Michaelmas is this Week!

Every Friday the children in our school gather for an assembly. Right now, one of the songs they are singing is a round:

Round and round the earth is turning
turning always into morning
and from morning round to night.

I've been thinking about this song--the movement and circling of the earth that it reveals. It's simple to see how the seasons move round and round, but there's another way to look at it as well--as a rhythm of inbreath and outbreath.

We all work hard at helping children through the day to have activities that allow them to expand out and move back inward in a rhythmic way. So, too, one could say do the seasons and the earth.

At the Spring Equinox, or Easter, one could say that there is the beginning of an outbreath, a lightening--a time when the earth expands and the soul expands, breaths, lightens.

chalk pastel by Helen, age 12

The Fall Equinox, at Michaelmas, the opposite happens--there is a turning, a coming back, a final flare of energy in anticipation of the inward work that will spiral in through the Advent season.

watercolor by Helen, 3rd grade

Often, in order for the best inner work to happen, there has to be an obstacle, an encounter that can help us define what our inner work needs to be. It takes courage and strength to truly meet that obstacle.

For me, that's the picture of the Michaelmas festival--courage, strength, will. Will--a term that I define as the almost unconscious energy it takes to make yourself do something you don't want to do. Michaelmas is full of energy, color, fire, and strength.

watercolor by Lou, 3rd grade

So, at our school right now, I see this season coming forth in verses such as one the Kindergarten is doing right now: "I am a blacksmith, strong and true. Best of work I always do. All day long my hammers go, slinging, clanging, clanging, so,.." In first grade: "We will work, with our will. With our strength. And our skill til the sword shines bright!" In 6th grade: "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!" Many classes are also working on a math block--a subject where you have to work things through.

main lesson book page by Lou, 3rd grade

A picture of Michaelmas can be seen in "St. George and the Dragon." The children are performing this play on Friday. St. George encounters and tames the dragon with the help of the Angel Michael.

main lesson page by Helen, 2nd grade

After the play is our Harvest Festival--also a season of celebrating strength. At the Harvest Festival we not only celebrate with foods and harvest activities such as pressing cider, but we also play games of strength and skill such as obstacle courses and relay races. We try our hand at the blacksmith's forge and show our strength in a woodsman's challenge.

How to bring this important season home to children? I personally think that a strong connection to the seasons as they both turn and move inward/outward is important for our own adult inner work. Making a nature table is a way to reflect what is going on outside, inside. My nature table actually resides on my dining table and is constantly changing as the world outside our door changes.


In addition to having a nature table that reflects change, I think that engaging children in outdoor chores that celebrates their strength is another way to connect them to this season. Learning to chop wood, or build a bird feeder, or rake leaves all provide that energetic engagement with nature that will somehow leave a space inside them for the quiet, almost unconscious soul-work of the darker days.


Michaelmas Day is just the beginning of my favorite season. Smoky fires, bright red leaves, and warm savory stews fill all our senses and beg us to get out and embrace our world. Enjoy the season!