Mists and mellow fruitfulness

October's monthly newsletter

Please read on for a free Hagitude giveaway, as well as the usual monthly reading recommendations and poem.

Dear friends,

The loss of our beloved old dog, Nell, brought a melancholy flavour to the beginning of autumn, but each day the rawness fades a little more and it seems possible to begin to fully feel my way into the beauties of my favourite of the four seasons.

Although we’re a week past the actual astronomical event of Autumn Equinox, I’ve always felt that this is a longer season through which we might find ourselves thinking about balance. For me, the days in which dark and light – night and day – are equally divided is always a time for profound reflection, whether that takes place at the Spring Equinox or the Autumn Equinox. But because of my predilection for the darker half of the year, the latter always requires a deeper dive for me. These are also the days when death is perfectly balanced with life, and the nature of death, and the ways in which we might befriend it, have been a major focus for me over the past couple of years – not least because of my own walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, with lymphoma. If the dark half of the year is a time that is more aligned with death, it’s only in order to prepare us for the rebirth that comes with spring.

This season of transition requires us, I believe, to learn how to sit in the in-between places. Caught between light and dark, life and death. Equinoxes are perhaps the most liminal of seasons, as we hover on the shifting thresholds of change. In Hagitude (and there, in the context of menopause, though the relevance goes well beyond) I wrote in some detail about the necessity of learning to embrace uncertainty, and of the ways in which, sometimes, we need to:

‘… let the new story emerge in its own time, and to sit with, and perhaps even learn to cherish, the uncertainty.

Uncertainty is the apprentice of mystery. It’s an antidote to our desperate need to know, to predict, and therefore to control. In the old native traditions of these islands where I was born, uncertainty wasn’t a threat, it was a natural condition of existence. The people we now call the Insular Celts had a particular love of ambiguity, an explicit comfort with not-knowing. A riddle was a gateway to the Otherworld, piercing the veil between this reality and the one which envelops it; formulaic koan-like questions jolted the listener into the heart of ambiguity. First, such questions and riddles produce confusion – but then they engage the imagination. They break down the rational, over-intellectualised categories we’re so attached to but that limit our perception, and teach us how to break the spell of everyday reality. To learn from them, you need to have faith in enigma, be prepared to apprentice yourself to bewilderment, and so find comfort in a shadowland where all things are possible and might be, but nothing yet actually is. This ability to sit with mystery and explore the dark but fertile realms of infinite possibility is crucial to the work of inhabiting a meaningful life. We have to learn to stay rooted in the midst of chaotic obscurity, in the shadow-haunted wild places of the psyche. We need these rootings more than ever during the bone-deep metamorphosis that is menopause.

Inhabiting this in-between space can be uncomfortable, especially when we’ve grown up in a culture which values doing so much more than it values being – and infinitely more than it values the process of apprenticeship, the time we spend learning to be. But in order to benefit fully from this time between stories, it’s necessary to let go not just of action, but attachment to outcome. The Tao Te Ching asks: ‘Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water becomes clear? Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?’ Knowing when to gather together our resources and go all-out to change a situation seems easier somehow than recognising instead when to sit quietly and surrender to its momentum. But the best of all strategies is simply to stay present, because the only certain way through uncertainty is through it.’

These days, when sometimes it seems as if everything we’ve learned to hold dear is coming undone, when all the sands around us are shifting, learning to sit still in the face of uncertainty seems like a particularly necessary task.

And so, as always, I wish you the fruits and the flourishings of whatever season of uncertainty you might find yourself living through.

Sharon

Hagitude news, and a giveaway

A reminder that the North American trade paperback from New World Library will be published on October 11; find out more here: https://www.newworldlibrary.com/Mythology/HAGITUDE. The Australian edition will be published by Brio books also on October 11 (pre-order on Booktopia for the best service).

Since I last wrote, there are two new episodes of ‘The Hagitude Sessions’, a podcast which features conversations with remarkable women about the challenges and opportunities they found during menopause and in the second half of life. Christine Valters Painter of the Abbey of the Arts is in conversation with me about elder women in the Christian tradition, and Gateway Women founder Jody Day talks with me about childless elderhood. New episodes are released every two weeks; listen here: https://hagitude.org/podcast/

Hagitude membership program

The Hagitude yearlong membership program begins today, and is priced at just £260 for the full year. It will still be possible to join after the program has begun, but it would be a pity to miss the opening rounds. Lots more information at this link: https://hagitude.org/the-program/

Hagitude giveaway – free audiobook

I’m delighted to offer one of my readers a code to download the audiobook edition of Hagitude, narrated by me. This code can only be redeemed on the audiobooks.com website. Please visit this page on my main website to enter the giveaway: https://sharonblackie.net/hagitude-audiobook-giveaway/

Upcoming events

OCTOBER 16: join me for a live online conversation and Q&A about Hagitude at Banyen Books, Vancouver. Register for free here.

NOVEMBER 25: evening reading at Ashburton Craftmongers, Devon. Details to be announced.

Reading recommendations

This month I particularly enjoyed The Hollow Sea, a novel by Annie Kirby. It has all the hallmarks of the kind of mythic fiction that I love, is beautifully written, and has a thoughtful thread on childlessness. Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

The story goes that, many years ago, the remote North Atlantic archipelago of St Hia was home to a monster. Her name was Thordis, and she had been adored. But when she was unable to provide her husband with a child, he sought one elsewhere - and Thordis was driven to a terrible act, before disappearing from her home. Today, lashed by storms and far from the mainland, the islands are dangerous. Many have been lost to a wild stretch of water known as the Hollow Sea. But to one visitor, it feels like a haven. After several years trying to become a mother, Scottie has made the heart-breaking decision to leave her home and her husband in search of a fresh start. Upon her arrival on St Hia, the islanders warn her against asking questions about Thordis – but Scottie can't resist the mystery of what happened to the woman whose story became legend. After years of secrecy, can Scottie unravel Thordis's story? And how will doing so change her own?

This month’s poem

A land not mine, still

by Anna Akhmatova
English version by Jane Kenyon

A land not mine, still
forever memorable,
the waters of its ocean
chill and fresh.

Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk,
and the air drunk, like wine,
late sun lays bare
the rosy limbs of the pinetrees.

Sunset in the ethereal waves:
I cannot tell if the day
is ending, or the world, or if
the secret of secrets is inside me again.