Depth Talk For Autumn/Fall

A talk and poem with music and voice about the depth and beauty Autumn and Fall invite us to enjoy and participate in. How the Earth needs humanity to slow down, especially in this season of dormancy and darkness, and organise our lives as much as we can in harmony with her seasons and cycles intimately mirrored in our own.

Transcript

There's a river of birds in migration A nation of women with wings There's a river of birds in migration A nation of women with wings This talk and poem are about the inward-downward,

Palpable pull of depth that autumn and fall invite us to enjoy.

Organising our lives around the seasons and cycles of nature,

Which are intimately mirrored in our own bodies,

Is not a luxury extra.

It is a radical necessity.

The earth urgently needs the whole of humanity to slow down and come back into rhythm and affiliation with her.

The global climate catastrophe cannot be solved by external quick fixes,

Artificial intelligence and new technologies.

A much deeper approach is needed.

Solutions need to be led by the earth on her terms.

The earth's clock and calendar are the stars,

Sun and moon.

They engender balance and wonder.

They enable us to be anchored and spacious.

And something more,

Something deeper.

Half of the earth's yearly quest for regeneration takes place in dormancy.

The earth needs our fallow with the land and trees.

She needs us to join the creatures in their spans of torpor.

She requires us to pause,

Stop,

Let go,

Deep sleep,

Dream,

Surrender,

Activity and growth.

She requires us to contract outwardly so that we can expand inwardly.

During the dark half of the year,

She needs our visions for radical solutions to be shaped by the darkness.

It is in dormancy and darkness the mind relaxes and we intuitively see the most far-reaching solutions gain deepest perspective.

She needs our atavism as well as our activism,

Which means to come out of our minds and re-inhabit our instinctual,

Feral,

Nature-loving bodies,

To lead with our hearts and souls,

To deeply feel why we want to protect the soil and rivers,

Rewild ourselves and the land whose borders we walk,

Whose trees are personal friends.

Our souls cannot do without any of the birds,

Wild and semi-wild creatures who we encounter unexpectedly in the tender light of morning or dusk when they feel safe to come out,

Whose presence leave us feeling consecrated.

And something more,

Something else.

Whatever wisdom ways and sacred paths we cherish,

Our souls need depth.

What unites all peoples is the quest for and experience of depth.

When we look outwards to find ourselves,

Seek distraction or rely on patterns of addiction,

What we are still always looking for is depth.

Nothing else can satisfy us.

One way to understand the global crisis is as a crisis of depth.

Boredom has become global.

Onewy at a soul level that forces us to consume rapaciously,

Invest ourselves in the aspirational,

Punted out on social media.

Without depth we cannot experience true delight,

Gratitude,

Empathy or love.

And depth has an intimate relationship with meaning and purpose.

We need both to feel fulfilled.

Autumn and fall are nature's gateway into the inward,

Downward,

Palpable pull of depth and how to come into deepest balance with ourselves and the earth.

Poem.

With a nosegay of decaying fungi,

Shmeagled in our hands like the bride of rot,

The natural year sighs and breathes out.

We stand at the centre of the double spiral where day equals night,

Dark equals light.

Pause to orient our bodies to the rhythms of darkness and quietude before we slowly walk the labyrinth inwards.

Nature,

Our favourite village auntie,

Shows us how to take stock,

Sidestep polarities,

Anxiety and overwhelm.

She shows us how to keep reaching for a dynamic fulcrum of balance as we gather in our second harvest,

Grieve our losses with grace,

Tip the scales towards generously finding in favour of ourselves and others.

Land a sweet spot of ease.

She guides our psyches past resistance to the long darkness ahead through a passage of wonders,

A brand new palette of rich,

Ripened colours.

Conkers in the road freshly broken open from their shells,

Polished and moist.

The hedgerows burgeoning with slows,

Rosehips and brambles,

Purple-black elderberries,

Scarlet-red rowanberries and whores for the birds.

She consoles us with caches of light and sustaining beauty left for us to find like squirrel nutting in the windy sunshine.

Raven caw-caws in the chill morning,

Ascending from the ancestors to bring our awareness into sharper focus.

On our daily earth walks,

Nature's wisdom medicine beckons to us from everywhere.

Over here,

Whispers the forest floor with its frosty musk musty down the cellar smell of moist loam.

Leave the path for the deeper woods.

Come and see the hamlets of mushrooms breaking down the tree stumps and mossy logs.

Like ours,

Your body is just the fruit.

Beneath the ground are miles of mycelium are making a million meaningful connections.

Expand your human consciousness beyond your present death spiral impasse.

Evolve wisdom.

Even if you haven't done everything you wanted to with your life,

Your body at death will be a tasty smorgasbord of nutrients for the earth.

Death is also home dear friend.

Over here,

Over here,

Change is done for you not to you swish the trees who have become their own surgeons to perform the marvel of abscission on their leaves.

For weeks they have been creating lines of perforations between their branches and leaf stems so their leaves will more easily tear off like notelets in the blustery wet squirrely gusgusting winds of change.

Over here,

Over here call those leaves twirling to the ground.

Pause to witness our final dance.

See how we flare and bleach out in a straggled strewn about finish.

Hold nothing of ourselves back.

Search long and hard for something in nature that is not necessary to another and you will find nothing.

Oblied summer hearts gather on the telephone wires with the swallows and house martins restless to be gone.

They tell us much about what we are capable of before we settle into winter's heavy bosom.

At the same time our wide winged downy bodied autumn souls return with the geese.

They arrive in V-shaped skeins to winter and feed on the tranquility of the estuaries,

Wetlands and marshes.

Here in south-west Scotland pink-footed barnacle and light-bellied Brent geese wading birds,

Winter wildfowl and hooper swans from Greenland,

Siberia,

Iceland and the Arctic.

Even their names and the countries they have come from circle in the morning air,

Touch our longing for home,

Our longing for freedom,

For the necessities of our daily lives to be filled with hallowed light and simplicity.

And Heron,

What about her,

Who is perseverance and patience incarnate?

Over here she beckons towards her impassive reflection,

Over here.

However long she has had to wait,

Nothing distracts her from the precision with which she executes her intention.

And what about Spider,

Queen of creativity?

To what in us does she speak when she exposes her abdomen to the night air,

Casts out her webbing with atophistic abandon,

Waits to feel it attach to a distant thing,

A star or a feeling idea she longs to reel in.

Her spiral dance is choreographed to perfection with construction genius that should make human engineers weep.

She maintains almost flawless concentric measure with just one of her legs.

And then in the misty mornings she leaves hundreds of ground cobwebs draped over the heather,

Bejewelled in dew to enrapture us.

In the gloaming gnarled hawthorn trees are ancient grandmothers casting shadows onto their crochet hooks.

Their familiars,

Badger and fox return to them at day's end from their foragers.

We knit our autumn colorlust into woolly warmth,

Scarves,

Cozy hats,

A long cardigan with deep pockets.

Bring in the wood,

Stock up the shelves,

Press fallen apples,

Make ready for the autumn kitchen goddess.

Pile up the squashes and marrows,

Make soup,

Root crumbles and chunky stews,

Experiment with baking kale crisps.

We rummage for the box of last year's candles,

Harvest our seeds,

Squash sunflower and sweet pea,

Dry our herbs and replenish our apothecary with nettle seeds,

Red sage for sore throats,

Dandelion root as a liver tonic.

Silence drapes its shawl over our shoulders.

We seek out stories with warmth and girth for our newly established hearth.

Root again and again in the hope that is dependent on nothing but itself and the numinous which is our burrow,

Our web,

Our one home.

I am home,

I am home,

I am home,

I am free,

I am free,

I am free.

I am home.

Reviews

Absolutely gorgeous insight into the turning of the season

There is much to contemplate and act on in this recording.

Perfect as I sit on my front porch here in Wisconsin, with my cup of tea, incense, light rain, and falling leaves on the wind. Thank you for enhancing the beautiful picture developing around me. Blessed Be!

A stirring celebration of Autumn 🍁🕷️🍄 with deep respect for our world 🌍your song Debra particularly resonated with my heart 💚thank you 🙏🏾

One to listen to over and over again to truly absorb the depth of this beautiful message.

Sublime 🙏

Exactly what I needed to hear this morning
Thank you
🙏✨🧡