Sunday Select: Happy New-vember

Samhain Season, Butterfly Strawberry, Invitation to Begin Again, Alumni Letter

Greetings friends and wisdom-lovers, and welcome to a belated Sunday Select, with some links, ideas and invitations from the Wisdom Workshop network. Happy Samhain! 🍂 Sending warm wishes for clarifying our visions of what’s possible, cleansing our lenses of perception, and awakening from any self-imposed distortions of reality. Also some good news.

Comparative Seasons Wheel by Ccferrie, CC BY-SA 4.1, wikimedia

Samhain Season

It’s Samhain season, the Celtic quarter day to mark the wheel of seasonal time. This year, the midpoint between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice comes on November 6th, 3:21 pm MST. Hold on to your hats, and air out your warmer blankets.

Pronounced SAH-wen, now is good time to honor our ancestors, harvest our efforts, and reflect where we might go deeper. Decide what we need to lay to rest.

I like to think of this time as a more accurate marker of the beginning of a new year. When I learned that the ancient Celts saw early November as the end of the year, I remember feeling a whole body yes.

The fact that we celebrate a new (solar) year on what we now call January 1st is a historical relic — a descendant of Julius Caesar’s effort to consolidate his economic control of Rome, later upheld in England to streamline tax collection.

Why not celebrate the New Year with the quiet reverence of Samhain? It is the end of the harvest season after all.

Below, I’ll invite you to begin again and draft some resolutions with me. Wishing you a happy new year, a joyful new you, and a graceful New-vember.

Butterfly Strawberry (a personal note)

We went trick-or-treating in our neighborhood on Halloween night. Our daughter was a strawberry with butterfly wings -- her creation. She's "2 and some" as she likes to say. A group of revelers asked her what she was, and she stood up tall and proudly said, "a Butterfly Strawberry"! They hooted in delight. We beamed.

I was dressed as a Bowie-inspired rock star, with a gold sequin shirt and a wild rainbow wig. A neighbor asked our butterfly strawberry what her daddy was dressed up as, and she said, "music," coming one syllable short of "musician." I liked this very much. Dress up as a musician, become the music. :)

This little note inspired by

Nancy Scannell

, one of my favorite writers on Substack. My music is on Spotify.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledging the first stewards and peoples of this land where I write these words, the traditional territories and ancestral homelands of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ute, Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, Lakota, Pueblo and Shoshone Nations, and the 48 contemporary tribal nations historically tied to the lands that comprise what is now called Colorado.

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Thank you for reading!

Wishing us well into our new beings.

As they unfold, please know that you are strong and capable of working towards what really matters to you.

You are worthy of it. The world needs you.

If our learning community might be of support, let me know,

Sean

More about me and the Wisdom Workshop here. If you want to re-write your life in an inspired learning container, let’s jam!

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👋 November 5-10 Invitations to Gather

Tuesday, Nov 5 at 12:30-1:30pm MST. Sean Waters Open Office. Phone.
Wednesday, Nov 6 at 11:00-11:50am MST. Good Life Writing Lab. Zoom
Wednesday, Nov 6 at 2:30-3:30pm MST. ELF Life-Work Session. Zoom.
Thursday, Nov 7 at 12:30-1:30pm MST. Sean Waters Open Office. Phone.
Friday, Nov 8 at 10:00-12:00 MST. Sean Waters Open Office. Phone.
Friday, Nov 8 at 1:30-2:30pm MST. ELF Facilitation Lab. Zoom

links and deets for paid subscribers.

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✍️ Start your Week Off, Write

What if becoming new were easy?

You Can Begin Again
It always will be, just beginning.
That’s the nature of time.  
You don’t need to have it all figured out.
You don’t need to have any of it figured out. 

You can begin again. Sit up, stand up, do the twist,
C’mon baby, just like this, you can begin again. 
See yourself out of your own funeral.
Love intently and intensely. 

Give yourself the permission to go for it. 
Open a new book, write a new chapter, a new act. 
Introduce new characters, draft new scenes.
Take a risk and throw your phone out the window. 

You already have what you need.
In fact, you can’t help it.
The waves will come, and you will ride them. 
The great mother gives birth all the time, and you are it. 

Let yourself into that room. Let yourself out. 
Fall in love with the leaves in autumn. 
Curl yourself into yourself in winter.
You can begin again, and you will. 

What if becoming new were easy?

Alumni Letter: November News from Wisdom Workshop Land

It’s been a year of big growth and beautiful questions.

I’ll share those current questions, some good news, links to this week’s gatherings, some bonus info about Samhain and my personal creative contract for 2024-2025 below. Thanks for joining in :)