It’s really fall here now. The last day of summer was yesterday, and the Autumn Equinox rolls in on us today. It rained hard here all night. I’m testing my ability to sleep through the cold as the sun starts to get further away from the Northern Hemisphere, and the ice will come in its place.

The creek flows just a little more after the rain. The water just a little louder. Calling the trees to change their leaves and for us to give thanks to what blesses us. The Autumn Equinox marks the time when day and night are at equal length. Where light and dark are in balance, and the spinning top is at perfect odds before falling again.

Autumn equinox

The Autumn Equinox is historically the period where fall and summer change hands. It has a deep history that stretches across cultures, religions, and philosophies. It occurs around September 22–23 in the Northern Hemisphere (March in the Southern Hemisphere). However, throughout human history, people have attributed profound meaning to this balance of light and dark.

Some Christians resist drawing meaning from things like the equinox because Scripture warns Israel not to take on the rituals of surrounding nations. Since equinox practices were historically tied to harvest gods, astrology, or polytheism, they can feel spiritually risky—a kind of distraction from God, or even idolatry. Even when the intent is simply to honor balance or nature. But some believers see it as mixing Christianity with other systems, which they call syncretism.

There’s also the conviction that Christ Himself is the fulfillment of all these cycles. Colossians tells us not to be judged by festivals or seasons because they’re shadows. The reality is Christ, and all you have to do is focus on Christ. From that perspective, to turn back to land-based rituals is to trade fullness for shadow, creating a certain distrust of nature (the world is fallen, after all). Add to that the sense that Christianity points us to eternity, not earthly rhythms, and so you can see why many Christians say these connections aren’t needed.

But there’s nuance too: streams like Celtic Christianity or eco-theology embrace the idea that creation is still declaring God’s glory. For them, honoring seasonal rhythms is not a distraction but another way of worshiping the Creator through His creation.

And, ultimately, I can’t ignore my own experience. It wouldn’t be in the kind of felt pursuit that I follow. I find, personally, that I feel the closest to God through nature. Through being close to the rhythms of the land, the cosmos, the trees, and the water. And in that is where I first found my way to God and to Great Spirit. Without the land, without the healing capacity of nature, I don’t think I’d be where I am in my spiritual formation.

And so there’s something to be said about both not letting nature be THE God but enlightening us with wonder and praise for how beautiful and magical the world that we live in is, and how in observing that we come to find just more about God.

Mother Earth and Father Sky

I have always thought that God must be both male and female. How could it not be? Everything seeded by the masculine and sparked by the feminine. The laws of the world being both in that masculine and feminine balance.

But in my recent inquiry, I finally have felt God as that fatherly presence that Christians have talked about for thousands of years. I’ve never felt that before. I’ve never had a very good relationship with my own biological father, which I think hurt that connection.

But, I feel, and I observe, the God that creates order. The masculine that holds everything together. We can measure Him through mathematics. We can understand him through Newtonian laws and the principles of thermodynamics. Code and logic. The invisible lines and systems and rules that hold all of this together, and through that, we come alive.

Through that, the world blooms and blossoms. It’s just beautiful. The masculine defines, so the feminine creates. We are in the womb of creation. Mother Earth is always giving more and more. We’re her children. So, where is Dad? We feel her, but He’s no where to be seen. But, we wouldn’t be here without him, right? We come from Mom, but we couldn’t possibly be here without the seed of the Father. There’s something to that.

Language as mathematics

And I still, as I write that, feel like, Val, but how could they be beings or something? We can’t see it exactly. It’s not like solid in front of us. So how can we KNOW? We like to stand in truth.

However, I think we've just done it, in a small way. This is the observing I’ve been talking about. This is the process of through our awareness we find truth. 

And metaphors therefore, like the one above, work because it’s the mathematics of language. Language is our means of explaining and understanding the Divine. The Bible was written as poetry for a reason.

It’s reasoning through abstraction. It’s fractions through words. Language is truth in all its forms. Naming the things both seen and unseen.

And the philosophy of language does understand it as a kind of mathematics. It doesn’t just name what’s in front of us; it gives us the capacity to reason through words what we can’t yet see. Like mathematics, it works by abstraction—reducing something vast and particular into a symbol, a sound, a word. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” pointing to how language functions as a frame for what we can perceive and reason about. A fraction is a way of holding the infinite in the palm of your hand, and language does the same. It takes the ineffable, the things like love, grief, holiness, and makes them something we can ground.

To speak is to participate in truth. Ferdinand de Saussure showed how language is built on systems of signs. A play between the signifier (word, symbol) and the signified (concept) that reminds us how language doesn’t just describe the world but shapes how we think within it. Even theologians have echoed this: the Gospel of John begins with “In the beginning was the Word (Logos)”, suggesting that language itself is woven into creation as the first principle of truth.

Therefore, naming is not just labeling; it’s an act of recognition, of pulling the invisible into form. In Genesis, Adam names the creatures as a way of joining creation in its unfolding, just as a mathematician writes an equation that reflects a law already pulsing through the cosmos.

Language is the bridge between what is and what could be, between the concrete world and the unseen depths. It is truth dressed in syllables, a way of carrying mystery into body.

It’s the same reason why when your lover writes you a love note, it seems to come from some place you can’t touch. The words aren’t just ink on paper; they’re a fraction of something infinite, a glimpse into a heart you can’t fully measure. Language does that. It carries what is unseen into form, and gives body to the invisible.

…

Prayer for the Autumn Equinox

Dear God,
I am thankful for all the blessings that You have given us.
I celebrate the harvest of my efforts through your will.
At this time, I let go of what is no longer in service of my growth,
of what limits my ability to be closer to You.
I renew my commitment now to focusing on the love and light inside of me.
And to realign the inner shadow for harmony inside and out.
I call in the balance available to me,
and I rest in the balance You provide.
Amen

Application

1. Write a gratitude list

2. Write down anything that burdens you. Burn the paper or, if there is running water close by, scatter a leaf for each burden into water

3. Take a walk in nature with mindfulness. Observe the colors and textures of autumn. Notice all the beauty and take it in.
   
   _{Prayer and Application provided and inspired by The Sweet Sundance Medicine Path}

Love,
Val

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