Summer signs off with a crystal clear day, her glowing fields ready for harvest, her trees easing into their first autumn hues. Such miracles she wrought while we were wrapped in her sunbright spell, dizzy with play and leisure, mesmerized by afternoons that stretched on and on and ended in star-strewn skies. Beneath our dreams she whispered her song: Become, dear ones, become. And tadpoles turned into frogs, and goslings grew strong wings and learned to fly. From blossoms came seeds and fruits and grains. Eggs became birds. Caterpillars turned into butterflies. And the earth was filled with abundance and the sky with song. Now, gliding into the smooth night, summer takes her leave, her song flowing behind her: Well done, sweet ones; well done.
When you need a taste of wisdom, this is a place you can come, this place where the tall ones rise from the earth and tower toward the sky. Stand among them and be still. Stillness is their first gift. Feel how you are rooted in the earth and formed from it. Feel yourself breathing in the light and the air. Notice the flowing of the life force through your veins and the music of its movement. Notice how it is not contained within you, but floats with your breath, carrying your essence outward into the air to dance with the essences of grass and flowers, trees, and ants and birds, your note forming part of the song. Watch the trees allow their leaves to color and fall, the seasons to change, time to flow. Hear them breathing the Yes. Taste its essence in the air, flowing into you, and through you, with its boundless song.
Then, over night, as if the soybean gods heard our longing, and being touched by it, whispered to their charges, “Turn,” the fields were topped with gold as far as the eye could see. And just think! This is only the beginning!
The colors are late this year. We say that every year about this time. I think it’s our eagerness to see them. But this year it’s true. They’re late. Still, the goldenrod is everywhere— in the fields, along the roads, anywhere, really, that it can find a spot. And look how perfect the corn! September knows what she’s doing.
Imagine being so bright with joy that you shone like the sun. Imagine standing with your face to the sky, hiding nothing, offering everything that you had to give, holding nothing back, for no other reason than your overflowing thanks for the incredible wonder of being.
At the very end of summer’s long, slow inhalation of the nourishing light of the sun, there comes a pause, a moment when time itself seems to stand still. Nothing moves. Not a leaf, not the water, not a sound. You hold your breath, maybe not even noticing; it’s such a natural thing. A rest note in the song, the last word in a chapter. Inside it, everything is awake, rooted, waiting. Then the air whispers and the beginning of what-comes-next stirs, and the reeds sway, and from high in a tree a bird calls, and once again you’re breathing.
The host of the program I was listening to last Tuesday asked his listeners to send in their stories about a transcendental experience in their lives, one of those defining moments that you know you’ll always remember.
He read a couple of them, and you could feel the emotion in each one, the quiet power and beauty. Then he came to one that topped them all.
It was from a woman who identified herself as Maria. When her daughter was ten months old, Maria and her husband took her to the zoo. The baby fell asleep after a while and Maria was carrying her in her arms when they decided to visit the gorilla house. Someone had told them that a couple of the gorillas in there had babies.
They were barely in the door when Maria found herself across the glass from a seated mother gorilla, cradling her own baby in her massive, hairy arms the same way Maria was holding her daughter,
The two mothers stared at each other, each of them sharply aware of the bond that linked them. Maria bent down and held her sleeping daughter nearer to the glass so the mother gorilla could see her more fully. To Maria’s surprise, the big gorilla carried her sleeping baby to the glass for Maria to see. For about ten minutes, with only mere inches and a pane of glass separating them, the mothers showed off their babies, comparing their little hands and ears and faces and feet.
Those ten minutes with the gorilla mom were a defining moment in Maria’s life. They made it clear that the right decision for her was to turn down a job she had been offered. It was well-paying and would have been a definite step up on the career ladder. But it would have required her to put in a substantial amount of time. She took a lower paying one instead so she could spend more time with her baby. The moments she shared with the gorilla showed her that children come first. “That’s what nature directs,” she said.
Maria went on to have another daughter two years later, and now she’s expecting twin boys. And she credits her family life to what she learned the day she met the mama gorilla and her baby. May they all live happily ever after.
The first notes sound and the curtain lifts to reveal a palette of gold and green. Dusty rose Joe Pye weed and waves of goldenrod rise against the backdrop of late summer’s multi-hued trees, all of them waltzing in the warm, light breeze. Now a crimson vine rises, trumpeting September’s red theme in notes that will sound in countless variations as the days unfold, each of them flaming with poignant drama as the year burns toward its close.
The green still prevails and always shall, standing as it does for life. Even so, the seasons roll, each having its purpose and time. Thus autumn begins its ascent, singing of harvest in tones of rust and gold. And on its heels the time of rest will follow. But even then, green stands, though there be mountains of snow.
