One of the challenges about renewable energy is that it’s hard to store. There is plenty of it when the sun shines and the wind blows, but there is a a lot less on a dark, still day in Winter.
Much the same is true for our own energy. I know that mine comes and goes in quite well defined cycles. It takes me a long while to wake up in the morning. I need a full morning ritual of breakfast, shower, and meditation before I can even contemplate leaping into action. Then there is a dip mid afternoon, but if I plough through that, I can keep going quite happily until late afternoon. Once past 5pm, only quiet activities, like blogging, will have any chance of success. I’m ready for bed soon after 10.
That cycle doesn’t vary much, even if I have a rest or a lie-in. Which means that I have to take advantage of my moments of high energy whenever I can, and respect the times when it dips. Playing around with it too much means I can feel off for days. The recent change to Summer Time is a very good example of that.
Druidry teaches us to learn from the natural cycles of the Earth, Moon and Sun. Each of these, at least in our region of the world, dance with light and darkness, warmth and cold, growth and decay. From them we learn that everything has a season, that a period of rest follows exuberant creativity, and stillness follows movement.
I have often tried to rebel against those cycles, but I can’t help feeling the effect of the seasons on my own levels of energy. My husband and I work together on renovating our house, and we have found that it becomes very hard to motivate ourselves in winter, when it’s cold and the days are short.
On the other hand, creative projects have their own waves of highs and lows, and they don’t neatly follow the cycle of the Moon or the changes of the seasons. Inspiration comes when it wills. Burst of activity can happen at any time, and fallow periods can block the flow even in the height of Summer.
It’s a challenge to dance with these waves energy, their currents pushing and pulling us in different directions. All we can do is listen to the rhythms of each day, to the seasons and the pull of the Moon, to the eddies of our creativity, and the capacity of our bodies. At the points where these meet, we need to choose our level of activity in harmony with the moment.
Permaculture encourages us to ‘catch and store energy‘. Observing our own levels of energy and the tides of Nature, we can find the pockets of time that support our creativity and our well being. Making the right choices, we can work towards the flourishing of all beings without exhausting ourselves.
To a Druid, this dance is sacred. In fact, it is the focus of our ritual year and the centre of our spiritual practice. Dancing with the rhythms of the Earth and of our own bodies, we honour Nature. Aligning ourselves with the cycles in which we are all embedded, we learn to work with Nature and swim with her tides.
Image by Gerd Altmann on pixabay.com