Friday morning creeps in under a veil of fog.  The trees seem to sag under the weight of morning dew, appearing sad at the barrier between themselves and morning’s warm red glow.

 It’s cool but not yet cold. 

Winter hasn’t come just yet, but its noisy, blustery arrival is anticipated while Autumn silently enters.  Each day she paints the leaves with a fiery red or a warm golden glow, quietly revealing a color palette with such energy, intensity, & passion, I’m astounded no one seems to notice.   As I gasp in awe in my head I hear a musical crescendo building & building & building with each color I see that I feel the musical climax approaching with the inevitable release from the source and descent into the unknown.

This season, Autumn (Automne, Podzim, Herbst, Autonno, Otoño) resonates so deeply within me.  The cool air chills you, just a bit, yet its crispness and clarity awakens you to the quiet beauty surrounding and within.  The trees, having been so busy, so productive during Spring and Summer growing, blossoming, stretching and expanding so noisily, now begin to slow their movements, quiet their growth, contract instead of expand.  Turning away from absorbing energy from the sun, earth, and sky, Autumn beckons her children to turn inward, focusing her sacred energy to their center with such an intensity that they must seek release and escape from their appendages, the leaves, in an explosion of color of fire or slowly burning embers.

A thousand shades of green evolve into a thousand tiny fires.

Although I know I sound crazy or worse yet, waxing poetic, but I feel these signs of Autumn are symbols of the fire within– within every molecule, every cell, every living being, from the infinite expanse of the universe to the quiet voice within me.  Yet it is only a symbol, a trite talisman.  I feel vainglorious to think I could ever describe something so intangible, so precious.  A thing I understand everyone possesses, but few are conscious of. It cannot be described, drawn, seen, or heard. For it is part of an indefinable process, the journey.  And every attempt I make to describe it seems somehow… sadly… lacking.

Yet for some strange reason I cannot help but try—

After absorbing from the outside; opening up and changing with Spring’s rebirth and blossoming, then whisked away with Summer’s eagerness to grow, produce, stretch, expand.  Autumn brings silence and reflection, and in that quiet stillness, watching the watery sunset and feeling the omens of Winter’s dark and icy coldness, she whispers her passionate secret —

 “I am alive, I am here, I exist.  I am a form of beauty like no other.  I am worthy of life and love and honor.  I matter because I

have a purpose– I am classic beauty, archetypal elegance, eternal grace.  These fiery colors signal the inevitable time when light diminishes and warmth fades and the energy from the earth, sun, and sky that has given me life slowly disappears.  The flow of energy changes course and balance is restored. Yet these fiery banners, these autumnal anthems reveal the immeasurable, incomprehensible, breathtaking energy and fire in me, from me, of me.

Energies that never fade, never die, only expand and retract, ebb and flow.”