Gratitude

It is the first day of October. Autumn. It is the beginning of the final quarter of another year. This time of year always feels like the last chapters of something to me…although a beginning would be just as much the truth, perhaps even more so. Every moment is new, after all. That’s truth. Still, it feels as if there is a book about to close as the weather gets cooler and the leaves begin to turn color. There is a certain beauty in cycles…a certain symmetry. Nature has her own rituals.

I was wondering to myself, this morning, what I was doing last year at this time of year…and I remembered.  I had just arrived back in Madison by Greyhound bus. Ostensibly, I was there to move along the sale of the house. Ostensibly, I was there to help take care of things so the realtor would not be alone…but all I felt then was paralyzed. All I felt then was useless…and afraid.

There is a place beyond this human experience that is whole. There is a place within each of us that is sound…forever pristine, unharmed and innocent. I believe that with all my heart. Some call that place “The Witness.” I have heard it called “Home.” The paradox is that we never find that place by denying the wounds we have felt. I have never found light by denying the darkness exists.

It may be that nothing I do will matter at all in the end…a thousand years from now, or even as few as a hundred…or ten. All I can do is nurture what matters to me now. That’s living. That’s appreciating the gift. That’s gratitude.

Diving in with everything I’ve got is an expression of gratitude.

So, as the year begins to wind down into autumn and winter; I wonder what will be born in the spring. What seeds can I plant now?