Jera Meditation

Effort, time, reward, timing, success (or failure with a lesson in a poor harvest), continuity, harmony with the order inherent in the world, in nature. 

Summer harvest provided food for winter.

Seeds provide next summers crop. Don’t over-water a soaked plant or one that prefers dry soil, and don’t treat a wetlands plant like a cactus. 

 

In this rune, in addition to the usual themes of harvest and the 12 months of the year, there is a lot to be said about about “dropping ones argument with the world.” I gathered that much probably about a year before I truly understood it. 

So often, people grate us like sandpaper, and we analyze everyone for friend or foe when we first meet them. Are you similar to me, or not? Will we get along, or not?  This kind of thinking may have evolved in humans for good reason, but often it prevents us from seeing the people we meet as individuals. It can keep us closed off from some of the best things waiting for us in the world. 

I once had a very bad interaction with someone on one of my other blogs. Followers of that person sent me the worst kinds of hate mail. Years later, we met in person at a Pagan event… and upon actually meeting, we wound up becoming good friends, and still are. 

Sometimes we need to observe more closely. Things may be growing with hidden roots below the ground. Responsibility and maturity gets a good summer and a survivable winter.  When you do harvest, don't spend it all at once, like an impulsive adult or an impatient kid would, but also do use it to help, to make the structures sound for all.  Helping others and being giving and open handed with the world makes others more likely to help you in turn. This can’t be done selfishly. What you do with your harvest matters. What you plant matters. Your patience? Your patience matters.

Working with others and the world means getting into a rhythm with them and with nature. Nature is persistent and uncaring if we’re ready or not, so be ready. Changes are not sudden and cannot be forced. Have patience, and trust nature, but work with the whole season. It’s the long game… think of how a therapist often has to guide their client into discovering the answers for themselves, because in just giving them the solutions, they wouldn’t be well received As solutions. (Worth noting Odin often does the same when seekers come to him for wisdom…)

To get personal, as I write this, in some ways I’m repeating a cycle where in the past I didn’t do all I could. This time? I’m using the energy from that to redirect to my other goals. Admittedly, there’s only so much I can do beyond prayers and offerings to the gods and leaving the situation alone when I’m not doing something to plant the seeds for it to go better… but I’m using that time. Now I’m stopping myself, asking the right questions, and working from the knowledge that you can’t get different results doing the same things over and over. Changing instincts and patterns is hard work, especially for someone with OCD. Feeling you have to do something elaborate or just right? Do something simple, and do the best you can because that’s all you can do. Having a knee jerk reaction to someone because you’ve pegged them as part of a group? Pause, and find out what that individual even means by the words they’re using. (For example, running into someone who called themselves an Odinist, and assuming they meant Folkish, I discovered they were anti folkish and against most groups I would define with that term and simply meant they were an Odinsperson.) I’ve gotten on a soap box so many times about in group vs out group assumptions and Othering. Now, I'm finally questioning it when I catch myself Othering the people I didn’t notice myself treating that way before. If you look for patterns and cycles… everyone has regrets they wish they could go back and change. In some ways we can - by doing something Different the next time Life teaches the same lesson.

Freyja survives Ragnarok. Despite being a goddess of war, she is also a goddess of love. She finds a third way to give hope, to try again, to save seeds for the next year. The others have their part to play and make honorable and noble sacrifices - but without the gods who survive, without roots that can restore perennials and the wisdom of saving the right seeds at the right time, and a bit of Luck… would the sewing be done at all? 

That said, don’t push yourself so hard you run out of energy. While you will need it at harvest, there are also future years. Plant and tend and complete projects - and expect a fresh start on a new one. We often underestimate the need for sleep in coming up with new ideas and insights - yet it is the best way to great the dawn and process the harvest of the prior days lessons.

But doing the hard work is not in vain. 

To paraphrase Yoda, there is a difference between do and do not - and it isn’t Try. Do when you need to, and do not do when you might be forcing the wrong situation, and reap the rewards of actions in their timing and season.