Honouring Grief For years, November has been the month of sadness for me. I used to chalk it up to the loss of leaves, loss of light, blustery wind, and descending cold. It felt like a twilight or liminal time where the crunchiness of frost had not yet given way to deep snow, where darkness lengthened but was not the deep dark of January. Tears have always been near the surface or depression wraps itself around me. Then came a diagnosis: Seasonal Affective Disorder. It always has been a bleak month, at least in northern climes, for any kind of celebration, with gray abounding in the visible world. We should not pathologize this response to November, however. My soul and the soul of the world
Giving from the Seed Jar I had a dream some years ago that foretold the spiritual journey I was to make, after a significant trauma. Shapeshifting several times in the dream, my form eventually entered into a small corn plant seedling that grew and grew until she was a robust, queenly size. On her sturdy girth, she was crowned with elaborate pollen-bearing tassels and each ear was crowned with golden silk. I was gifted with blue flint corn from New Mexico and I planted these handsome seeds this past summer. As the plants grew, I noticed that they had strikingly human qualities; they were clearly alive and responsive. It is hard to explain, but anyone who saw them had a sense that they were b
