Yesterday I was part of an interesting conversation in my Adult Sunday School Class about how people used to measure time before the invention of modern methods like clocks and calendars. Most of us agreed that the concept of time and how to measure it most always involved something in nature as the measuring stick, be it the moon, the tides, or the signals in nature that announced a change of season. Depending on where in the world people lived, folks living in desert countries might measure time quite differently than folks living in the mountains or at the North Pole!
Native American and other indigenous people measured time by the cycles of the moon, a change in the air, the way plants and trees went through their own process from season to season, how the animals behaved, and a host of other ways that Mother Nature provided to guide living things from one year to the next. They took the time to stand still and follow the stars.
It seems like only yesterday that we were carving pumpkins and soaking in the beautiful Autumn colors. Suddenly it is all gone, at least in my part of the world, where the trees are now stripped bare and the leaves are laying under what's left of our first real snow of the season. The parades are over and people everywhere are ending November with the same question: "What am I going to do with all these leftovers?" And then, of course, there's Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the Christmas season comes rushing at us full force whether we like it or not.
This year I decided to go back to the way my ancestors did things. I am not running around trying to fit into someone else's schedule of what I should do, and when. I am slowing down and letting nature guide me. I am watching the skies for the geese, keeping an eye on the behavior of my squirrel neighbors, taking note of the recently frenzied behavior of the crows that live nearby (what do they know about the coming winter that we don't?), and feel the seasons. I am not fighting crazy mobs of shoppers. I am visiting the small, local shops in my area for my gifts this year. I am not rushing to decorate for Christmas. My inner knowing will tell me when it is the perfect time to hang the holly and bring out my little woodland tree to decorate. I am returning to natural time, nature's time, God's time.
So while I wait, I think I will pull out my yarn and needles, and let my fingers guide me as I listen to the cacophony of honking that is flying across the sky, and the cries of the crows trying to tell me what I need to know. After all, they don't need a calendar to tell them which way to go.
And so it is.
