Everything moves on

The autumn equinox arrives at 9:54 PM on Saturday, September 22, officially marking the beginning of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere…..

Another year gone, leaving everywhere its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

– the uneaten fruits crumbling damply in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries — roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time’s measure painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing to stay — how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever in these momentary pastures

Mary Oliver, Fall Song

Like a leaf

When I rise up

Let me rise up joyful

like a bird.

When I fall

Let me fall without

regret

like a leaf

Wendell Berry, Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer

Nature

 

The first of three poems by Mary Oliver as the seasons change…

Well, there is time left —
fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

Mary Oliver, Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches? (extract)

 

Notice

Consciously inhabiting our senses is a pathway to the present moment, to feeling truly alive. Tuning in to our senses in nature invites presence and joy, whether we’re smelling the first full bouquets of apple and cherry blossoms in spring, seeing a crystalline carpet of dew on the lawn in the early morning, feeling the warm moisture of a tropical breeze as it softens our bodies and melts our hard edges, or hearing the dawn chorus of birdsong. Living with such a full awareness, we can be present to life’s gifts when they present themselves.

Mark Coleman, Awake in the Wild: Mindfulness in Nature as a Path to Self Discovery

Flow

Pain is physical, but suffering is mental.

Outside of the mind there is no suffering.

Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but none compels you to suffer.

Suffering is entirely due to clinging or resisting;

it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life.

Nisargadatta Maharaj, 1897 – 1981, Indian teacher of nondualism

Lessons from foxes…

What is this message that wild animals bring, the message that seems to say everything and nothing? What is this message that is wordless, that is nothing more or less than the animals themselves- that the world is wild, that life is unpredictable in its goodness and its danger, that the world is larger than your imagination.

Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting lost