Entering Change

How do we pack for the journey we're embarked on? I've begun today with a look over to the neighboring fields that once held cornstalks and are now lined with the nubs reminding me of yesterday. Looking towards winter in the Northeastern United States, there is talk of snow and cold, polar vortexes, and messy roads. The days at hand seem to be a wisp of what they were yesterday, cut short by the rotating of Earth's dance along its axis. These memories and images of the past linger in my body, almost in anticipating of the changes upon the communities nearby. Preparations seem to become ritual, as the leaves being raked become the song of the day.  

The journey seems never ending, and at once, always changing. Branches continue to grow on trees that have shed their leaves, and I am hearing talk of the coming holidays. Time seems to travel so fast, and with it, the movement of busyness of expectations and uncertainty. To slow down is to be unrealistic. What is enough for me? It seems as if longing for yesterday's return urges me to recreate the past for tomorrow. Yet today, today there is a song that I can sing. I learn it for tomorrow. Each verse of lines that rise and fall in harmony that the darker days mean an opportunity to carry more light for growing still.

Growing still, in movement rooted in what we live, is an opportunity to hear the days of our lives - moving and making peace as we live and strive for what's best. As I write from silence, it opens the window of the moment to a rush of what we have packed and what we receive. What we bring and give will enter fully into what we have to work with. 

   

Immerse Yourself In Winter

The weather has become cold, the days have become shorter, and everything familiar about winter in the Northeastern United States is here. The familiar grey skies overcast with few breaks in the perpetual ceiling of clouds keep us scurrying around as though hurrying will make the sun shine. Where the depths of winter loom with the joy of holiday song and light behind, we groan and moan, and can't wait for the first crocus to bloom in hole left by the melting snow.

 It is a new year and the first full month of Winter. It is a season where it is easy to hole up and grab our video games, read our books, and watch our movies in an effort to hibernate. For some of us needing warmer temperatures, we need to find any way we can to stay warm. So where do we live in the season where everything seems dreary and ghastly grey?

 In recent posts written about community, the barefoot wonder of community with other people can sometimes bring a mix of obnoxious cacophony and good humor. We cannot live completely alone, but we can take in this cold weather and feel it surround us while we take some time out for solitude to listen. The sounds of rain drops melting snow during a warm spell. The sound of a radiator hissing as it warms us as we watch the spaces around us from inside. To listen and connect to all that is happening even in the midst of silence.

Somehow the stillness takes more time to notice than the busy rush of daily life. It is in its vast presence that nature emerges taking our breath, our life, and forming all of winter with the breath of all living beings. The conifers revel in their chance to show off their needles as people everywhere notice their wintry white covering. Colors are seen as birds that stayed home take flight and fill their air with sounds of their chirping. Stop and feel the presence of the seasonal temperatures grip your skin, expand your soul, and comfort your sense of living. It is as invigorating as it is peaceful. Let the newness of feeling become familiar so that the familiarity can let you engage it with barefoot wonder.*

* Just don't wander into the snow barefoot without a way to warm up shortly afterwards. Hypothermia and frostbite are no way to enjoy the wintry climate. 

Autumnal Colors

My eyes have begun to lift higher as the Summer's vibrant hues begin to fade into wind tossed changes in Autumnal breezes. The skies are filled with the textures and colors of the earth's arbors, the gardens of melody that are played by the symphony of songbirds as their flight choreographs in the days and nights. Daylight shortens in bittersweet fashion as we gather collectively to watch the skies and change with the leaves as we reflect, remember, and return to new times. These seasons in the Northern Hemisphere are opposite of that in the South as the North provides the canvas for those in the South to see. To me the end of September is that ambiguous time where Summer and Autumn in transition from one to the next continue as nature's gentle way of saying come with me and change.

Recently I watched the skies open up as rain and wind poured out over the fields and the roads.  The changing of the seasons ever dramatic as the season of growth becomes the season of harvest, the season of gathering and being together in preparation for Winter. With the rain bringing in the cooler weather, I continued to look to the skies for the heavens become our connection to the universe. They create a drama that spreads out across the continents and over the oceans that extends to reach us as we live amongst the flora and fauna that helps color the atmosphere of our planetary home. 

The sky is filled with movement now. Migratory birds form their flocks and head towards warmer regions flying, dancing, with the wind in the shifting change of daily reality. The soul of a planet, in rain, in snow, in hurricanes, in fair blue hues, and rainbows as they fill the skies with momentous displays. With the wind bringing in aromas of apples ripening in orchards and water vapor cooling breezes while hot air balloons take flight, while candles flicker in remembrance, while we point to our loved ones the lights of stars and clouds that form the wondrous shapes of memory, of our home.

It can be the sky in Autumn that takes us from the restless days of Summer as it gathers us with a blanket and guides us to feel at home in the changes life has brought. Or it can helps us  feel at home in the new beginnings of every evening as night showers us with stars and birds sing to us as they come and go in a seasonal lullaby. It is not goodbye, only the cluster of our hearts and souls walking and waking, slumbering, and inspiring as we feel something anew in the colors of the skies. 

A Symphony of Summer

"There is a song, a song without a word,
whispered the wind and I overheard.
It sings in summer showers and the music of the rain,
falling on the growing grain,

There is a song, a song without a word
Whispered the sea and I overheard.
It burbles in the brooks and steams and rivers running clear,
If you listen you can hear...

Listen! you can hear it
Listen! you can hear it
In the echoes of the endless ocean swell.

Treat the earth well..."
- Song of the Earth ~ Tom Chapin


In the morning of a new summer day, a fresh beginning of birdsong and glows of sunshine arrives.  It's a creation of the bursting forth of goldfinches and the buzz of honeybees collecting pollen. In each Summer day the essence of life created in Spring bursts into a blaze of life in the motion of synergy, in the strum of a guitar being played on a front porch as the travelers pedal and whirr past on bicycles, and the fragrant combination of barbecues, sweat, grass clippings, rain, and flower gardens becomes a collage of the senses.

The passage of time seems slower. It's been said to be lazier, but it's a time to let the heartbeat of humanity reverberate in our movement along the way. In a summer of dry weather in the United States, it is a time to hear things differently, to hear the mourning doves crying as the day becomes the cool blue night and to awake and paddle out onto the water and see ducks feasting together just after dawn. It is here we find the uniqueness of each day that forms each year and each life.

The spirit of togetherness surrounds us in nature and neighborhoods. In a field of wildflowers and shrubs I passed on a bike ride recently, a cloud of goldfinches and starlings begin chirping flying over the flowers and filling into the sky with color. Their songs distinctly unique, even in unison, can give us a sense of community with nature, with those we love, with the places we live.

We hear the passage of the trains as they roll through our communities and see the jet streams that connect us all through the skies. These sounds, echo with our heartbeat as we move with being. The being that can be felt with our bare feet, the untapped experience that ultimately adds a picture or aroma to our existences, to our lives. The movements of this symphony are found in the screaming of young children flying on swings as they take off and feel the exhilaration of the moment, the fiddles singing into the night as dancers and old friends gather to feel their souls together, the quiet melody of a choir singing the memory of those lives who have been a part of ours but are now memory, and the walks with loved ones where we cherish what is held with dear trust and grown in the minutes of laughter and wonder.

As the last full month of summer draws to an end, its sunset is not the foreshadowing of nightfall, but the transition into Autumn. The fall leaves and period of change, of settling, and final foraging of the summer's warmth before we bring out the blankets and hooded sweatshirts. Summer will be missed, but the symphony continues and evolves as new instruments join the flock to continue each measure in the harmonies of the harvest.

The Birth of a Season

Time cannot be captured or harnessed, it can only be lived in and made the most of where we are with what we have. Seasons come into being as nature forms their very composition. Spring has come for the northern hemisphere in 2012, and not without the depth and variation that grew from winter's restless spirit.

As nature brings new days from the darkness of night, it also brings spring, from the seeming emptiness that is winter. Even the sun feels friendlier and less hostile as it begins to blanket the northern hemisphere with more of a gentle touch. Plants begin to grow again, and being among the life that is constantly taking shape opens my eyes and ears to what is about to become a memory.

Since time cannot be captured, aside from in photographs and writings. Maybe in the layers of flora that make the setting for our lives, we can experience what has come and what is yet to be found. It is in transition that life is lived, because even the seemingly static things change. Watch the stars in the sky for a few hours and you can see how they have appeared to move as Earth spins on its axis.

Yet in springtime, we can be in movement as we dance to the sound of the rain falling around us with the movement of our bodies with nature connecting us to this changing time. We can smell the aroma of violets grown wild and free and let their growth inspire us to live vibrantly and fully. We only have one life that we choose to form and react to in a multitude of ways. As colors form in nature, emotions flow in life, unexpectedly and beautifully as they transpire. With the expression of our connection, we can live in the changing times and see the opportunity to make something with the chance to reach to the steadier moments and let our choices fill our lives with wonder.

Growth nurtured by interconnectedness.

Wild vegetables grown by shade and sun, affirming the need for the dark and light.

Color bursting from the end of winter.

Last year's growth enriching the soil for a new year.

Reaching out of the ground that was scarred by winter's touch.