Heeding the Pause ~ Guest Writer Wendy Weiss

Photo Credit: Wendy Weiss

As the sun sets on Halloween, the moments before darkness, in the liminal dusk, I feel the pause inherent in the season's shift, the turning of the months from one to another, and my own journey out of ordinary time at this moment in my life. We've just returned and settled in after traveling to see Martin Shaw in a tiny venue tucked into the craggy foothills of Northern Georgia. It was like leaving home to go home. The land was exactly what we see from our own windows everyday: rolling pastures before low mountains, with chickens and horses meandering across the countryside. One marked difference, the sun set over the mountains we were visiting instead of rising over their horizon-stretched knobs and dips. Oh, and perhaps the other notable contrast from home was the clearly intentional and tended garden.

Our garden here experienced a pause this summer. Aside from a few basil plants, everything that grew from the untouched soil is volunteer. A Roma tomato that had reseeded itself, all the perennials, a wild rambling rose, and mostly filling the garden are sprawling pumpkin vines from who knows where. They're creeping along from one edge of the garden to the other, crisscrossing in spots and breeching beyond the bounds in others, a visual remnant of an unintended negligence that has translated into a freedom of expression of the land and quite possibly the birds as seed messengers, sharing like artists just what was needed here and there in this year's tableau.

These pumpkins, this holiday, signal a change in pace. While the earth and its creatures are slowing down, ending their cycles, preparing for hibernation or moving into torpor, us humans are gearing up for the stretch of festivities beginning in a few weeks that will lead us out of the year in a somewhat tousled state. It's the most magical time of the year, and one that demands much from us by way of nostalgia and tradition and social cheer in a goodwill to man kind of way that can strain and test and leave us threadbare.

This is why early November has always felt especially sanctified to me. The baring of the trees, the colder temperatures, the cast of shadows at starker angles. Things are different now. We are in a space between. Suspended. Before all of that begins, we take our subconscious deep breaths in preparation. It's a time to languish in the downtempo of late autumn, the first whispers of winter's deep call for stillness will soon be muffled beneath the carols and the decking of the halls with lights and baubles. November's new and familiar call we hear and heed on some level. It asks us quite simply to stop. And notice. Things are different now. We are different now.

And so, all that becomes possible because of a pause, a simple rest from the usual. We may sense that we need it, but how often do we give ourselves the gift of it?

What happens when we allow ourselves to slow down

and rest there

in the pause

in the liminal

in the stillness

How are you responding to the idea of a pause? What's your visceral response? Is there a longing in you too to embrace it? Is it a diving in or a washing over? Do you feel carried by or drawn to? Are you called to follow the whisper around that corner?

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Wendy Weiss