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Happy Mabon everyone! It’s Autumn equinox with day and night of equal length. From this point on the nights will grow longer until on Winter Solstice we will have the longest night of the year. But today we all get as much sunshine as darkness. It is a harvest festival primarily. It’s a chance to think about what you’ve harvested so far this year. We have a tradition that we do either at Lammas which is in early August and is supposed to celebrate the first harvest, or here at Mabon near the end of the growing year. We’ve gone back and forth but have finally decided that it makes more sense here.

We will have a family dinner prepared by either all, or most of the family and then we will sit around the table and tell what we have harvested this year. Since most of us don’t work with the land or with food animals, harvest has a wider definition. Say, you wanted to meet a new person to date. At the beginning of the year, which for us begins just after Samhain, Halloween, you would write out a list of things you could do to help you find someone new to date. Then at Mabon you see how you’re doing on that goal. If you haven’t progressed much on the list you have until the end of October to get cracking on that. If you have done all on your list but have still not got any progress, then Mabon is a time to reassess what else you can do, or why its not working. If you have that new girlfriend, or boyfriend, then that’s what you’ve harvested. You can also list things that weren’t planned that neatly, but were things you learned, or purchased, in the year.

Example for me: I will have harvested the pages I’ve written. The novella, FLIRT, the last Anita book, SKIN TRADE was finished after Halloween last year so it counts, and I have a great deal of the new Merry book DIVINE MISDEMEANORS written, so that counts, too. I learned a lot this year about myself, about my friends, my family, and how we all interact. Jon and I have grown as a couple, and Trinity gets bigger and more the person she will be when she grows up every day. I have done a lot of serious meditation work and traveled farther on my spiritual path. I have been blessed with new people coming into my life to help me learn, and with many old friends that are a comfort when all the newness gets to be a bit too much. We have three new employees that are working out wonderfully. So our little company has grown, and in these economic times growth is something to truly celebrate. I have gone back to the gym and am weight lifting again. My ankle is so much better than it was this time last year. Good health is a really good thing to be able to add to your list of harvests.

What do I want to accomplish before Samhain? Finishing DIVINE MISDEMEANORS, the last rewrites on the novella, FLIRT, and I’ll see my other novella "Can He Bake a Cherry Pie" out in October. It’s the first story I’ve written that isn’t Anita or Merry in a very long time. It’s in the anthology, NEVER AFTER. Trinity will have her birthday. Jon and I will have our 8th wedding anniversary. I hope to get better acquainted with new friends and reacquainted with old ones.

Now when we go around the table I wouldn’t say all of the above, because if everyone did that we’d never get to eat. So, I will pick one, or two things, and so will everyone else. We’ll talk about what we wanted this year to be, and what it turned out to be, because this year, like most years was full of surprises, most of them good. So, Happy Mabon everyone, and may your own harvest this year have been full of blessings.