I hope this email finds all of you safe and warm, with food in your bellies and clean water to drink.

It has been quite a week on the East Coast...

Hurricane Sandy hit just as we approached the Celtic celebration of Samhain or, as we call it here in the States, Halloween.

Samhain is the time when the veil that separates the worlds of the living and the dead gets thin and our ancestors can slip through to visit.

In Celtic cultures, Samhain was also the beginning of the new year.

In Autumn, seeds, that will become next year's harvest, fall from flowers and rotting fruit to be buried in a compost of leaves and mud.

Our ancestors were wise enough to know that this seed- time is the beginning time. The quiet months spent underground are a womb-time that creates new life.

Think about how you can allow yourself this womb-time in the weeks to come.  How you can go within and examine the core of your being, setting seeds of intention for the coming spring?

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The evening that the storm hit, our power went out.  We lit candles and read by flashlight. 

There was no noise, no streetlights, no ambient light on the horizon.  Just the darkness and the small warmth we created within it. 

That first night, before knowing the devastating power of the storm, I felt a heavy, lethargic, peace.  

I have held onto that feeling as the news of destruction and loss has rolled in.  I hope that you, too, were able to find some small peace in the darkness.