Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me,
Liz Scott.
I'm standing right beside a spring where water rises up out of the earth here on Dartmoor and then trickles down through marshy grounds to the stream that's flowing below me.
And today I am reflecting on Samhain,
Which is also known,
As we know it,
As Halloween.
And Samhain is a Celtic festival,
A festival that was celebrated by pre-Christian,
Pre-Roman tribes that would have lived on this land.
And the truth is,
There is very little evidence we know of what the festival would have been like.
So I'm going to interpret it in my way.
My request is that you spend some time reflecting on this for yourself.
Samhain,
As it was known,
Actually marked the end of the Celtic year.
So for the Celts,
This was the end of a year and then a reflection on,
I guess,
A new year.
And this was a time of darkness,
Of looking inwards,
A reflection to seek and understand inner mysteries of life.
And it was about letting go.
And that's the reflection I really want to explore with you today.
It's like,
What are you letting go of?
And what are you allowing into your life?
For me here at Samhain,
This sense of a veil between this world and the next is quite thin.
That's what I like to imagine as I reflect.
And looking inwards is a time of being aware of who I truly am,
That sense of spirit that arises within me.
And it's also about accepting that winter is well and truly on its way.
So this is the reflection around letting go of.
It's like letting go of the season as it ekes its way out to winter.
Summer is well and truly gone.
Autumn and the harvest time is now finished.
And here we are,
Allowing winter to take its place.
So what are you letting go of in your life and what are you allowing in?
Here we're letting go of the summer and the harvest and the autumn and we're welcoming and allowing in winter.
We're not resisting it.
But of course it's so good to reflect on our own lives of maybe what are we resisting?
What is coming to an end as a cycle?
And what is there to let go of?
And for me as well,
This is a time of ritual and of creating a ritual that represents something meaningful for me.
And that's why I'm here at this spring here on Dartmoor,
Is I want to give something to the earth,
A gift to the earth.
And I've got a beautiful collection of pebbles that I've picked up over the years from beaches and rivers and different places that I've visited.
And when I knew I was coming out here,
I wanted to place a pebble on the earth.
This was going to be my gift to the earth.
And as I come to this spring,
Which to me is a great representation of the in-between worlds where water seemingly rises up from nowhere and falls back and finds its way back to the streams,
The rivers and the ocean.
And it seems to come magically out of the ground as if from nowhere.
It is a great recycling.
Water is the great recycler.
It falls as rain and then the earth seeps it up and then it is returned to the earth and returned to the oceans before it is once again taken up and made into rain clouds and rain.
For me,
This is a wonderful representation of the in-between worlds,
The allowing of what needs to go to fall back and to die and to let something new emerge.
So I've got a really beautiful grey and white speckled pebble and I'm going to place that pebble in this spring here as my gift to the earth.
There it goes.
So the question today is,
What are you letting go of?
And what are you allowing in your life?
As you allow the season of autumn and harvest to disappear and winter welcoming it in.
What are you letting go of?
And what are you allowing in your life?
Let me know your reflections.
And of course,
Don't forget to join me again tomorrow,
Where we'll be continuing this theme of darkness,
Of looking at this shift in the year,
And we'll be exploring All Saints Day.
