(All photos and pictures adapted from photos are mine unless noted. You
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As Fall winds down and the onset of Winter is at hand, images seem to arrive at a fast pace which as I pause allow me to incorporate the old with the new in more than a fact-of-the-matter manner. The changing of the seasons is more than a scientific explanation which once known enables the miracles happening all around us to remove our habit patterns which usually place events neatly in small boxes somewhere in our memory banks.
A single leaf changes and before it dies offers a wondrous look at the beauty of its final stage of growth. Yes, growth, as the next stage is to decompose into food for all that will be nourished, plants, grass, trees, everything, seen more clearly as our heart's eyes develop a different view of what God is doing in us and in the world. As we die, physically or of the things that are no longer useful in life, we can also show the grace and splendor of what has and is continuing to transpire as we grow into the fullness of who we truly are.
How? I hear the question asked. Listen to the beautiful answer of someone who "sees" in a most extraordinary way. It will take only five minutes of time -
Click Here: Listen With The Heart
Sonnet
LXXIII: That Time of Year thou mayst in me Behold
BY
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
Winter's onset
a violent abuse by Mother Nature
seeming to wipe out all equanimity.....
Pay no mind
Spring, Summer and Fall
have stored their life deep within you,
accessible with the gentle touch of memory.
The Bird of God's Spirit
will emerge from our soul's depths
in an instant that sears the heart
with the memory of "What Is"
Never with what was, or what will be.
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A Little Humor:
Peace until next week,
Bill Lagerstrom
