Hanging in the Balance for Equinox

21 Sep Hanging in the Balance for Equinox

The balance of light and dark is one of the oldest mysteries of time. Ancients celebrated the solstices and equinoxes as a way of connecting with the cycles of nature. Fall Equinox is usually a time of abundance, when the harvest of the summer’s crops are shared and prepared for winter.

It is also the time when the Jewish tradition celebrates Rosh HaShanah, and it’s worth noting that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on the first night of this period. In the Jewish tradition, this is a sign that a person was a tzadik, someone of great righteousness, someone who died at the end of the year because they were needed until the end. With her passing, a beautiful and courageous light for justice has gone out of our world. We can show our respect for this great soul by heeding her dying wishes, to not appoint a new justice until the next president is elected.

It is no news to anyone that life on this planet also hangs in the balance. The effects of climate change, such as the fires that recently ravaged the west, are hitting dangerous tipping points that can bring disaster to the whole world on a scale we can barely conceive of now. Increasing gun violence, police brutality, and a deadly virus together have taken four times as many lives this year alone than Americans in the whole Vietnam war. Meanwhile, our two party system of politics is locked in a power battle over who will control the future, while the world spins out of control.

With an election looming, it is easy to get lost in taking sides, and I’ve already scrapped a previous blog as being too polarized.

But what I see in this election is that humanity is facing an evolutionary moral test. Do we have the integrity to vote for life sustaining values of kindness, compassion, racial justice, resilience, equitable distribution of wealth, health care, ecology, and common decency, or do we vote for corruption, violence, manipulation, pollution, and dictatorship?

The answer will depend on far more than who runs the White House for the next four years. It will decide whether or not humanity is plunged into social chaos and climate disaster, and perhaps whether we will even survive.

In the ancient Pagan calendar, there were eight holidays, the two solstices and equinoxes and the cross quarter days between them. Fall Equinox is a time, not only of harvest, but also of letting go, letting the stalks fall to the ground, letting the old ways die. It’s time to let go of what has been and mourn if we must.

The next holiday after fall Equinox is around Halloween, which was once called Samhain (pronounced saow-in), meaning summer’s end. The ancients saw this as the new year, the time when the seeds of fall bury themselves in the ground and gestate for the winter.

Who knows why election day happens right after Samhain, the cutting point between the old and the new. But maybe it has to do with starting a new cycle, where the seeds we plant now will be evident next spring and summer.

Evolution has always proceeded more by cooperation than survival of the fittest. (Even Darwin said so many times, though he was often misquoted).

If America is going to avoid a catastrophic collapse that will affect far more than just our own citizens, we need to make a moral choice for cooperation, balance and justice, ecology and equity. Our very lives and the lives of our children depend on it.

How do we stay awake and continue to help others awaken, when it seems everything is falling apart?

How do we lead when we have no leaders to follow and may have been misled ourselves?

Where is the map that helps us navigate through all this uncertainty?

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