Peculiar seasons of the soul

How peculiar the season is this year! 

We’ve had August temperatures in October when it’s been warm enough at times for me to sit on the step outside with a lunchtime cuppa.

We’ve had the rich scent of a spring flowering shrub, flowering now despite the fact it’s not spring. And that’s mingled with the perfume of late roses. I’ve collected one for the table – it’s alongside the Christmas cactus, also deciding to flower out of sync with the season.

And I’ve just discovered the stems of a miniature daffodil rising up beside a pot of viola and nasturtiums still surviving despite the first frost.

Daffodils shooting up already!

Very peculiar!

Although we like to think we can, there’s just no predicting nature.

There is no predicting our own nature either!

I find my own seasons come and go just like nature’s, flushing me through with emotions either blossoming or bleak, bounteous or barren. And our children are just the same. You can almost see the changes in their moods flash across their lovely faces like clouds on a blue sky. It all gets a bit difficult to manage sometimes.

So this is to reassure you, especially if you’re going through a particularly challenging season with the little ones right now, that there is one thing that is comfortingly constant through all this unpredictability; things always change.

Children and nature. Seasons and souls.

Whatever is feeling difficult now, won’t remain so. However peculiar their moods and emotions are they’ll pass; they too experience seasonal changes. As you do. We all do. Nature does. And it’s important to acknowledge your own as well as theirs, let them be and let them pass.

And incidentally, there’s no better tonic than getting all outside and seeking the delights of this season to help lighten the spirits whilst you do so.

A seasonal delight – gossamer strung across the fields catching the autumn sunlight

Cornfields, crickets and carbon dioxide.

 What will I do this Bank Holiday?

Sit in queues on motorways? No way.

Brave a heaving festival? Definitely not.

Go shopping? Hate it; it wastes your money and destroys the planet.

See friends? Most certainly and in hugging distance too.

But most importantly what I shall do is take time to increase my well being. Isn’t that what holidays are for? To take some time to recoup; physically, mentally and, perhaps the most important of all, spiritually as it is our spirits that have the biggest impact on our health.

I know some folks like to shop to keep their spirits up. Some like the batter and buzz of crowds and noise and hubbub as a distraction from the everyday.

But I’d rather sit in cornfields than in queues. Rather listen to crickets than traffic. Rather feel the earth and the elements than the pavement and the carbon dioxide, and hear nothing other than birdsong.

These are the things that de-stress my body and keep my spirits well. Sometimes I do need the cosmopolitan impurities of man-made life. But ultimately I am not man-made, I am natural made, evolved from man-made influences maybe but natural in root and core. And as such I think we need, far more than most realise, to recognise those connections and pay homage to them. Leave the technology off and give those roots some nurture, tend the part of us that is natural and of the earth – there’s no getting away from that fact. We come from and return to – earth.

So it’s back to those natural roots this bank holiday, come rain or more rain or even sun. I’m off to seek places to watch thistle down blow and hear seed heads rattle, smell harvest and earth and – yes – even cowpats. Get out under the massive sky. Costs nothing. Its value; immeasurable.

Whatever you spend your days off doing may they be blessed with the peace of holiday you are looking for!