Ushering in Autumn

While some were sleeping this morning.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate summer: I do. I love it deeply, from the first rich flush of hawthorn blossoms to the last fading mauves of August heather. I love the green and the growing, the treasures of the hedgerows, and the always astonishing abundance of the land which surrounds me. It’s just that I love autumn and winter more. Something opens up in me then – something soft and deep and glowing – which is far too shy to expose itself to the inexhaustible light of summer.

~ Sharon Blackie, The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday

A Tuesday meander: Late summer

They have colors in common.

The voice of compassion is not absorbed with itself.  It is not a voice intent on its own satisfaction or affirmation; rather it is a voice imbued with understanding, forgiveness and healing.  This voice dwells somewhere in every human heart.  Ultimately it is the voice of the soul.  Part of the joy in developing a spiritual life is the discovery of this beautiful gift that you perhaps never even suspected you had.  When you take the time to draw on your listening-imagination, you will begin to hear this gentle voice at the heart of your life.  It is deeper and surer than all the other voices of disappointment, unease, self-criticism and bleakness.  All holiness is about learning to hear the voice of your own soul.

~ John O’Donohue, Beauty:  Rediscovering the true source of compassion, serenity, and hope

A Monday meander: With the boys

At the Point on a rainy day.

No child ever receives a box of colored crayons and says, “What’s the point? I can’t draw.” Nor does she reject a jar of modeling dough because sculpture is too complicated. If you give him a guitar, he gets sounds out of it without fuss. If you ask her to sing, she doesn’t refuse to because she doesn’t know the words or because she hasn’t got a perfect voice: she simply takes a breath, opens her mouth and belts it out!

~ Fabiana Fondevila, Where Wonder Lives

Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.

~ Albert Camus

A Monday meander: May flowers and showers

Reflections in the manor house window. (Quail Hollow Park)

The young hear memory in the voice of their elders and, delighted by these voices from the past or bored by them, too often miss the content behind the content. Memory is not about what went on in the past. It is about what is going on inside of us right this moment. It is never idle. It never lets us alone.

~ Joan Chittister, The Gift of Years

The softness of spring

Dogwood dreaming.

Sometimes you are privileged with a glimpse of the other world, when the light shines up from the west as the sun sets and dazzles something wet. The world is just water and light, a slide show through which your spirit glides.

~ Fanny Howe

A Monday meander from the Bogs

A Wednesday morning moon. An hour or so before sunrise.

Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important today, and when you say of a thing that ‘nothing hangs on it,’ it sounds like blasphemy. There’s never any knowing – (how am I to put it?) – which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won’t have things hanging on it for ever.

~ E. M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

A Monday meander: A Saturday hike

Saturday sunrise.

Learning about the languages of trees, their social networks, and our own human microbiome forces us to rethink our relationship with “things.” If trees have memories, respond to stress, and communicate, then what can they tell us? Will we listen? Where does one species end and another begin? What happens when we know plants can talk?

~ Katie Holten, Deciphering Words in the Woods (Emergence Magazine)