“Our summer made her light escape into the beautiful.” —

Sep 19

— Emily Dickinson

On my walk today I saw an image of “summer making her light escape”.

On this side of the world, outward-looking summer has ended just as spring is beginning in Australia. Wherever we are, we feel the shift of seasons and time passing. Here, the equinox, the balance of days and nights, is a reminder that even the happiest life requires balancing success and failure, glad and sad, right and wrong, pain and love. The movement into longer hours of darkness turns us inward. There is often a sense of loss when the long days of light recede. What is lost has the possibility of being returned to us in a new shape; a recognition of something deeper — seeds hidden in darkness.

Isn’t this what creation, the occupation of makers, is all about? Finding a new shape? Or recognition of a shape that is both new and has always been? In this short pause of equal days and nights, what is it that we wish to bring with us from summer into autumn? Or, on the other side of the world, what sleeping promise is ready for a new beginning?

Another image from my walk of the gate between the seasons.

How do we prepare for what wants to come, for what we wish to bring with us into the gate between summer and fall? I am thinking about this word, preparation. Preparation means putting together, drawing up, composing, fashioning, arrangement, making ready. How do we make ready: make and re-make our inner and outer space?

As a noun, preparation means concoction, solution, suspension, tincture, medicine, potion. It is only now, checking my dictionary, that I am caught by the relationship between composing (one of the verbs for preparation) and potion (one of the nouns). That the verb, making ready, becomes the noun, medicine — that arranging becomes the solution. It is so helpful to remember that it is making ready that brings into existence your vision.