Autumn Half Gone
Hallowtide, Fall Harvest, and Links to Like: We're mid-way to Winter!
Triduum of All Hallows
Longtime readers may recall that I love a 3-day-long liturgical feast. The 3 days surrounding All Saints’ Day (Halloween, All Saints’, All Souls’) are some of my particular favorites. You can read more about why that is here in this post from 2022, but to sum up: treats, costumes, and the thinned veil between life and death. Also because of my Irish ancestry, probably? (Click the video below for possible proof.)
This year we had the added thrill of the first snow on Halloween. There were heavy flakes during the evening, which added to the thrill of trick or treating as our neighborhood transformed into a swirling wintry world of roaming creatures in search of sweets. We were a small but mighty band this year, due to bouts of illness and the passage of time that kicks older teens and young adults out of the door-to-door ritualized holiday begging. In case your children have ever wondered, singing Christmas carols on the doorstep in lieu of shouting “Trick or Treat!” will illuminate them as to the variable tolerance and humor levels of the neighbors. Some laugh and add in hot chocolate, some scowl and give you a jawbreaker.
All Saints’ Day (Nov. 1st) is a holy day of obligation in the U.S., which means attending Mass. All Souls’ Day (Nov. 2nd) was sunny & warm here, so my mom and I were able to fit in a cemetery visit to pray for the dead, clean up a few family graves, and leave some flowers from our home gardens. The emo teen/ Anne Shirley in me loves that the Catholic Church encourages cemetery visits every November. Whatever your faith tradition, or thoughts on your existence within humanity, I do believe a walk in a cemetery can be a peaceful, contemplative, and healthy philosophical exercise.
Usually I’d make soul cakes, but this year there was the distraction of module deadlines for my professional recertification, plus a sick child at home and other assorted family stuff. As I’ve mentioned before, you don’t have to fit in all the traditions all of the time in order to honor the liturgical year. It’s a rhythm by which to mark our relationship to the seasons, the Church, and our Creator, and meant as a gift, a beautiful way to view the passage of time. If there is a year in which a certain baking project or celebratory meal is too burdensome or stressful on top of regular life, then simplify or skip it that year.
Final Fall Harvest, in Photos:
Links of Interest:
On acedia: a term I heard in a podcast, which refers to spiritual ennui or a sense of apathy that can lead to discouragement or dejection. Traced back to the desert hermits of early Christianity, it was something to guard against, a lesser sibling of the 7 deadly sins. The idea resonates in our modern world, I think, and contributes to the collective societal disregard for the sacred in the earth and in each other. Different than dysthymia or major depression, it is more insidious and permeating. A good overview can be read here.
On Irish religious sites: Paul Kingsnorth, among many other topics relevant to environmentalists and those interested in larger cultural trends, has mentioned the spiritual energy that imbues a landscape, and the strength of that energy’s remaining presence over time. He is currently doing a tour of Irish holy wells and writing about them on Substack. You can read the latest installment here (at the time of publication of this post, his article is not behind a paywall). I came across a charming YouTube channel with a Dominican friar who visits historical religious sites in Kilkenny and does short videos about them with knowledge & humor. (I do increase the playback speed, as his cadence is a bit slow for me.)
And if you like to go down an esoteric rabbit hole, might I suggest a series on baptismal fonts of medieval Britain? You’re welcome.
And lastly, this poor sheep who was stranded on a beach under steep cliffs in Scotland: read about her happy rescue here. She got separated from her flock 2 years ago, and up to the time of her rescue she would bleat to people passing by in boats. The water was too rough to rescue her from that angle. I’d been following her story, and I’m just so glad that amidst all the violence in the world, there are still plenty of good people, including a quintet of cliff scaling chaps who rescued the lonely ewe in desperate need of shearing.
How is your autumn at this mid-way point? Or Spring for our Southern Hemisphere friends? What foods have you been able to enjoy from your garden? What good news or heartwarming stories can you share to reaffirm the continuance of human kindness in this broken world?
—Erin, in Michigan
I love seeing your harvest, and hearing that the poor sheep was finally rescued!
In my region, Fall means a second chance garden as our brutal summers kill everything. I'm having an amazing crop of basil plants, carrots and radish are nearly ready, and pepper and tomatoes are blooming. The marigolds are also doing very well. I like adding them to salads.
My “Like” was woefully inadequate for how much I enjoyed this post, Erin! You had me at “Irish Man in Germany,” then came Anne Shirley, your All Souls’ Day with your mom, holy wells in Ireland, plus your garden pics! A treat from start to finish! 😊