September 23, 2012

A lovely day for the first full day of fall . . . warm, sunny, with a little breeze and not a cloud in the sky!   Overhead, the sky has that pale, almost translucent quality to it, as if the deep dark of space faded into this hue by layers of bright white light.  Walking slowly through the back yard, the cat is going no place in particular, stopping often to look around, then moseying on.  From the deepest summer green, the canopy of leaves is just the slightest bit faded, and the grass is thinning from its . . . thinness, though this year its thinness was not quite as thin as usual.  The remaining cane is blooming, tops opened out to feathery gold-trimmed russet brushes, like the plumage of some exotic bird. 

Such a contradictory season, harvest and plenty contrasted with empty fields and falling leaves.  Everything that ripens, bears fruit, or matures has mostly done so, and the wild is frantically storing what it can against the cold of winter.  Here I don't believe things are quite so frantic as they are in places where the ground is covered with so much snow, and freezes into a hardness that is rigid and unforgiving.  Things are milder in this climate, the squirrels fatter, the raccoons inclined to occasionally raid the cat food, only when we are at the few coldest days we have.  Even the crows seem bigger, feathers glisten with oil, their voices rough and often heard.  There is enough of a change you can tell it's fall, but not enough to make you believe in winter.

 Sunday, and a blessing . . . this one from a journeying God . . .

Journeying God,
pitch your tent with mine
so that I may not become deterred
by hardship, strangeness, doubt.
Show me the movement I must make
toward a wealth not dependent on possessions,
toward a wisdom not based on books,
toward a strength not bolstered by might,
toward a God not confined to heaven.
Help me to find myself as I walk in other's shoes. 

(Prayer song from Ghana, traditional, translator unknown)

Show me the movement . . . that's what I need, movement, moving on, through the changes in life and the season.   Fall seems like a season caught between looking back at the fullness of the harvest and looking forward to . . . the fallow time, which I suppose can be looked at more than one way.  Fallow is . . .ready to be planted but empty at the moment, something like the day at its beginning, where the night and its dreams have moved on, and the day is filling with sun, ready to be planted.  The wisdom of the morning is not found in any book but in the experience itself, and isn't it a good thing we all have wealth not dependent on possessions?  God cannot be confined to heaven, being inside us all, being evident in everything that surrounds us, even those things we wish would not happen, because if you believe in grace and God, you have to think those things happen so we might make grace of them and thereby show what we believe.   As we meet others on our way, those encounters make us aware of our own beliefs, and how we find God in every person, even the ones we are sure are not . . . godly.  Those probably have the most to teach us about who we are and the gift of grace.  So everything that happens could be construed as a blessing, some are just kindlier than others, but all bring some gift for us, an opportunity of choice, something to learn not found in books, only in living this daily life.