Invitation to Collective Autumn Triduum Vigil.

It is autumn here in the Northern Hemisphere, a season bringing cooler nights, a changing of light, a crispness in the air, the falling of leaves, and a slowing down of the beyond human natural world with the gentle reminder to humans to follow suit.

Tomorrow, amidst this quieter season, we enter into the Autumn or Fall Triduum which encompasses All Saints' Eve (Halloween, October 31), All Saints' Day (All Hallows,' November 1) and All Souls' Day (November 2). As Wisdom Teacher Cynthia Bourgeault has said in her blog on this triduum, these three days make up a powerful "passage from death to life which is at the heart of the Christian mystical tradition, and in fact, all mystical paths."

She says they are a progression we can take beginning with the great druidic celebration of All Saints' Eve asking us to acknowledge the masks (or false selves) we have constructed without being disturbed by them. Then, moving into All Saints' where the boundaries and assistance between our ourselves and the communion of saints or those spiritual ancestors who've gone before us is rather thin. And leading into All Souls' to grieve and honor those specific beings no longer in physical body, with all of the preceding preparing us to go on living more astutely from our two natures at the intersection of the horizontal world of time and the vertical world beyond time.

We can tune into this sacred passage way, leaning towards these inner movements with presence and attention. As Cynthia says, "In the quiet, brown time of the year, these fall Triduum days are an invitation to do the profound inner work: to face our shadows and deep fears (death being for most people the scariest of all), to taste that in ourselves which already lies beyond death, drink at its fountain, then to move back into our lives again, both humbled and steadied in that which lies beyond both light and dark, beyond both life and death. What better tilling of the inner soil for the mystery of the Incarnation, which lies just ahead?"

In the spirit of this Fall Triduum, I will send out an email each day over the next three days with a breath prayer, a reading, and a few questions for you to ponder and take with you into your day. For those of you who wish to follow along with these emails, I invite you to join me in seeing these three days as a collective vigil of sorts. We can see it as a vigil we will offer up from the collective invincible Heart of God that lives in the depths of the individual heart of each one of us, and that we will offer up towards someone, something, or somewhere specific that is a heavy burden on our individual vincible human selves.

I hope you will consider joining me and if you are drawn feel free to let me know that you are!

A blessed triduum passageway to you,

Heather