Music Dear friends,
Welcome to today's meditation.
Can we begin by entering into a state of relaxation,
Closing our eyes and letting things be,
Noticing our breath,
Gently breathing in and out,
Just simply breathing in and out.
Let's take a minute to enjoy this time when we bring body and mind together.
Sit back and enjoy the gift of this present moment.
Music Welcome back.
It's October here in Dublin,
In Ireland.
Our friends in the Southern Hemisphere will have a chance to exercise their imagination as we reflect on the arrival of autumn,
Our autumn,
Or as it's appropriately called in the US,
The fall.
There's a slight chill in the air these mornings,
But the darker mornings allow us an opportunity to awake before dawn and enjoy the miracle of the sunrise.
As it has been said,
Awake at dawn and give thanks for another day of loving.
And then we have the earlier sunsets,
A real gift in this part of the world where in summer we enjoy long evenings of daylight.
These miracles of nature are more compressed and more evident in these shortening days.
And of course there are the glorious autumn colours extending over the trees day by day.
Touches of gold,
Then orange,
Then red.
We pray for calm days so that this autumnal shading of nature will not be blown prematurely away.
In his poem,
The Wild Swans at Kool,
The Irish poet William Butler Yeats describes the scene on an autumn day.
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry.
Under the October twilight the water mirrors a still sky.
Upon the brimming water among the stones are nine and fifty swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me since I first made my count.
I saw,
Before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount and scatter wheeling in great broken rings upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon these brilliant creatures and now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I,
Hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still,
Lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air.
Their hearts have not grown old.
Passion or conquest wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious,
Beautiful.
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool delight men's eyes,
When I awake some day to find they have flown away?
William Butler Yeats and the Wild Swans at Kull Let's pause now to give thanks for the seasons of our lives and the beauty that surrounds us.
Thank you for watching!
Welcome back.
We are reminded that every season has its own magic.
In autumn,
In Dublin,
We have the earlier sight of the magic of the night sky.
In midsummer,
You would have to stay up until after midnight to see this miracle of nature.
And then we can be surprised by what we call Indian summers.
Just when we think we have to prepare to wrap up,
We are surprised with clear blue skies as summer makes one of its last stands and everything looks bright again.
The outdoor chairs,
The outdoor tables are back in use again.
And even when the weather changes and we sometimes begin to complain,
Alfred Wainwright,
Author of A Coast to Coast Walk,
Tells us,
There's no such thing as bad weather,
Only unsuitable clothing.
October brings us indoors a little more and reminds us that the weather is not so good.
We are invited to slow down.
Good advice since we rush far too much.
October represents advance notice of a year not ending in a final sense,
But only turning another corner to a new beginning in the cycle of life.
In her poem from 1971,
Maya Angelou reminds us that life is a cycle,
That there are beginnings leading to endings that lead back to beginnings again.
She uses the example of the seasons as a metaphor for life.
This is what she says,
Only life is a cycle.
This is what she says,
Only lovers see the fall a signal end to endings,
A gruffish gesture alerting those who will not be alarmed,
That we begin to stop in order to begin again.
So let us see seasonal changes,
Such as autumn,
As simply one of four segments on the wheel of the year.
The wheel goes round and round,
And as it does may we grow in wisdom,
And may we learn to accept with gratitude what is brought to us in each of the year's segments.
As T.
S.
Eliot reminds us in this quote,
We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started,
And know the place for the first time.
May your autumn days be blessed,
May all your days be blessed.
Namaste.
Thank you.
