March 2025 Equinox Festival: Balance and Resilience in Turbulent Times
Festivals are a time of celebration, a time when humankind honors Gaia’s essential energies in its dance through the seasons of the year. When we celebrate winter’s deep renewing silence or the vitality of summer’s growth, we touch into energies that can open spaciousness or uplift and renew us. Celebrating Nature’s seasonal energies also connects us with valuable resources we can draw upon to meet the turbulence of daily life and current human affairs.
The festivals, as we celebrate them here in Lorian, seek to highlight Earth as an integrated beingness. We seek to stretch our awareness to embrace a “both/and” understanding of our earth’s nature, holding appreciation for the distinct experiences of north and south, east and west, light and dark, cold and warmth, and recognizing it is the balancing and strengthening relationships between these differences that make up Gaia’s abundant field of possibility for organic life. For the earth itself, winter and summer are just two parts of one interconnected experience. Spring and autumn as well share a similar impulse. Our Gaian Wholeness festivals seek to call attention to the interwoven nature of the essential rhythms important to life on earth.
What has become evident to us is that the essential qualities of each season are not just isolated ideas to be celebrated but interrelated qualities that weave and shape our world’s life-nurturing qualities both physically and energetically. In the upcoming equinox celebration, we seek to widen and deepen our imagination of Gaia’s seasonal rhythms and what they can offer us when we are worried or stressed about the state of things that are happening in the world and in our lives. We recognize that Gaia’s equinox qualities of balance and buoyancy, steadfastness and resilience offer us the opportunity to pause and breathe, to have our questions and concerns held within a steady field of both Gaia’s and our own sovereignty, inner coherence, and calm. Coming together we help to build and strengthen our own capacity for wholeness and balance.
This equinox season, we invite you to consider consciously holding your worries and concerns in the light and blessing of Gaia’s Equinox energies. How are you drawing on those energies of balance and resilience to help yourself navigate these turbulent times? We wonder what keeps you buoyant and brave, despite your fears? What practices help you to handle your stress, and bring a greater lightness of being and beauty to your days? What brings you peace and joy, and an appreciation that you are alive right now on planet Earth? How are you standing in your sovereignty and self-light despite all the challenges?
As a festival team, we asked ourselves these questions and discovered more about the threads we draw upon in our lives. We invite you, too, to consider the things that are challenging in your life and how you bring them – together with your seeds of hope and joy and possibility – into your awareness this Equinox season.
Freya: I create small “resource altars” in my home so that I am often reminded of something I find beautiful or inspiring. I might arrange a small vase of flowers or place a treasured item on a table that I walk by during the day. Not long ago a friend gifted me a card created by a small creative studio called “flying edna” that now lives on my desk where I can see it easily and often. It reads, “run your fingers like a prayer over every bit of the world, saying quietly, with each breath, thank you for this chance to love.” I feel that every effort to touch my world with love brings me right back to the flow of the equinox energies and settles me into a way to participate, right in that moment, in an energy of equanimity and joy with the world around me. I am empowered to breathe more fully and evenly, to widen my gaze to be more inclusive and soften the intensity of my intention in order to welcome co-creative possibilities into my situation. My mini altars are practical touchpoints into love and the balancing qualities of equinox energies. They are important reminders which helps me reconnect with wholeness, grace and aliveness when I am feeling vulnerable to events that bring change and uncertainty.
Ara: I like to think I have a calm demeanor; I mostly take things as they come and accept what is. My partner Ralph and I have a saying, “Oh, well” when something has happened that we can’t do anything about like a disappointment or a certain sequence of events. That “oh well” helps to let it go and not be weighed down by circumstances.
That is except when it comes to political and world events!! Not so simple, until I am reminded of the influence of Incarnational Spirituality in my life, my daily standing and connecting practices, the knowing in my heart we are all one. I use my breath to bring stillness and expanded awareness, I watch the clouds and stand in the trees. Rue’s energy tending finger-holding practice stills my mind at night, I take responsibility for the sources of news I read, and I am grateful for those around me, seen and unseen for the gifts we bring each other.
Linda: When I feel overwhelmed by the world’s events, nature is my go-to. I turn off my devices – go sit in my garden or walk on the beach or in the bush. Being in nature brings me back to my centre.
An example of this happened a few weeks ago. I was wandering by a riverbank known for its resident platypus. The water was cascading over the smooth silky stones, the sound of the bubbling brook soothing my senses. Instead of seeing one of these shy platypuses in the water, a dragonfly made its presence known. I have written in the past about my relationship with dragonfly.
This little being was playing with me. It was about 2 inches long, electric blue, with the sun reflecting rainbow colours through its wings. I started to follow it as it flew from bush to bush. I was laughing as I tried to keep up. It was definitely playing chase with me until my phone rang and the dragonfly disappeared. So I started walking back deflated, when there it was again flying in front of me. I put out my hand and it landed on my palm. The joy, the wonder of the moment, of connecting with this little being, lifted my spirits and affirmed to me, yes, I really do have a connection with dragonflies. Then this first dragonfly flew away, but as I walked on there were another 2 species of dragonfly flying around me wanting to play.
This encounter, or the beauty of the night sky, or of a full moon rising, watching beautiful cloud formations, or feeling a summer storm approaching, each of these magic moments excite me, bring me into the present moment. I am not aware of anything else. I am at one with nature. This is what supports, grounds and calms me in these difficult times.
Lucinda: My essential main practice for finding calm in the storms of these chaotic uncertain times is this: I wake up every morning and affirm that I am a Gaian human being, willing to be an agent of blessing and love for all life on this beautiful planet we call home. It’s the “Gaian” part of my practice that steadies me the most. If I am anxious and stressed about the dismantling of life as we know it, I take a deep breath and sink as deeply into the depths of the earth as I can. I feel the visceral support of being held and comforted by Gaia, knowing that I am seen and honored as one of Her own. I recognize that I am the earth, I am Gaia, that we are not separate in any way. My body, my soma, my soul are part of the body, soma and soul of the planet. We are navigating this journey, this time of transition together.
When I walk in the woods near my house, I feel the trees reaching out to me, whispering that I can “stand tall and be rooted”, like they are, that I can reach deep into the ground, and high up to the skies, and be stable and fluid, balanced and buoyant at the same time.
Strolling along the beaches of my island home, I experience in a whole-bodied way, what it means to be at a threshold – where everything is shifting and changing – where nothing stays the same – and yet every present moment is filled with life and light and beauty to cherish. I stand where water meets sand and shore, and I learn to trust what is, what comes, what goes. My mind grows still, my body and heart open to a spaciousness and well-being I know is always there, beneath the flotsam and jetsam of my days. In those moments, I am filled with gratitude, and I thank Gaia and nature for teaching me how to live.
You are invited
Our Gaian Equinox Festival will be held Friday, March 21 at 2 pm PT. We will share in an attunement to Gaia’s seasonal equinox rhythms to heighten the energies of calm and resilience, balance and wholeness we each bring as we meet the challenges of these times of change and transition. You are invited to add your note and practice of “Equinox balance” by linking with us in meditation as it fits with your schedule any time on that day or, if you would like to participate in our online gathering, please email freyas@lorian.org for the link to join in.
With blessings,
The Festival Team – Lucinda, Ara, Linda and Freya