Our Mabon Cycle Gather is late this year. Almost a week late, actually.

Not because we forgot or because Mabon somehow slipped past unnoticed. Quite the opposite. Everyone has been busy with the fullness of their own lives, and finding the place where enough of those lives could come together took us a little further around the calendar than usual.

There is something rather fitting about that.

Our Cycle Gathers have never really been about hitting an exact date. We gather around the seasonal turning points, close enough to notice what is happening but with room for the lives of the people who make up the community. This year, Mabon gets a little more room.

And while everyone else has been busy with whatever September has placed in their hands, ours have been pretty full here too.

This is a wonderfully busy time at Ninth Wave Arts. There are things being made and tended, materials being gathered, workshops being imagined, and spaces being readied. The folk arts and folk wisdom that live here seem to wake up a little differently as the weather cools and we turn toward the darker half of the year. There is always something to put our hands to.

Tomorrow, some of that will find its way into our Mabon gathering. There will be food and making, walking and singing, and all the small preparations that happen before people arrive. Today, there are still things to finish, carry, gather, and set out.

And there is another kind of readying happening here too.

Within MiddleWorld Mysteries, many people are moving toward the end of the Cycle they have been travelling while others are preparing to begin. Endings are happening alongside beginnings. Some are looking back over the ground they have travelled while others stand near the edge of something they haven't stepped into yet.

We find ourselves holding both at once, and that feels very much like where we are in the year.

Our hands are full. And for now, that feels just about right.