Transitions

So many things are coming to fruition.

One daughter is already firmly established in her new college world with routines and patterns and circles of life that are hers and hers alone. Another daughter is managing the transition from a year of public service following college into the world of job applications, interviews, and apartment hunting.

There are no more baby turkeys on the trails where I ride my horse. Instead I see half grown adolescents strutting (if turkeys can ever be said to strut) along as they follow their mother – finding comfort in her presence for just a little while longer.

It is almost time to begin reflecting on how this year has gone. Almost but not quite. There is still garden produce to be prepared and stored for the winter, onions to chop and freeze, apples that are waiting to become sauce, soups to be made for the freezer.

But it is coming to an end. The apple trees, once so full of ripe fruit that picking one apple would send countless others tumbling to the ground, are now nearly bare. There are only a few remaining vegetables and flowers in the gardens. These will hang on until the very last moment when a hard frost confirms that the season is over.

Our political cycle is also coming nearer to a close. It will be a relief for many, a celebration for some, a disappointment for others. I imagine that the people who sell advertising are in a frenzy of activity rushing to fill the advertising spaces that will be empty when the relentless campaign slogans and slams finally disappear in early November.

I hope that after the elections those who are selected will have a chance to retreat into relative silence for a time of contemplation and preparation. Like the seeds that are falling to the ground or already lying under it I hope they will be able to use the rest of this year to gather strength for the seasons that lie ahead when the year begins anew.

Plants and animals make the transition from season to season, from cycle to cycle with a natural ease and grace. With us it is a little harder.

However, as I watch my daughters, who are no longer children but instead are companions in the adult world, I know they are making their transitions well. As I watch my political candidates I want to believe that they will manage their transitions just as well.

Savoring the Moment

The morning is beautiful. Cool with touches of warmth as the sun begins to stream through the trees. The air tingles my nose just slightly – a preview of the nose crackling cold that is to come. But not today. Today the air will grow gently warmer until it feels almost like summer – almost but not quite.

No matter what the temperature is the senses know when we have passed into another season. The colors have changed. Reds and pinks and sunny yellows no longer predominate. Shades of purple and wine and deep gold and rust have moved into to take their place. The leaves share their space on the trees with pine cones and seed clusters and those helicopter seeds we love to watch flutter to the ground. The grass is still rich and lush but it is a deeper shade of green. A more mature, more sedate shade. There are a few scattered leaves on the ground that crackle and crunch when we walk about. The unmistakable smell of early fall is in the air.

While all these things tell us that the seasons are changing, I think it is the light that tells us most of all. The sun still rises in the eastern sky at dawn but it rises much further to the south than it did just a few weeks ago. Every day it is a little later. When the rays of light finally come they caress the earth with a deeper shade of gold, lingering low and long on the horizon. The sun seems to rest a bit before climbing up into the sky - as though it's a little tired after all the summertime brilliance.

In the evening, much sooner than I expect it, the sun begins its descent. This time seeming to rush towards the horizon. No lingering now. Just a deep descent into the deep purple shades of the early night.

These short days – still much longer than we will have in only a few more weeks – fill me with a sense of urgency. A need to be outside as much as possible, to complete projects that lay dormant during the summer's heat, to prepare for the winter but also for the spring as I tend my flower beds and plant the bulbs that will greet us when the days begin again to lengthen.

However much we may surround ourselves with artificial environments – with light that goes on and off at will, with heat that can be precisely controlled, with breezes and winds that turn on at the flip of a switch or turn of a dial – I don’t believe we can ever silence the song that sings inside our bodies in harmony with the seasons. Nor do I think we ever should. We are creatures of the Earth. Wherever we may have come from, wherever our souls may be going, we are here now. We should take the time to savor every nuance of each moment that we share with this extraordinary world.

Through a Squirrel's Eyes

Already so late in the month. September is supposed to give us time to savor the last few sweet days of summer - those extra weeks after school begins but before we reach the equinox. But here we are already several days into autumn.

Everything seems to be moving faster this year. I anticipate endless summer days as though by believing in them I can make them happen, can stop the march of time. But it doesn’t work. Time just keeps passing – whether you believe in it or not.

Or does it? The philosophers and the scientists aren’t so sure. Neither am I sometimes. The past lives so strongly in memories. Dreams bring alternate life experiences that pass by in only a few seconds as I sleep. Who can say what is real and what is not?

Yesterday, as I lay reading in the hammock, a squirrel was perched in a nearby tree scolding me very loudly. It was easy to tell that my presence was interfering with what he needed to do. Watching him as he continued to harass me, I imagined how the world would look if I were able to hang upside down on a tree trunk like he was doing.

Looking out at the world through my imaginary "squirrel eyes" I was surprised to see how much broader my perspective was. When I look with my human eyes, I limit my sense of the world to the parts that I walk on. The world I live in is the ground, the place I put my feet, where my home is. Oh sure, I look up at the sky and admire the tops of trees. But I don’t think of them as places to go. They are just places I can see.

Looking through my squirrel eyes I see so many more possibilities. Trees I can run up as easily as I walk along a sidewalk, branches that are highways to another tree or a roof, the endless expanse of lawn, the garden, the road if I dare to cross it, the porch with its supply of peanuts.

There are so many places I can go and so many directions – up, down, sideways. I can hang upside down. I can jump. I can almost fly. Who knew a squirrel’s world would be so exciting?

When I finished musing about what it might be like to be a squirrel, I noticed that my admonisher was still on the tree trunk, still watching me carefully, but now he was no longer scolding me.

He was making a new sound, a long drawn out chirrup. Unlike the insistent, staccato rhythm of his scolding noise this sound was slower, more "conversational", almost consoling? Perhaps he had been imagining what it was like to be me and was offering condolences for my limitations.

I wonder if he ever notices that time is passing by more quickly?

Water

In my deepest meditations my mouth sometimes fills with water. The water is warm. My mouth feels soothed and nurtured by it.

Allowing the water to rest in my mouth it feels as though there is a gentle current, almost imperceptible, that connects this water with the liquids of my body, with the water in the air, in the earth, in streams and oceans, with every water molecule everywhere. As though somehow the water in my mouth is both within me and outside of me. As though the water is flowing into my mouth from all of these sources and then returning to them. And again I feel nurtured by it.

The water just appears, is suddenly just present, like a river source hidden deep below a forest pool or gently trickling out from beneath the rocks of a mountain slope. It feels like a gift. When I allow myself to swallow, it feels like a gift returned with gratitude and with connection.

Another Kind of Season

Sadness. Emptiness. Anticipation. A little depression. Melancholy. Freedom. Pride. Satisfaction. Excitement. A hole in my heart. A space where there should be something. An expectation of footsteps that never come….

Only a few of the many descriptors I could use to describe what it feels like to have my youngest leave home for her first year at college. Knowing well that even though there will be regular and frequent visits home it will never be quite the same again.

A season has passed. A new season is beginning. Each brings its own beauty, its own special magic but always we remember the one before and anticipate its return. With the cycle of children it seems like each season ends never to return except in our hearts, in our memories, in the photo albums gathering dust in the cabinet.

Somewhere deep inside I know that this is the view from a small perspective. In the eyes of the universe the season of children begins again with the next generation who will be born and grow and move on just as mine have done. And then my children will be the ones experiencing all the emotions of joy and sadness, pride and loss, freedom and emptiness that I feel at this moment.

The four-leggeds still look to the door for her arrival. The wise old cat sits in her room when I return home from moving her into her dorm. He is alert when I walk in. Welcoming, questioning? I am not sure if he is there to comfort his own sense of loss or if he is there for me when I need him once again. Saving me from entering a room that is empty. He is often like that. Knowing somehow when he is needed the most.

Worlds Within Worlds

Snorkeling in Key West:

The warm water is womb-like. It cradles me, gently rocking me back and forth, holding me near its surface where I can feel the warm sun on my back. I suspend all need to be concerned with carrying my physical body. The water allows me to float soundlessly and effortlessly over the silent world below me.

Plants are waving gently in the ocean currents. Strangely shaped sponges on the ocean floor remind me of urns, and bottles, and bowls left behind after some oceanic banquet frequented by beings we have never seen. The banquet table is decorated with centerpieces of gracefully branching tree shaped plants. Small fish are darting this way and that cleaning up the remnants of the feast. An ancient lobster hides beneath the rocks, recovering from his part in the imagined festivities.

Floating away from the banquet I hover over a field of waving grasses. Camouflaged fish exactly the color of the grass and the sand below it are swimming between the blades of grass. There is a gentle slope as the grass flows up an underwater hillside. Small oval shapes like fist sized ladybugs are dotting the landscape. Tiny schools of rainbow colored fish dart about closer to the surface.

There is an entire world formed here within the space of the nurturing water. The inhabitants pay no mind to the water which surrounds them. They simply existing within it. They are just as unaware of the unseen presence that is hovering above them watching through my mask as I breathe the air from my world. They are unaware that I am quietly watching as they go about their business. They don't know I am smiling from the joy and beauty of being able to share their experience.

It occurs to me that just as the underwater world is formed within the space of the nurturing water so is our land-based world formed within the space of nurturing spirit. We are formed within the space that spirit - that consciousness - creates.

Like the underwater creatures, we go about our lives paying no mind to that which surrounds us. We simply exist within in it. Like the underwater creates we are also often unaware of the unseen presence that is watching over us as we go about our business. The unseen presence that is smiling with the joy and beauty of being able to experience us.

Another Key West Morning

Another Key West morning. Warm and sultry. The world is beginning to wake up. The day gets started a little later here than at home. The roosters have been announcing its arrival for almost an hour.


I’ve just begun to hear the occasional voice from neighboring homes. I can hear the sound of an engine somewhere and smell the fumes from an idling car. Very intrusive – not the sounds but the smells, the fumes. Just one car and to think we have millions of them! An airplane is flying overhead. More noise, more exhaust. Is it any wonder that our planet is so stressed?


We insist on going places we would never reach if we weren't able to travel at speeds far beyond our natural capabilities. I am in Key West over a thousand miles from home. It took me only a matter of hours to get to an island already populated by many more people than it can sustain. Water has to be brought in from the mainland simply so that we can survive.

How fragile we are as a species and yet how insistent we are on trying to master everything - even speed and distance.


What is it in us that always makes us reach for more? For something different, bigger, faster, “better”? For something other than what we have?


Is this internal drive that causes us to cover our world with technology and even to begin to explore others our greatest gift? Our greatest weakness? Or is it just a distraction that keeps us from knowing our true selves?