Re-creating during the Courting Moon

New Courting Moon

I've actually never posted for the New Courting Moon before, but here is my one lonely post about the Courting Moon:

Courting Moon 2009: Courting Moon - I took a break!
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This month's new moon is the Courting Moon, an intercalary moon that is added every few years to keep the solar festivals in their proper lunar month. One of the beautiful parts of Annette Hinshaw's calendar is that both the moon cycle and the solar festival cycle tell the story of the God, the Goddess and their Creation and that both cycles stay in sync. In a purely solar calendar like the Islamic calendar, festivals move around the year because the 29.5 day lunar cycle doesn't fit perfectly into the 365.25 day solar cycle. Every calendar that needs to keep it's solar cycle aligned with it's lunar cycle, like the Jewish calendar, has to add an intercalary month or period. I wrote more about this phenomenon two years ago during the last Courting Moon.
Like the last Courting Moon two years ago, I am feeling the energies of this moon as a question about how we re-create our lives through recreation. Keith Collins at The Inner Coach calls recreation the "third way" between work and rest and is a way to creatively work out how to live the life your soul asks you to live. I find this to be a huge task to pick up, especially in a month like this all full of sunshine and sleet, flowers and mud.

The Flower Fed Buffaloes by Vachel Lindsay

The flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
In the days of long ago,
Ranged where the locomotives sing
And the prarie flowers lie low:
The tossing, blooming, perfumed grass
Is swept away by wheat,
Wheels and wheels and wheels spin by
In the spring that still is sweet.
But the flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
Left us long ago,
They gore no more, they bellow no more:--
With the Blackfeet lying low,
With the Pawnee lying low.

April is National Poetry Month and I have been using my Facebook page as a "ministry" outlet again by posting lots of poetry. I have been having a great time reading many different kinds of poems ranging from classic children's poems to very modern poems about the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. In his article Recreation and Re-Creation, Keith Heidorn laments the fact that arts, music and even sports and science are being relegated to the halls of academia or other haunts of the highly skilled. "How many of us still sing outside the safety of the shower or the car in rush-hour traffic?... And poetry, according to Adrienne Rich, is being 'hoarded inside the schools, inside the universities' because the priesthood believes that the average citizen can't understand poetry and thus, it should be left to the experts." He goes on to insist that art is an act of re-creation, of giving physical substance to our innermost feelings. We should not give that away or let others take it from us. Posting poetry to Facebook almost feels like a renegade act, but one that is deeply fulfilling.

The Rainy Day by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

In addition to poetry, my other re-creational outlet this month has been working in my garden. This year I am back to just one garden but expanded it to three beds. I planted quite a few hardy greens last summer and autumn and was pleasantly surprised by how many survived and even thrived with minimal protection over the winter. I've spent a number of pleasant hours in my garden in the past few weeks pulling weeds, planting starts and seeds, massaging compost into the soil and just generally puttering about. I love watching everything poke its head up out of the soil, old friends like the persistent and perennial lemon balm and new plants that might be flowers or they might be weeds. Or they might be both. I've discovered some runaway garlic and raspberries from my neighbors yard and am excited to see if the gangley grape plant bears fruit for us this year. I get so much spiritual nourishment from my garden and playing around in it really is one of the great joys of spring.

Daffadowndilly by A.A. Milne

She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,
She wore her greenest gown;
She turned to the south wind
And curtsied up and down.
She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbour:
"Winter is dead."

How are you re-creating your self through recreation this spring? Are you planting a garden? Reading poetry? Enjoying a sport or an art or time spent with dear loved ones? What are you reading that is re-creating? What are you writing? What life is your soul asking you to create through your recreation? What's your favorite poem? How are the flowers coming along wherever you are this spring?