Apples Are Everywhere!
It's one of the really fun side effects of trying to more fully incorporate the Calendar into my life. Starting off Abolan with a focus on the new month and what it means is affecting every single day in that month in a really interesting and positive way!
I'm a huge fan of calendars in general: I have a few beloved books on the different types of calendars used since we as humans started making them, and the different ones currently in use all around the world today. So coming into a religion with its own Calendar and all of those fantastic 'extras' I've been reading about my whole life - an added month, even going further and adding days out of time! - different ways of setting up the months and weeks - beginning the week on a different day in different years, each month beginning with the same weekday for a year - a different marker for when a day begins (dawn, as opposed to midnight or dusk) - different start and end dates: it's all so fantastic!
I did have some consternation for a while about the year date. There seem to be a few floating around, but the commonest one is the 33-- dates: this year is 3336. I was most interested in where the year date begins, as I brought up on the Forum a little while ago, but I got some really well-thought-out answers, which brought me to the point where I comfortably use the year date on my personal work.
The problem of having the movable dates may be of less importance when I get more used to the Calendar, but for now, I like having the reminder. That's the point! Bringing more of the Calendar into my life helps remind me, more often, of my spiritual life, and the importance of the seasonal changes in that life - in reflecting the eternal Cosmic Drama. Bringing it more visibly into my regular mundane sphere also helps impress upon even my subconscious that both these lives are intertwined - we're not spiritual beings when we want to be and physical beings all the other days. We're both, simultaneously, but living in a world primarily focused on the physical - while not inherently "wrong" or "evil" or anything like that - can rather trick one into forgetting the spiritual outside of designated "spiritual times."
So for me, to bring the Calendar more into my mundane life, I began using the dates in my nightly journalling, instead of the regular Western dates, and when I go to class I date my notes with the same. I've also scheduled the holidays & festivals on my phone, so I get an alert when they're approaching. I'm writing this blog post in theme with the season! Little things: but if they are consistent, they become quite big things in their own way.
~.o.~
What a lovely post! There is something so poetic and charming about the names of the Filianic months (though it takes some digging to find all their meanings) but, more to the point and just as you have said, they are an opening to Dea's self-disclosure in the thamë of the year's progression, and simply knowing the date on any given day can easily take aspect as a spiritual practice. I stand endlessly in awe of this calendar!
ReplyDeleteReflecting on such matters in relation to fruit is especially poignant for me because I did not realize how much I was missing of acquaintanceship with the seasons until one day, early in my relationship with my brunette, when she sent me to the store and told me to buy some produce that was in season. It was then that I realized that I had actually no idea what was in season and what was not! Since then (although I am still far more ignorant than I should be), making a little effort to eat with the seasons, much like marking them on the calendar, has helped me to appreciate each much more distinctly and to savor them while they last, yielding a wealth of insights on the transience of the world, the poignancy of what the Japanese call "mono no aware", and the panoply of diverse encounters with Our Mother's love that are possible in Creation.
(PS, I am very glad that you were able to resolve your doubts about the year dates to your satisfaction!)