I enjoy fall. Don't you? The sweaters, the crunchy leaves, the relief from the heat, the soups and warm tea. I like reading, snuggled in blankets. This week was the end of summer and the hello to autumn. The fall equinox is symbolic of balance between the work and rest, the movement and meditation, and giving and receiving. I take this moment check-in and consider my ways. As the darkness increases, I consider the inside of my heart and mind; these are secret places that only my Maker and myself know, but that influences all outside me. What is going well? What can I learn?
2020 Fall Memories I Want to Make
Write NaNoWiMo
Catch 12 falling leaves
Replenish my stock of tea and honey
Play dress up with children-paint their faces
Bake pumpkin cookies and enjoy them with lit candles
Read Anne Dillard's book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Ask more questions in my parenting
Breathe deeply everyday
Host a gathering of friends.
Visit my grandparents
Plant bulbs
“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
―L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
―Albert Camus
“It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon.”
―Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost
“Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.”
―Lauren DeStefano, Wither
“Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling, and they're falling like
they're falling in love with the ground.”
―Andrea Gibson
“I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house." [Notebook, Oct. 10, 1842]”
―Nathaniel Hawthorne,The American Notebooks
“Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn--that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness--that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.”
―Jane Austen, Persuasion
“He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.”
―J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
“There is something incredibly nostalgic and significant about the annual cascade of autumn leaves.”
―Joe L. Wheeler
I am learning the power of gratitude. Neuroscience tells us that we create negative thinking habits to cope with threats from which we can neither fight nor take flight. The chemicals released with negative thoughts help us resolve the need to act in stressful situations, but also create tendencies to be cynical or pessimistic and doubt the good. The simple act of gratitude foils our animal thinking brain and activated the part of us that is higher. Higher in trust or faith in a compassionate, constant, capable author of our lives. Seeking a grateful habit of response builds healthy synapse reconfiguration promoting resilience and mental health. Being grateful is how we receive love. As I delight in the purple asters or sweet drops from the honeysuckles, the rich oranges and reds, the hugs... All the loveliness of our world is love being offered for those that have eyes to see and ears to hear. We are loved. Do we often cast it aside through ingratitude? I do. Since moving, I have felt so ungrounded, lonely, impatient, and frustrated. These emotions blind me from gratefully seeing the good. I am starting to see and feel and enjoy being so loved. I am grateful for beginning friendships, my steadfast core people, the sacrifices of my parents and the fall beauty.
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