This maple that stands at the edge of the cornfield at the big curve in the road, this one, newly aflame with the deep oranges she lifts to the sky each autumn, is an old friend. I’ve known her for decades now, walked beneath her branches, explored the old farmhouse she sheltered all its life. I remember the tire swing that hung from one of her limbs and imagine the laughter of children playing there on a day much like this one. Their family had a barn, too, and cows that grazed where the corn grows now. And right in the middle of the cornfield, there’s a tree with thick branches that folks call the hanging tree. This maple holds all these stories for me and more. I always look her way as I slow for the curve. She comforts me, and I imagine we’re radiating love to each other, feeling a connection somehow. I round the curve and the cornfield gives way to woods, and she is behind me now, marking the invisible point that tells me my journey’s ending. that I am almost home.
I couldn’t see the tops of the corn until I got to the rise of this hill. The stalks, suddenly gone from green to tan, are taller than my car now, almost ready for harvest. I get to drive this smooth, curving road every Wednesday, and I confess it’s a highlight of my week, year ’round. But today, the first day of sun after many days of rain, it thrills me. Just yesterday, it seems, I was a flea on the hide of a sleeping elephant as I drove between stubbly mounds of rutted, muddy gray. And now, look what this land has done! All those green shoots that rose from that elephant’s hide in spring have turned into corn! I feel rich, as I breathe in the late September air, a flea become a king.
As autumn rushes in, her flashy colors and cold in tow, she sets aside some places of refuge from the tumult, places of calm, where sun and shadows balance and peace resides.
Within each of us, such places dwell, little meadows of reverie and dream, where we can sit for a while and gather ourselves when the rush of the world overwhelms.
It’s good to map them out, to keep little postcards of them in our pockets, remembering their scents and seasons, and sounds, returning to them whenever the need arises for refuge, for calm. Settle there for a while. Feel the peace. Hear the whispers: You are welcome. You are cherished. You are loved.
The Great Yes always provides. Today it is berries for the birds’ journey south. Sometimes it is help when none seemed at hand. Or hope when all seems lost. Always a light dawns to quench the darkness. Openings appear. Faith rises in response to surrender. Answers flash into view. Don’t allow life’s maze to trick you to despair. The world is far more wondrous than we know. And forever there is this certainty: The Yes provides, and we are known and loved.
You can’t go from emerald to crimson overnight. No great work happens in the blink of an eye. First you need a vision: Let us paint these woods in autumn hues. Then you may begin. And once you have begun, you must keep on. A swath of red here, a bit of gold there, some orange, a touch of yellow. Keep on. Hour by hour, trusting, singing work’s joy, knowing your vision was born in the Yes and the Yes will unfailingly guide your hand.
Summer’s packed her bags now, said her farewells, lowered the lights, gathered her greens, ushered the last of the songbirds toward the southern horizon. Now, as she drifts away, Autumn tiptoes in, and smiling at all that Summer has done, kisses her forehead and scatters gold across the land to thank her and to bless her going.
I was paging through the local newspaper this morning and happened across the area’s high school football scores. I chuckled as I remembered the year our junior high school’s team got off to a dismal start. After losing their opening game 37-0, they went on to lose the next one by an even more crushing 67-0. Ouch. But eventually, they tasted victory and held their own for the rest of the season.
When you think about it, all the games we play—even the ones we call “life”—are a bit like experiments. And as Buckminster Fuller said, “There’s no such thing as a failed experiment, “only experiments with unexpected outcomes.”
Losing isn’t the same thing as failure. You form your strategies and put them into play the best you can. You bring all you know to the game; you call on all your experience.
But life is full of mysteries and variables, and the only way to learn more is to do the experiment, to play the game. Sometimes it all comes together just the way you had hoped. Sometimes it doesn’t. Accidents happen. We make mistakes. We get reminded that we’re mere human beings. But win or lose, we always come away knowing more than we did before we took the leap.
It’s the unpredictability of life that makes it interesting, after all – and fun.
You may think that you’d like to know what the remainder of the day holds, or what tomorrow or next week will bring. But if you did know, life would soon become one long and tedious déjà vu. Surprises keep us awake – and show us where we need to be paying more attention. They teach us. They give us new opportunities to use our strengths and talents and to develop them.
I hope when the coaches of losing football teams sit down with their players that they point out what the team did well and help them to do it even better. I hope they’ll help the kids discover how they can bring their strengths and talents to improve in the areas where they’re weak. And more than anything, I hope they tell their players that losing isn’t failure, and fill them with enthusiasm for learning more about playing the game, and loving it, win or lose.
I hope the next time you stumble, when something doesn’t work out the way you wanted, that you’ll remember it’s just one of life’s unexpected outcomes, meant to lead you onward, to make you better next time, and to unveil a few more of its mysteries for you.
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!
