Retreat

© 2015 Oona McOuat

Sleep little seed, in your warm earthen bed, dreaming of what you were born to become.

Falling leaves and fading flowers; shades of ochre and brown.  Garden wisdom speaks to me as I pull out the tomato plants.  Let go, and make space for next year’s bounty. 

As the days shorten and a late October wind chases clouds across the moon, I too feel a need to make space for what I want.  

Outside the plants are slowing down, dying back, and decomposing - nourishing the soil.  Growth requires death, my garden teacher shows me.

But my grown-up life with its glowing screens can become frenetic to distraction. So often I am busy and buzzy, but getting less and less “done.”  Slowing down feels like trying to sleep under a fluorescent bulb.   The first thing I need to do is remember how to turn it off.

You see, I have a sneaking suspicion that the time I spend on digital tools – as freeing and uniting and amazing as they can be - is rewiring my circuitry.  I remember how it was at age 18 to watch the first November snowfall through an old stone window in a cafe in Quebec City – how still and purposeful and vast everything was, how immediate and present each sensation.  But if I had been brought up on a steady diet of digital devices, I am not sure I would know that silence, the perfect stillness that existed before the buzz.

Turning inwards and making space requires a reclaiming of my own innate peace patterning.  This means saying no to extraneous distractions, like a mindless use of social media, and a huge yes to all that nourishes me. Making space for what I want requires resetting my nervous system and reconnecting to my heart. 

Snugly, cozy, fire, and book.  Pumpkin soup, a forest walk, misty lake canoeing.  Writing and dancing and laughing and loving, and being, just being.  Giving my very best gifts to the very best world I know, believing that we can awaken from our dormancy, our self-induced sleep, to become a balanced, vibrant haven of wonder and delight.

A Mute Swan overwintering at Fulford Harbour, Salt Spring Island - photo by Leigh Hilbert

Sleep little seed, in your warm earthen bed, dreaming of what you were born to become.