Morning

Some mornings, I’m gifted solitude.

Health-conscious people tell me I should start my day with yoga and a large glass of hot water with lemon. I’ve tried to but I always wake hungry. I think I always have. Perhaps I’m just not so yogic-ly pure and self-controlled!

However, when I reach our kitchen, I go straight to the back door. The delicate sunlight seems vulnerable. Breeze quivers leaves without sound. The garden nods its “good morning” with silent, gentle reverence. It’s like watching a movie in mute. It’s enchanting. I open the door to switch the silent-movie alive and I take a few appreciative breaths. Communion. I do a few little stretches while the kettle boils; my compromise for the lack of something more disciplined.

I nearly always wake early… usually accompanied by my son and his incessant chatter. I well know that, in years to come, when I’m no longer worried about him waking the neighbours, I’ll treasure my memories of greeting the day with him. I’ll miss it. So – although in this year it’s the alone-time I treasure – I pay attention to his voice, to the funny things he talks about, to his posture, the way he flicks his hair and the deliberation with which he spoons his muesli into his beautiful little mouth (insisting on using a big spoon!). I lock these things preciously in my heart for when this wild, crazy season of early parenthood has tumbled by and I can get the memories out again to marvel at with a different, more savouring appreciation. For when I’ll regret not savouring it all more at the time.

Every early morning, I feel the hope, the promise and the renewal offered by the new day in the way that I do at new moon or new year. Or on Mondays. Ayurveda assigns this time to Vata dosha and it certainly feels light, creative and swift-moving to me. I get blown along, sometimes with an idea awakening too. Sometimes just with the memory-making chatter.

May. And pixie dust.

Many with an earth-centred spirituality believe that, at Beltane and Samhain, the veil between our world and spirit worlds is at its thinnest. In recent years I’ve noticed that I tend to feel this closeness for pretty much all of May – perhaps starting in late April. This is a reason, among others, that I don’t get too hung up on my Beltane celebrations taking place on Beltane Eve/Day.

The spirit worlds I feel are close at Samhain are those where the ancestors who have passed on walk. They sometimes bring me gifts of a little inner wisdom – if open myself to it – and reassurance. I offer them rememberence, reverence and thanks.

The worlds that seem close to me at this time of year are the realms of the fae; the pixies, the gnomes, the sprites, elves and other beings often confined to childrens’ books and legends such as those from my native English West Country. (Brian Froud is one of my favourite authorities on fairies). In May, I get this feeling that they’re fully awake and out to play. The gifts that I attribute to their generosity are the interesting forms in nature that I usually find more of at this time, as well as the general vibe of sparkle, benign mischief and giggling enchantment that seems sprinkled over this month. The pixie-dust month, with its bluebell pixie-hats, dainty skirt-like hawthorn flowers and pretty cowslip bells.

This makes May a usually-happy time of inspiration and imagination for me – if I’m open to it. Combined with the reminder from nature to remember – and be true to – my passions, May holds excitement about harvests to (hopefully) come. Harvests of personal projects and goals, harvest from the land. I feel excited when I look at the flowers on our blueberry bushes (above) and think of the juicy fruit that we hope they’ll become. I feel excited when our seedlings push their little green shoots above the soil, then add leaves and more leaves and more. Year after year I witness this magic take place, but still it amazes me. I hope it always does. ♥