A lesson from nature
Sometime this week, the fall colors came to their peak here. Driving to work has meant experiencing part of the joyous God dance of creation. I've longed to plant a garden of trees, planned for their blooms in spring, their shade in summer and their leaves in autumn.
One stretch of the road before I get to my office is a straight line border of dogwood and pear trees. They've always reminded me of women at a formal dance, waiting on their partners. Both trees wear the soft white of debutantes in the spring. Last week they were more mature, less naive and sexier in their crimsons, golds and rusts. I knew that autumn had passed its peak when they started to look like women going home in the morning with mussed hair, mascara smears and their evening gowns still on.
The innocence and exuberance of autumn is definitely gone. It's gotten colder, harsher and darker as the things that must die have died and those that live are somehow changed. It's still beautiful though, and it makes me appreciate my own changing beauty. The morning sun reflecting off the frost on a close cropped field is dazzling. A sunset filtered through the black lace of emptied tree limbs stuns.
The shifts in nature are natural, inevitable, not always kind, but always necessary for life to go on. I am reminded once again to embrace change, and I can literally see how futile it is to try to hold onto the ever receding past. I cannot make things return to the way they were any more than I can arrest this moment. In allowing myself to change and in not rushing the changes before their time, I'm truly alive.
autumn
change
posted by Cynthia at
6:17 PM
2 Comments:
'Round these parts, autumn is just getting going. The colors are pretty much at their peak...or they were before the rains descended this week. Everything is looking kind of soggy, now...
Beautiful essay, Cyn. A great analogy between the seasos of the year and the seasons of our lives....
Beautiful reflection. I think we've just passed our peak here, too. I sat in my meditation chair this morning after writing my morning pages, gazing out at the rain pelting down and the wind whipping leaves off the nearby maple. Their cooperation in this autumn change struck me as quite beautiful today, though rainy windy days don't usually feel this comfortable and harmonious to me. That lense of not wanting anything to be different than it is in any moment -- acceptance -- sure worked this morning.
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