As if a curtain had been raised to reveal a whole new setting for the next act of the play, the field stood transformed. Gone were the gold and crimson hills. Gone the goldenrod. In their place, a wonderland stands, with pale, bare sycamore branches dancing before the dark hills with the last russet oaks. And at their feet, acres of goldenrod, now dried and white and fluffy as cotton, paint a view of things to come. The three of us, laughing, walk through the billowing stalks and Betsy says their tops look like the hats that elves wear.
The breathing earth sighs in contentment. This is her season of rest. The ten thousand leaves have fallen; soon the snow will come. Beneath the waters, fish find their warm depths. The creatures of the land snuggle in their burrows. Everything waits. What comes next is grandeur. And this, my child, is the great pause.
Every year about this time—generally when we go from Daylight to Standard time—I share with friends my conviction that humans are closely related to bears, and that in fact we should be hibernating now. “I want to burrow into my cozy cave,” I tell them, “drift into dreams, and not wake up until the strawberries are ready.”
This year, I’m more emphatic about that than ever. It’s more than the fact that daylight is rapidly shrinking away, that the world has lost its bright autumn colors. It’s more than the coming season of cold and ice and snow. This year, it’s also the fact that, world-wide, chaos is on the loose and tension seems universally sky high.
On some level, it affects us all. And coupled with inevitable pressure and stress the coming holidays bring, it can be a difficult season. It brings exaggerated emotions. For many, it creates a heightened awareness of pain, inadequacy, loneliness and loss.
As I thought about the suffering that so many are enduring, I found myself remembering a piece of wisdom from psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach. She pointed out that often, when we’re suffering, we feel very alone in our pain. But in fact, all across the world, countless others are feeling the same kind of suffering we are—and many are suffering even greater pain than ours. Suffering is, after all, a part of being human. At one time or another, in one form or another, it comes to us all.
The remedy she suggests is that we say to ourselves, “This is suffering. Everybody suffers. May I be kind.” It’s a powerful remedy. Recognizing that we’re suffering allows us to open ourselves to experiencing it, to letting ourselves feel it, rather than trying to cover it up or deny it or ‘power through.’ “This is suffering. I am in pain. I hurt.” When we can say that to ourselves, it lets us be authentic and gives us a kind of permission to sit with the pain, to accept it for what it is.
The next phrase, “Everybody suffers,” brings comfort. It opens our well of compassion and allows us to see that we’re united with a great body of others. We’re all in this together. And somehow, that makes bearing it easier. In a season when the ideal is to be vibrant and strong, it takes away the sting of thinking that it’s somehow ‘bad’ to be sick or upset or afraid. It’s not bad. It’s human. “Everybody suffers.”
Then Tara gives us the pathway through our suffering: “May I be kind.” May we be kind, first of all, to ourselves. May we be gentle and forgiving toward ourselves. May we look for ways to comfort and strengthen ourselves. May we nourish and hydrate and rest and move our bodies. May we remember all the good that remains and seek to see the goodness around us.
“May I be kind.” Then, may we have the grace to be kind to others, knowing that they carry burdens, too. May we be gentle and forgiving toward them. May we look for ways to comfort and support them, as well as ourselves.
In the background, songs that sing of good will and good cheer are beginning to float through the air, and despite the season’s dark side, a current of hope and expectation lies beneath it all.
Thinking about all of that made me feel much softer inside, and much more willing to go with time’s flow. In tough times, compassion is the best tool I know. May we kind. May we all be kind.
I glance through the tree house window, a wave of condensation at its base, a product of the cold of the late afternoon. The boughs of the spruce surrender their color to the shadows, but beyond them a faint light lingers in the mist, and the distant lavender hills rise to a soft golden sky. “Self portrait.” The words float into my mind, the view becoming a mirror.
This time of year, when the clouds cover the sky and the nights come all too soon, it can feel as if all the color has drained from the world. The summer song of the trees has given way to their clattering in the cold wind. At my feet, as I walk this field, only faded, fallen leaves remain. The brush that surrounds me is brittle and gray and tangled with burrs and knife-edged thorns.
But if I follow the path and keep climbing, wound around the trees to the east I’ll come across a patch of bittersweet vines, their berries like lanterns gleaming through the gloom. The old timers say there’s a legend that if you gaze at them and listen for what they have to say they will tell you secrets that fill you with understanding. “Test it,” they say. “These lanterns aren’t here for nothing. It could be that they’re meant for you.”
Softer than breath, the spirits of the fallen ones rise free, etching on our minds the memory of their summer days. Oh, how they danced then, so supple and alive, as green and shining as the breeze. We thought they would go on forever, so joyous was their song. Now, as we gaze at the emptiness of the spaces they once filled, we are bereft. The world is not the same without them, nor will it be, ever again. There’s little but our souls we would not give to look once more into their faces, to feel their bodies, warm beneath our fingertips. But no, the spaces that were theirs are vacant now, except for this river of tears and the acrid taste of pain. And how we cling to our anguish, for it’s all we have left, just this, to fill the unfillable spaces. Yet, despite our pleas – Don’t take my pain! It’s all I have now! – eventually the last tear dries, leaving only the space and its ringing silence and this late autumn breeze that we would not trade, so tender and deep is its song.
I have no idea what prompted me to climb this hill. I haven’t been up here in two years, maybe longer. But I nearly floated to the top, entranced by the beauty of it all. And now, my reward: this view, and look, how perfect is it that the young family I saw down below is making the climb. Ha! The littlest one looks three quarters of a century younger than I. And here we all are, in this woods, its song singing all around us.
The deer. I think they’re appearing now in my dreams, messengers of some sort. I wouldn’t have seen this one, distant as he was and a wall of twigs between us, but for the way he leaped up the hill. I stepped to my side to get a better view and when I looked again, he was gone. In a flash. Just like that. But I felt him. So I stood still, barely breathing, staring. And so did he, from right there, by the fallen log, still as could be, barely breathing, staring right back. A flicker of acknowledgment shot between us, signaling our respect for one another. Then we moved on.
A shaft of late afternoon light spills across the fallen sycamore leaf, its broad ivory underside facing up from a bed of crumpled maples, and a single gray maple resting atop it, tenderly, it seems, grace notes of red, green and yellow flowing past, the whole of it breathing some soft, nostalgic song. It carries me into a dream of a quilt that covered my great grandmother’s bed, where I would fall asleep gazing at its patterns and the stitches, so tiny, so carefully placed, while she cooked in the kitchen, quietly singing that her bonny lies over the ocean, over the sea. I watch my mind place the image of these November leaves atop my grandma’s quilt, and I nod, smiling.
“Nesting bird,” some voice said. And after that I couldn’t see it any other way. Words do that. They hold things fixed in time. “Of course you would see nests and birds,” another voice, more from the left brain side of things, said in a most reasonable tone. All this chatter! I look again. I know it was once a great tree. I photographed it myself. I think how it took tens and tens of years and weather to render this design And here we are, gazing at it, our imaginations weaving stories, the whole of us awake with interest and appreciation.
