Monthly Archives: November 2016

1310. Delicious autumn!  My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.~George Eliot

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Trickle, trickle, trickle! Plop, plop, plop! How
Steadily the sand falls in the year’s hourglass.
Wait, wait, wait. Day after day we’ve waited
Until at long last you stepped ever so lightly
Through a door which opened months ago.

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How is it that I’m so sure of your presence now?
What is it that speaks loudly of your arrival?
Perhaps it’s the changed hue of a once green leaf,
Or the gusty winds, from both north and south.

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Or could it be the chilled hours at dawn and again
At day’s end? Or it could be the slant of golden
Light, or the nip in the air, or the richness of colors
No longer faded by summer’s miserable heat.

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Or just maybe it’s being able to dally on mellow
Afternoons, or it could be seeing northers
Push hard against the garden’s weathervane
Or maybe it’s the deep blue of the skies above.

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Last season and fourth child of the year,
Autumn, golden, splendid, glorious autumn,
You are late in coming but you’re finally here
And oh, oh, oh, how very welcome you are!

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Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever. ~Psalm 136:1  ✝

**All of these photos were taken by me in and around my neighborhood today. I know many of you have been enjoying autumn for some time, but the colorful part of ours didn’t starting happening until recently. I know not how long it will last since we are rapidly approaching the Winter Solstice but I shall enjoy ever minute of it until winter topples her and sits on its chilly throne.

To Be of Use

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ivonprefontaine's avatarTeacher as Transformer

Marge Piercy wrote this poem about what it means to immerse one’s self in one’s life. She does use the word work, which is not always what we immerse ourselves in.

Hans-Georg Gadamer used a German word that means to while over the worth of something. We linger over those things that have meaning to us and make us feel useful in our lives. We do not want those things to end. When we find work that feels like that, we do not want it to end.

Something magical happens when we encounter something worth taking our time with in life. It is like it waits for us and we feel real when we come to know it. When are doing that, we experience being useful and giving back in a very real way.

The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

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1309. O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being. ~Percy Bysshe Shelley

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So I like best of all autumn,
because its tone is mellower,
its colors are richer,
and it is tinged with a little sorrow.
~Lin Yutang

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If I had to pick a recent, appropriate emblem for deep November, it would be the mellow richness of this rose. Though a wild west wind has blown today, the day I found it, dawn had broken under a heavy fog, and when the mist lifted, this rose and everything else in the garden was left completely soaked. It was as if the heavens had rained down a multitude of tears and tinged the landscape with more than the little autumn sorrow of which Yutang speaks. I for one have to wonder if, with daybreak coming later and later and darkness falling earlier and earlier, a garden knows that the year has almost completed another turn around the sun. If so and because the longing to be, to exist as an expression of the Divine Presence, can be seen in all Creation, that longing is not easily given up.

As this year draws to its end
we give thanks for the gifts it has brought
and how they came inlaid within,
where neither time nor tide
could touch them, and we also thanks
for the days when the veil lifted
and the soul could see delight;
when a quiver caressed the heart
in the sheer exuberance of being here.
-Excerpted and edited lines
by John O’Donohoe

When we take time to look beyond the trials of life, we see God’s blessings and realize that daily we continue to be given endowments of grace from the Host of the universe. From unmistakable “quivers that caress the heart” we know that we are not alone. We know that we belong to God and recognize a longing within us to touch Him. We know that He sits at the heart of life, and from there works at bringing to fruition that which He inlaid in us from the beginning. We know too that He is beside us in every moment and that our sadness is His sadness, our joy His joy, our loss His loss, our victory His victory.

Give praise to the Lord, proclaim His name; make known among the nations what He has done. ~1 Chronicles 16:8  ✝

Respect your ancestors…

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Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life! ~Albert Einstein
The family is a haven in a heartless world. ~Attributed to Christopher Lasch

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Autumn for me, more than any other time of year, speaks of “home” and the “haven” that family is. In the mellowness and slower pace of the year’s closing months, I rejoice in the “deep comforts” of family and home and think about the love of thousands and the Lord who has bequeathed us our “beautiful land of life.”

**On the upper left is the wedding picture of my maternal grandparents; beneath that are my parents; on the upper right are photos of my daughter; on the lower left are Nikki and I together; and the last one is me now; collage done by me