Seasonal living in modern times
Practical & societal considerations…and how nature continues to be our best teacher and guide
With time, the practice of seasonal living deepens in its resonance.
It works like a spiral. Each time we pass a moment or transition in the wheel of the year, our understanding of and connection to that moment deepens and expands. The transition from summer to autumn lands differently for me now than it did last year. It will likely evolve and connect with me differently next year than it does this year. Not because I’ve learned more information about the season’s change, but because my body is learning, all year long, what it means to be present to and with the created world.
For some, this time of year is full of busyness and activity. School begins, along with the many activities that keep our lives and our children’s lives full. We begin preparing for the holiday season, scheduling events and buying gifts. We might even succumb to a sort of “get it all done before the end of the year” energy, suggesting that if we don’t check every item off our to-do list by December 31st, then we’ve missed our mark. It’s a lot of pressure—the pressure to perform, to hustle, to get organized and to make “it all” happen—while also making it look effortless, of course. Don’t let anyone know you’re struggling or having a hard time. Do it all and look amazing, joyful, and free while you’re at it. The standard is impossible. But I digress…
For years now, I’ve leaned into the belief that Creator, in grace, hopes that humans might take a cue or two from the natural world about what it means to be alive. That we would learn, in time, to release our manufactured expectations about what’s required to live well. That we would settle into a more natural, more rhythmic, and slower pace of things.
Of course, this is counter-cultural, especially in modern times. Slow living is not accessible to everyone for a plethora of reasons. And yet, this reality remains: the more we attune to creation’s cycles and songs, the more our bodies find their rest.
The more we opt-out of societal pressures to perform and conform to the chaos of modern life, the more room we have for our soul’s deep longings to be met—longings for connection, for intimacy, for joy, and for communion with the Divine.
Are these lofty luxuries? Yes, maybe. Though I wish such spaciousness was more readily accessible to us.
A practice: Take a moment to go outside. Look around you. Note what you see, smell, hear. If it’s safe to do so, close your eyes and take in your surroundings from a different felt sense. What do you smell? What, if anything, do you feel on your skin? Is there a taste in the air? Simply take note. And then ask yourself, What happens within me as I awaken to this moment in the natural world?
Recalibration: outer lives and inner worlds
Last week, I had the pleasure of spending a few days in Manhattan, NYC. I was there hosting an event with some of my favorite collaborators. I visited my most beloved shops, I grabbed meals with dear friends, and I even went to see Wicked on Broadway. It was a blast. I love being in a big city by myself. Something about the noise and activity of places like New York City stokes my fires of creativity and possibility.
A funny thing happened, however, once I go home. As I pulled into my driveway, welcomed by the oak, pecan, and cedar trees that fill this land, I immediately felt that my internal world was still moving at a New York City pace while my body and the created world around me were moving much more slowly.
It was a strange, though familiar, disconnect. Have you ever felt this before? It’s like when you go on vacation and find yourself in a peaceful place but your thoughts or your emotions are still moving at the pace of your job. Or maybe you’ve worked towards a big deadline or event, and even though you’ve met the deadline or the event is over, you still struggle to recover a sense of steadiness in your days.
An object in motion stays in motion. So when you’re busy, active and on-the-go for an extended period of time, the only way to shift out of that level of intensity is to create a hard stop.1 If you don’t create a hard stop and let your systems slow down and recalibrate to a reasonable, even-paced baseline, you’ll likely remain busy, active, and on-the-go for way longer than is healthy for you.
Nature, the created world, can become a partner in rest with us as we seek to create those hard stops and recalibrate our systems. Especially after periods of dedicated work and productivity. It might take a few days, but if we allow ourselves to be immersed in nature’s landscapes, we are holistically supported in returning to a more grounded and sustainable pace.
Following my trip to NYC, it took a few days for me to readjust to the stillness and natural flow of my life. I did my best to listen to my body’s desires for aloneness and quiet. I cleared my calendar and only said “yes” to things that were easy and wouldn’t require too much effort on my part. I sat on my office floor for periods of time and let my mind wander. I deleted Instagram and muted my notifications. Silence is such sweet medicine. I needed it after being in what is surely one of the noisiest cities in the world.
Your recalibration might not look like mine, but I encourage you to consider: what might it look like to let yourself find rest, stillness and a slow rate of growth in the midst of this seasonal transition? How might immersion in wild and natural places support you in this? What hard stops do you need to add to your calendar, ensuring that you will take a break and reclaim a reasonable pace in your work and in your life?
Collective considerations
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much we need communal and collective solutions to the exhaustion and overwhelm many people are facing. As a blogger who is committed to self-empowerment and self-determination, my work always runs the risk of individualizing life’s hard realities. But the more I learn and the more people I talk to, the more I’m convinced that a portion of our struggle with rest and time—and perhaps a large portion—is due to the diminishment of village life. There’s too much pressure, in my humble opinion, on the nuclear family to do and be all things.
We need each other. In this, too, nature is our teacher, as extensive webs of connection between diverse arrays of trees, flora, fauna, and more all play a vital role in sustaining the health of an ecosystem. Humans are no different in our need for collective tending and care. I hope to lean into this more, creatively and practically, in the future.
As we welcome the Autumnal Equinox, I’m grateful for the many invitations there are to explore what seasonal and earth-honoring living might mean for our modern existence.
The wisdom of creation, flowing from the heart of a gracious and brilliant Creator, has much to offer us if we would only listen and respond.
I’d love to hear if and how the ideas shared here connect with you. What are you hearing? What are you learning? Please comment and let me know.
With love,
Bethaney
I learned this lesson from my friend, Jeff. I’ve incorporated the “hard stop” into my schedule for years, especially following periods of busyness or intense productivity.