the goddess of limit

sitting with her

This is the newsletter version of Sara by the Season, where I explore a little bit of everything that’s on my mind as I try to lean into nature’s wisdom and rhythms. I skipped the podcast version this week because it’s a lot of extra labor, but let me know if you miss it to give me reason to keep at it. If you know someone who would like this sort of thing, I’d be so grateful if you would share it!

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Early this year, I went down the Martin Shaw rabbit hole. It started with Courting the Wild Twin and Smokehole, but then it spiraled into every podcast interview I could find. Early in the pandemic, he kept talking about the pandemic as an invitation to sit with the goddess of limit¹. I couldn’t get enough of him talking about about her, and even though he never defined her (at least in nothing that I listened to or read), I seemed to know what he was talking about because one of the hardest - and most fruitful - lessons of living seasonally for me has been this idea of sitting with the goddess of limit. If you lean into nature’s rhythms instead of capitalism’s, you quickly find nothing in nature that is always on, that is always producing, that is constantly expending energy.

Shaw, back in the spring of 2020 when he was talking about her all the time, had hoped that we would see the pandemic as an invitation to sit with the goddess of limit, but despite that mostly missed opportunity, the fall and winter seasons are annual invitations to embrace our own limitations, to reflect on the things weighing us down, to even consider our own deaths.

Since I’ve been paying attention to the values of limits for a long while now, I see how allergic our culture is to limits all over the place; the only limits we’re even barely willing to entertain are limits we can place on other people usually that we deem inferior in someway, but never limits on ourselves. Our inability to even consider the goddess of limits, let alone sit with her, explains nearly all of our communal ills: the ways in which we’ve destroyed so much of our planet out of our insatiable greed, the ways we wreak havoc on our bodies and psyches by pushing ourselves beyond our natural limits, the ways in which we try to consume our way out of discontent instead of acknowledging our own limitations and losses, the ways in which we blame the other side or institutions instead of admitting our own culpability.

We used to joke that Roxy, our first dog, would never stop eating; if a bag of dog food was in front of her, she would eat until she got sick - and then start eating again. As a country, we’re like Roxy: stuffing our faces long past the time it has made us sick. The availability of nearly everything whenever we want it turns us into tantruming toddlers when things don’t go our way. It keeps us from the authentic and humbling growth and maturing that has always been an essential part of human culture. I don’t see Americans moving collectively anytime soon to willingly sit with the goddess of limit, but it doesn’t mean that we individually can’t give it a try.

As nature hunkers down for a long winter nap, we can lean into the limiting lessons that fall and winter provide. Instead of pushing her away as is my tendency, I can make time and space for the goddess of limit, inviting her lessons, listening and getting curious. Martin Shaw writes,

“Limit brings meaning,
Endless success, despair.”

We’re all desperate for meaning and looking for it in all of the wrong places. If Shaw is right (and I obviously think he is), then exploring our own limitations is a better place to look for meaning than the ones we’ve been trying. This work isn’t flashy or fun. It certainly isn’t Instagram-worthy or even something you want to talk about much in general. I’m completely resistant to it. And yet, any willingness I’ve found to uncover new depths to my own limitations and new sides to my own shadow, has resulted in the seasons of the most growth and healing that I’ve experienced².

Scattering Seeds

I’m always finding stuff that supports the thesis of the book I’m writing on the benefits of leaning into nature’s wisdom, so I thought I could start sharing those links and things here with all of you in hopes of some of the seeds I share germinating into something beautiful at your place.

• Kimmerer on how knowing our visual limits opens us up to new ways of seeing: “A Cheyenne elder of my acquaintance once told me that the best way to find something is not to go looking for it. This is a hard concept for a scientist. But he said to watch out of the corner of your eye, open to possibility, and what you seek will be revealed.”

• The Indigenous antidote to capitalism’s gluttony.

• I cannot stand Rod Dreher these days, but this interview has so much to think about in terms of the ramifications of our limitless age that I’m begrudgingly linking to it because I think Kingsnorth makes some revelatory points, including this overarching one: “The big issue — the resounding global question, the one we are so desperate to ignore — is the reality of limits.”

• If you’re thinking all this “sitting with the goddess of limits” thing sounds great, but you aren’t sure where to start, I recommend starting with some grounding first and seeing where that leads you.

Here’s to sitting with the goddess of limit in these darker days to come!

Sara

1. If you google “goddess of limits,” the first thing that comes up is an entry about Hecate, the Greek goddess known as the goddess of thresholds and boundaries, as well as the goddess of magic, witchcraft, the night, moon, and ghosts. It is quite a fun rabbit hole if you’re up for it.

2. I think sometimes when we hear “embracing our limits,” it conjures up ideas of self-flagellation and discipline. But in my experience, it is a breeding ground for more compassion (especially toward myself) and freedom. The surrender that comes when we’re able to lean into our own limits is the stuff that all of our great wisdom traditions rave about.