Autumn

All summer we sail the soul in our inner sky born upon its sea green heart. The changing of the season reminds us that there must be an enfolding as well as an unfolding. A moving inwards to enclose the experiences of our fervent solstice. There must be time to read our runes, that the greening may bring new fullness from the ripened term, and from the branch that stretched too far to hold this time.

Time's mercy is that it conserves our significance as autumnal repose, to mull the new wine internally for certain awakening. This season of involution husbands the gathering to maturity. We let go of the growing that it might be the planting of potential, that the stock of our awareness becomes the store of foresight.

Autumn changes the way the heart responds to itself. It no longer opens only to receive, but to conceive itself in this new wind of change. It embodies the gifts of the summer that the harvest be not depleted by forgetfulness. The womb of insight envelops the soul's fleeting affairs to germinate yet further light.

For every advance of aspiration there is a season of contemplation that must be the dormitory of new arising. A time for the bearing of spirit children, nourished by the fall of the green leaf to grow in comprehension. Autumnal hearts are the seedbed of God's becoming consciousness. They are pregnant with seasoned purpose, being the vestibule of new emerging.

Just as a bird that flies too high may wound itself on the unsupporting air, so the soul must regain yet greater wings to take the air once more. It challenges the dusk to be the rebirth of flight. And so the dusk of the dying season is the nursery of yet higher revelations of reality.

Autumn is the time of temperate confinement, a time of quietude, that the soul may absorb the lessons of its journey in God. This pilgrimage is to the heart of love, that is both the sanctuary and inception of all heart traveling. Autumn reforms us in the likeness of divine renewal. It is the harbinger of resurrection, and the pause that inspires our next step.

Here we abide in the unwinding of light's coil, and pray into the world the fullness of our understanding. The leavings of yesterday become the flowers of tomorrow; and so we say -- This much I have known, and by this, I shall see my way.

Every now and then,
all the green shoots
and tender buds
of a love between people
come shyly up
through the surface of this world,
and we remember that all night
they have been growing together
in the same garden.

Every now and then,
someone drinks a cup of wine,
and for no clear reason,
nourishes the world.
The drop of every heart
becomes a flood,
and we all begin to pour.

Every now and then,
a person will surrender his interests,
accounts, and dogmas.
He will begin to fall like autumn,
just for the sake of losing,
and so we are all changed
by his season.

Love is not tempted
by anything less than itself.
Sleepers awake in every heart.
Every now and then,
autumn drinks the summer down
and we all fall into spring.

from Dancing With Sophia