Blessed Mabon

Happy Autumn Equinox to all of you! Here we are, celebrating once again a day when day and night have the same weight, the same lenght, but unlike at Ostara, from this point on nights would be dominating time, days will become shorter and with it comes the chill, the cold, the winter. Rains are more abundant now in this part of the world, and so as the skies grow dimmer, colder, grayer, the land becomes more lush, more green, cluttered with life. At the same time, at home he dominant colors are warm even though the weather isn't. Red, oranges, ocre yellows and golden browns cover everything, preparing to give space for the silvery grays, the whites and the hundreds of coal and tuned off colors.

If I recall correctly, last year's Mabon post talked about the balance. (I'm not checking and cheating, though I did look up the post since I wanted the link to make your check up job easier, but I remembered the celebration we had with some friends and the topic we choose.) Though it always applies to this celebration, today I would like to highlight another aspect of the celebration, specially related to Mabon.

In the Pagan calendar Mabon represents the Second Harvest. It's a time of abundance, when you reap the largest fruits of your work. It's the time of plenty, and it's also some sort of Thanksgiving celebration, when you enjoy the blessings you have received, and those you have worked for. It is also the time to start planning for the leaner season, putting away for the winter, for all those days when the land, your work doesn't produce enough for you to sustain yourself and your family together.

In here there are two thoughts I'd like to bring forward. One is to be thankful for the results yielded for or work. How many of us do that? Lean or rich results, there is a result always. Good or bad year, nothing happens in our life that leaves behind no result - at least a lesson for the future. Well, let's be thankful for that. Let's recognize it and cherish it.

Many constantly complain and are ungrateful for whatever their year and their activities yield. Many also preech that you should never be satisfied, or happy with what you have. If you have worked for something, don't look only at the negatives of the result, but also enjoy the positive results of it. When you are working, don't go complaining always because your wage isn't as high as you'd wanted it to be (unless there's an ilegal component about it!), but be happy because you have made an income(1). Be thankful for the results you make, for the progress you achieve in your life.

Maybe you had plans, maybe those didn't work out as you expected it - yes, it can happen - but you can still take this Mabon to celebrate the fruits this adventure yielded. Fruits in the form, of knowledge, experience, better understanding, all of which you would have missed if you wouldn't have embarked in this particular adventure.

A second thought I'll like to highlight is the planning for the future, the setting aside. The richest bounty of our work, the shower of blessings, these can make us think we can go on spending like there's no tomorrow. We take the knowledge and apply it now, we take our wage and spend it all, we gather our bounty and eat it all in a feast. But from all these riches, let's plan forward, let's separate something for when things go uphill or times go leaner. There's one more harvest ahead of us before we retire to meditate and evaluate our work and our bounty, let's separate a part.

In knowledge, let's prepare the plan, draft a path about how shall we apply the things we've learned. In spiritual harvest, let's write down, paint, compose or create something where these experiences get fixed, settled down for us, so that when the times of emotional or spiritual darkness come, we can tap back on the light we hold now inside and revive the flame in us. In the material harvest, let's set a savings plan, let's stock up for the future. Let's fill our basement, let's stock up our barns, let's stash the money in the cookie jar.

Being grateful is about not taking things for granted, it's about enjoying the blessings, being happy for them, but also recognizing that this is the time when we can plan ahead and make those bleaker spots in our future more bright, take the edge fo dread out of them, make them times of comfort and fill them with much happier thoughts than the gloom of being in need and empty.

Blessed Be!

(1) Regarding the "be grateful with your wage" topic, there's something I want to make perfectly clear. Yes, be happy and learn to enjoy your wage. It means that you shouldn't spend all your day munching because you are an assistent and do all the job and get paid 800€ a month, while this new coleague got there last month and is already a supervisor and is making 900€ a month. It doesn't mean, however that since there's an economical crisis and high unemployment rates, you should be thankful for a job at a sweatshop that pays you under the minimum, or a wage so low you don't even cover your transportation fare, are submitted to long working hours and on top of everything have to endure mobbing. No, that's ilegal, it's not right and you shouldn't tolerate it.