rest easy in that blue bowl in our kitchen. Not-doing.



So my days are full of doings and not-doings, going about the fullness of taking care of my family, honoring the season about me, the changes that are slow yet sure, each and every year. I joke that I am not-doing Maryland, but on I go, doing waking-up, talking, feeding, walking, playing, shopping, making...

It strikes me that struggling is also doing, and again I look to that little not-yet Cosmos-- just a little differently, this time.