The Tug of Autumn
At noon I stood in stillness
amidst a cathedral of browning oaks~
chin up, mouth agape, watching
leaves languish from the trees.
It was raining and the tug of autumn
was surely here.
I would like to be wiser, calmer,
more at home in the world.
I’d like to give my days
the delighted artfulness
of courtship, merging, lingering,
bearing witness, offering praise.
I want to hold what holds us.
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
Lately I’ve been considering this question from the Zen poet Ryokan, “If you point your cart north when you want to go south, how will you arrive?” I think I might do this often- second guessing myself, my deepest calling- trading in the inconceivable for the conceivable, which is often too small. Does this ever happen to you?
I’ve been doing a bit of walking lately, and asking myself some good hard questions, like “Is it God I converse with on my trail, or my own wide and mysterious life?” and “Is it a visitation I wait and long for, or the awakening of an awareness?” Must a distinction be made? Must I choose? Could it be both/and?
These kinds of questions prompt two desires: the first is to escape into the arms of a lovely sleep. And the second is to lean into the mystery, and see how I am held.
Life has Loveliness to Sell song and slide show ~ This is a pretty Sarah Teasdale poem which I sang on my album Savor the Days. I used pictures from my blog, mostly of the Vineyard, for the slide show.
This post is inspired by a quotation I clipped from the top of the Vineyard Gazette newspaper, and which I have had pinned to my wall for many years as wonderful words to live by:
To let no bird fly past unnoticed… to have the mind a storehouse of sunsets,
requires a discipline in pleasure and an education in gratitude.
~G.K. Chesterton
Here are a few summer photographs from life here on the Vineyard, mixed with quotations from my One Hundred Fortunes Collection.
We are not separate from Being. We are in it. ~Plotinus
The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread.
D.H. Lawrence
We are shaped and fashioned by what we love. ~Goethe
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
~Henry David Thoreau
In every human being, there is a special heaven
whole and unbroken.
~Paracelsus
At the center of your being you have the answer.
You know who you are
and you know what you want.
~Lao Tzu
The only wealth is life.
~Henry David Thoreau
There is a lotus on our fishpond. In the morning, it opens its petals to drink in the sun. In the evening, it folds its petals in again, like hands in prayer.
This has helped me to consider the naturalness of my own rythms- how I open my petals sometimes, and how I fold them in when it is time to rest.
Rose and I visited Blackwater Pond the other day. The water lilies were magnificent. The pond stretched out with such peaceful being, and birds poured out their music. We are so grateful to the Martha’s Vineyard Landbank for preserving pockets of beauty throughout the island for all of us to enjoy.
