Nature’s Subversive Rhythms
BRIGHT BLESSINGS of the FULL blue moon to you
Support for Every Season
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May 31, 2026
We’d hate to inconvenience anyone
When I lived in Seattle, there was a local mega church that advertised its Easter services on billboards around town. Large churches often have multiple worship services to accommodate holiday crowds, and this particular church had added an Easter service on Saturday evening.
“That’s odd,” you may be thinking to yourself. “I thought Jesus was still in the tomb on Saturday.” And you would be absolutely correct.
In some traditions, churches have a service on Thursday evening to celebrate the last supper. Some have a service on Friday evening to mark the crucifixion. And some even hold a vigil from the Friday night service all the way through to the Sunday morning service.
Saturday is venerated in these traditions as Holy Saturday, a time when the faithful wait and pray. They set aside a day to act in solidarity with Jesus’s followers who didn’t know that he was going to return. They hold off on celebration to make space for the grief of his death.
Not this church, though. They decided they would wait for no one—not even Jesus! Imagine that.
I don’t know what their motives were, but it always makes me chuckle to think their planning meetings went something like, “people aren’t going to want to come on Sunday morning. They have Easter egg hunts, family gatherings, brunch reservations. We better accommodate they’re busy schedules and give them a suitable alternative.” I’m sure it’s what Jesus would have wanted.
Disrupt your Routine
It’s something I love about hosting moon circles. The full and new moon rarely fall on the same day of the week for one full cycle. Sometimes our gatherings are on two Wednesdays in a row, but very soon it’ll fall on a Thursday or Saturday. And before you know it, it’ll be on a Tuesday.
The moon’s cycles are disruptive. The moon doesn’t care what our plans are or if Monday isn’t a good night for us. It flows on in it’s own cycle as if to say, “Join me if you like. If not, I’ll see you next time.”
To be clear: I’m writing this post for those of us who feel constrained by our prescribed schedules. The practice I’ll outline below is for people who feel the tension of their body wanting one thing and their work demanding another. Or kids’ school and activities. Or family responsibilities. Work travel. Misaligned schedules with a partner or other loved ones.
There are many potentially disruptive cycles in nature, not just the phases of the moon. Most women are on a roughly 28-day hormonal cycle where our energy levels naturally ebb and flow from week to week. Circadian rhythms impact our sleep/wake cycles and when we have energy throughout the day or night. (How many of us are night owls who nonetheless have commitments to be up and performing hours before our bodies and brains are ready?) Shifts in daylight hours invite us into different activity levels. And the seasons shift what grows in our gardens.
Make a Bold Statement
How we spend our time is a bold statement of what we value. Other people know that, and they have opinions about it. Therefore, asking for a change in work schedule is a radical act. Re-negotiating responsibilities with a co-parent is vulnerable. Declining a few holiday events in order to create a quieter December is downright subversive!
I feel it when I get behind on work because I’ve made the bold choice to spend the evening at a museum or crafting. I see it in my coworker who fought for more livable work hours. I see it in moon circle attendees who choose to prioritize something just for them over being available to their family members for an evening.
This month we have an extra full moon. A reminder that assigning 30 days to April and 31 days to May and 12 months in every year and declaring that the new year starts January 1st is all a construct made by humans trying to organize ourselves over great distances and complex systems.
Don’t get me wrong, the Gregorian calendar is hugely beneficial. Personally, I use it every day. But for those who are feeling stuck, who feel like they’re constantly swimming upstream, who are looking to tap into something that feels more substantive and more authentic, this practice is for us.
An Expansive Tarot Practice
This practice is for people of all experience levels, and you can use any tarot or oracle deck that you have access to. (If you don’t have a physical deck, you can draw digital cards in the free version of the Labyrinthos app.) Shuffle the cards, holding the following two questions in mind:
What makes time feel scarce?
What makes (or could make) time feel abundant?
Whenever you feel satisfied that you have shuffled as much as your heart desires, cut the deck and draw two cards off the top. The first one represents a source of scarcity and the second represents a source of abundance.
I encourage you to notice your own response to the cards before bringing in outside voices:
What thoughts or feelings do the images evoke in you?
What patterns or colors stand out?
What associations do you have with the images and symbols you see?
Once you’ve done some noticing, then you can turn to other reference materials. Discuss with friends. Look in the guide book that may have come with the deck. I’ll link below to some resources that I like.
Invite Community
Whether you’re doing this practice solo or with a group, I encourage you to draw and reflect on a third card. Formulate a question about how your community could shift to invite more alignment with nature’s rhythms, or how it might benefit from or overcome barriers to such a shift.
These are just a few suggestions, but please make it your own:
What is an experimental rhythm I could invite others to try with me?
What would change in our community if we shifted our relationship away from the calendar and toward ______ rhythm?
What would it cost (socially, financially, energetically) to live more aligned with nature’s rhythms?
What’s a shift I could make as an individual or with my household toward nature’s rhythms?
What’s something this group could do to support the people here in making shifts?
If you’re doing this practice in a group, each person can ask their own question and everyone can put the resulting cards together and wonder and discuss.
Join me
Sunday, May 31, 2026, at The Space Within in Baltimore we’ll carve out an evening to do this practice and reflect on our relationship to time together.
A few resources I like:
Labyrinthos app
Contemporary Tarot on YouTube
Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast
Modern Tarot book
Red Tarot book
Tarot Diagnosis podcast
Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash.