The word equinox comes from the Latin for “equal night.” It’s the point when the sun crosses the earth’s equator. In the northern hemisphere at this time of year, we celebrate the vernal or spring equinox; while the southern half of the world celebrates the autumnal equinox. On equinox, night and day are roughly equal all over the planet. Twelve hours of darkness, twelve hours of light. Another way of describing this: equinox is the only time when the northern and southern hemispheres are equally illuminated.
A moment of illumination; a moment of balance. What does equinox (north and south) have to teach us at this time in the earth’s story?
When I used to lead spirituality workshops, I would often start with a meditation called Flame of Love, probably an adaptation of a Buddhist practice. It begins where one is, in one’s body and one’s surroundings: a room, a backyard, a lake. And gradually moves the heart outward in a spiral across city lights or rural skies dark with stars; one’s region and landforms, rivers and lakes; one’s country, across borders, then multiple countries; over continent and continents, oceans, and finally the whole earth held within one’s mind. Sometimes I would simply play a short NFB video called Cosmic Zoom that does the same thing starting from the cells of the body and “zooming” out to the universe and back again.
It is worth pausing to consider on this day the equal light and darkness that falls on the whole earth, our enemies and our friends, familiars and strangers alike, the light a gift to us all. On all the suffering places of the world: Palestine and Israel, Russia and Ukraine, Somalia, the Congo, South Sudan, Haiti. On the peoples of Syria, Myanmar (Rohingya) and so many others forced from home to wherever they find themselves including those camped on the highstreets and byways of our own cities.
We each stand equal on this day in the gift of day and night. No one more or less. No one controls the sun in this universe. There are no borders on it.
Maybe if we stand in that insight/in this moment, we can remember who we are. Remember our suffering land, what Robin Wall Kimmerer calls the “more than human world.” Imagine the forests rising up, the oceans, inland lakes, the mountain ranges, prairie, steppe, and deserts. Imagine the wind. Imagine the volcanoes, earthquakes, clouds and storms, tornados and cyclones, so much more powerful than the voices of might and chaos ascendent in our human world right now (voices within us and those surrounding us). Maybe we can imagine equal.
