entering the time in-between time...

When I walked out of the house this morning, 

it finally felt like fall: 47F, grey skies with yellow and brown leaves falling all around, and a seasonal transition silently taking shape as autumn slowly dies and winter struggles to be born. Oh, do I love this time of year! The ancient Celts grasped that this is an in-between time, that sacred liminal space that was neither "one thing or another" (The Celtic Wheel of the Year, ed. Meg LLewellyn.) It is the passage from one half of the year to another - and my ancestors in Scotland and Ireland trusted that all of these passages were pregnant with possibilities. 

(These) in-between places and times, whether they are shores between land and water, the boundaries between political territories, bridges that cross streams of water, the twilight between day and night, or the transitions of the seasons, are holy.

All of my life I've felt most alive when the leaves start to show their true colors, the air cools, apple cider flows freely, the pumpkins pop, and sun light shifts from direct to slant. It is Samhain, a cross quarter day, taking shape and form half way between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice. "This is the Celtic end of the old year, the beginning of the new, and as such, it is a 'hinge' in time, marking the transition from light into darkness." (Llewellyn) William Palmer puts it like this in a Thanksgiving Prayer:

Lord of the changing seasons,

   of harvest time, frost, and hearth fire,

   I think you for this holy turning of the year.

A hard freeze on All Saint's Day morning.

The russet leaves fall thickly in the still, early light.

Like all men and women who have ever lived, they return to the Earth.

I thank you, Lord, for this moment in time,

   this moment of clear revelation.

I thank you for the faith of my ancestors,

   remembered this day,

   for Halloween candy and pumpkin pie,

   for the Communion of Saints,

   and cozy evenings,

   for the low-angled sun of an autumn afternoon.

I the name of the dead: I thank you.

I the name of the living: I thank you.

I the name of those to come: I thank you.

Two weeks ago, we gathered pumpkins and corn with our children and grand children. This past weekend, we went into the hill town and found mums and apple cider. Today, I finished putting the plants and paraphernalia of gardening away for another season just as a light rain began. I moved our fountain inside, too. Our home, our energies, and our lives are ever more directed by the ebb and flow of the sun and moon as Mother Earth speaks all around us. We are moving towards the inward journey.