For me, the Fall has always been a time of sacred renewal, a time to take stock of the seeds we have sown and to harvest with gratitude what has grown … It is also a window of opportunity, a moment when we can embrace ourselves anew, loving ourselves for all that we are, forgiving ourselves for our mistakes, with the conscious promise to evolve going forward. But perhaps the most beautiful part of this time, when things prepare to go inside, when the leaves fall from the trees, we can emulate nature- we can be the leaves, and surrender to the inevitable cycle of life. We can stop fighting and struggling against it– go with it, the way the wind blows, and like the leaves falling to the ground, we can fall into the NOW. So when you float through the air, what color will you be? Brilliant scarlet? Bright yellow, soft russet, velvet brown? How will you fall into the now? Whatever color you decide to be, will you let yourself be all you can be in this one wild and precious life?
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
~Derek Walcott