Late Summer Spirituality: Dormition Fast in the Dying Season

The leaves are still green and high, the tomatoes are just starting to ripen. The pigs are heavy, muddy beasts -eating and sleeping their days away. I've a screen of herbs drying above the sleeping stove, and sunlight streaming in through every window; but the nights are bright with autumn stars and my bare-feet are unhappy, running through early morning chill to feed the animals. It's a good season for the fast - vegetables everywhere. I can make a meal without leaving the yard, and watching the summer die feels Marian in a way - a bright, perfect passing - beautiful and too soon.

I'm mourning the season early this year, because August tastes like September now, and because my birthday feels momentous this time around. I can't help hovering over all the things I should have done - almost as much as I anticipate the things yet to be, my "memories of the future" that haunt these magic days. August is a month for magic - a month of otherland wanderings and paths that may not come again..paths leading the Virgin each year back to her Son and me to the hidden places of wood and stream where elderberries laugh under the fading light.