Heroes Not Zombies

I know it’s tempting to think of time as a straight line, running from then, through to now, and onto whenever. But what pleases me so much more is to become aware of phases and cycles……those circling, looping, spiralling movements of Life.

In this photo, the first thing I see is the Moon…..that celestial object which never stays the same. Every single night or day when we look at the Moon we see its shape is a little different from what it was yesterday. Surely this must be one of our most ubiquitous examples of constant change….the phases of the Moon.

We know that a lot changes here on Earth in sync with the Moon phases. We see the effect on the tides as the oceans and seas reach further up the beach, or recede away from the land to a greater distance. We know that there are rhythms of change in incidence of psychological phenomena too…..the old word “lunacy” is not without foundation in reality. We also know from “biodynamics” that seeding, planting and harvesting at different moon phases can produce different results. Yet, somehow, perhaps because night skies above cities are rarely clear, many of us have lost touch with our knowledge of Moon phases.

Do you know what phase the Moon has reached tonight?

Check tonight and see if you are right.

The second thing I see in this photo is the vines. There are vineyards everywhere in this part of France. Each of these lines is called a “wire”, and each vineyard has several “wires”. Here, near the town of Cognac, almost all the grapes go to the production of the drink of that name – “cognac” (but also to another product called “pineau”). The big “cognac houses” have contracts with many local growers, each of whom dedicate the harvest of a certain number of their “wires” each year to the distillery. By selecting particular amounts of the harvest from several, diverse regions within this grape growing area, they get a mix of flavours….some from land which is near the sea, some near forests, some very high in calcium content, and so on.

Watching the phases of the vine growth and grape production over the course of a year brings a certain rhythm to life. A rhythm attached to the seasons. In this photo the vines are all turning gold as they do every autumn. I love this season of the year for its glorious colours.

Attuning ourselves to natural phases and rhythms sets a background sense of time which stretches over longer periods than how long it take the hands of the clock to make their way right round its circular face. And it sets a rhythm completely different from the rigid, relentless movement of our digital devices as they show us what number of hours and minutes, or even seconds, have “passed” since we last looked!

Phases and seasons……cycles and rhythms………which ones do you attune to?