Before our colors fade into winter’s quiet dreams, let us give you one more sweep of hues to carry you through the colorless cold. Tuck our bright flags into the corners of your mind. Wave them on nights when the wind howls, when winter pulls its white blankets over your fields. Let them warm you with their flames and encourage you when the days seem bleak and endless. Let them whisper to you that winter is but a pulling back of the Archer’s bow so that, come spring, shafts of fresh color may fly, and joy, renewed, may drench your soul.
You can tell me the how of it all that you want, explaining the way the light rays bend around the curviness of earth, and how their travel through the atmosphere produces all these colors. It doesn’t change things or answer the why. There didn’t have to be beauty. But here it is, glowing, and touching our souls. Let’s just take it as a gift, a love note from the Yes, one flowing note in its endless, mysterious song. Just because.
It matters, I believe, that we remember these moments of beauty, that we fold them into our being. And not only the sight of them and their fragrance and sounds, but the way they touched a deeper truth within us. And it is that which is important for us to recall—the way they sang to us of the Yes from which they arose, and the way our hearts sang with them in a mystery surpassing comprehension and beyond all time.
It’s like this now, like living in a bowl of golden light. And all you can do is walk in wonder, knowing, truly knowing, what it is to feel alive and blessed.
So, now that summer’s dust has finally settled and we’re beginning the slide into our year-end reality again, let’s take a minute to kick back, stretch out, and let our imaginations roll.
Here’s a question to get yours in motion: What would have to happen to end up making this a glorious year for you?
Here’s another question: When I asked you that last question, what kind of feelings sprang up? Did the idea of ending with a glorious year excite you and get you thinking about the possibilities, and maybe even some delicious high improbabilities? Did it spark your sense of adventure?
Or did it feel heavy, as if the very idea of having a glorious year was an impossibility?
If it felt heavy, remember, all we’re doing here is playing. Imagine something magical happens, your own personal miracle. Imagine that everything that weighed you down simply evaporated for a while. Pretend that, just for now, whatever it is that’s keeping you from imagining a fabulous year is gone. Stuff it in a sack and let it sit over there on a shelf for a bit while you play.
So, the question is what would have to happen to make this a glorious year for you? Go ahead, name something. Anything. Whatever comes into your head.
Now take that something and imagine it actually happening. (We’re just playing a game.) Put yourself right inside it and let it drench your senses. When you think about it, what do you see? Where are you? What does it look like? What sounds do you hear? What are people saying to you or about you in this marvelous circumstance? What does the air feel like? Does it carry a fragrance? What’s the temperature? What are you wearing?
Pretend that we’re all sitting in a big circle and each of us is sharing our vision, and it’s your turn.
Imagine everybody clapping in delight at your dream.
Now sit back and relish it for a bit. Feel how good it feels.
Then, just for fun, ask yourself what’s stopping you from turning your vision into your reality? Maybe not completely, maybe just galloping toward it like some wild stallion. What’s the first thing that you’d have to do? What’s stopping you from doing it? What would you have to change? What would you have to give up?
If you answered a bunch of those questions, you have, right now, some great new insights about yourself—whether you ever act on them or not. You have a vision of something that captures the feel of things that turn you on. And you know for sure that you have a wonderful imagination – and that it can be quite an adventure just to let it roll from time to time.
It lets you see new possibilities for yourself. It opens you to new ideas.
You can grab that vision you created, you know. You can toss it around, look at it from new angles, see what else it has to say, what direction it’s asking you to go. It came, after all, from some place deep inside you. And it came to you for a reason.
What got me to thinking about this is a quote from Robert Moss, a man who teaches people how to capture and learn from their dreams. Here’s what he had to say about the kind of vision that describes your glorious life:
“Let’s be real about this: There will be days when the contrast between your vision and the clutter and letdowns and bruises of everyday life seems so jarringly huge that you give up hope. But this is not about hope. It’s about vision, which is more substantial than hope. Hold the vision in your mind, however rough the seas turn out to be. If you can dream it, you can do it.”
“If you can dream it, you can do it.” You’ve heard that, I know, before. But suppose that it’s true. Suppose that it can be true for you.
I walk the hillside gathering twigs that I will use as tinder for fires on cold nights, an annual custom that I began three decades ago. The air carries the fragrance of fallen leaves and coming rain. For one brief moment, the sun breaks through the layers of cloud and I turn to see it kiss the treetops as they dance, tall and bright, against the charcoal sky. I add the moment to my twig bin along with a fallen gold leaf. Remind me, I say to it, the next time that I touch you, of this warm and shining day when I saw the sun brushing the mid-October leaves and watched them shimmer in its sudden light.
One of the things that the Great Yes wanted to experience was being a maple tree whose leaves would turn scarlet in fall. And so he did. And on one perfect October afternoon when the sun was warm and a cool breeze was waltzing through its scarlet leaves, the maple tree danced, and the Yes sang this wondrous moment down into his very atoms in perfect and absolute joy.
In case your mind is longing for ease, in case your heart is in need of a song, in case you need to remember that, in the wider world, beauty dwells, the Great Yes placed this love flame in the midst of the pines to dance, its crimson and gold leaves whispering, “Be at peace, Child. All is well.”
You show us our greediness, autumn. We walk through your perfect falling leaves, through the exquisite textures and colors of you, grasping the moment so tightly, wanting it never to end, or at least to slow so we can take in every detail. And yet the dance itself is at the heart of the beauty. And the song can only sing if we let the music play.
You must love these days, I say to the ancient maple, as I stand beneath its spread boughs gazing in awe at its leaves, orange and lemon and crimson, dancing in the sun. How could you not feel proud and triumphant to have produced such a glorious display! How I hope our human adulations satisfy and touch your soul. I hope you feel it. I hope you know. This is what it’s all for, isn’t it? These precious days of splendor. The rest, the shade and whispering songs, and seeds, and perches, and nests, were simply gracious gifts that you bestowed along the way because your core is made of Yes and love. And now we get to see it, writ large, in flaming letters that dance in joy beneath this autumn sky.
