September. The birds are busy at the feeder. It has been fun to watch the young ones grow up this summer. Gradually the young finches, cardinals, and bluebirds are coming into their adult colors. Every day, a stronger patch of red, another blue feather…. And now some of the birds seem to be taking note of the turning season. The red-bellied woodpecker visits often, taking his mouthful of seeds straight to Old Oak, where he hides them in deep crevasses of the bark.

September. Even though it has been dry here, mushrooms are springing up in their multitudes — Deer are gathering in larger groups again — and though the hot days are not yet done with us, the nights are cooling down, promises of the new season ahead.

Having been tuned into school schedules for much of my life, September has always brought me feelings not of endings but of new beginnings, new possibilities, new vistas opening up. This year that sense of anticipation is somewhat muted, but just typing down the preceding sentence — a memory of that feeling, a reminder to myself — is helping lift my spirits and clear my vision a bit. Now my curiosity kicks in — What next?

The morning of September 1st brought to my mailbox two wonderful quotes and an exquisite photo in a friend’s substack. They are so beautiful and so true to my thinking/feeling that I must share them with you.

The first quote is the monthly Reflection from the Center for Education, Imagination, and the Natural World , an organization dear to my heart:

September Reflection

"One of the great achievements of humanity during the early period of awakened consciousness was its capacity for subjective communion with the totality of things and with each particular thing. 

Each fragment of matter had it own subjectivity, its own interiority, its own spirit presence. 

It was to this spirit presence that humans addressed themselves. 

So with the trees and flowers, birds and animals, so with the wind and the sea and the stars, 
so with the sun and the moon. 

In all things there was a self, a subjectivity, a center; humans communed with this center with a profound intimacy." 

~ Thomas Berry, “Contemplation and World Order”

And then the Word for the Day from https://grateful.org/ :

"Our sense of enchantment is not triggered only by grand things; 
the sublime is not hiding in distant landscapes. 
The awe-inspiring, the numinous, is all around us, all the time. 
It is transformed by our deliberate attention.
KATHERINE MAY

Sensing the Seasons and Cycles and Spirals of Being enriches my life.  
But I don't want to forget that my awareness of & participation in Life are made up of Moments, of Nows -- 
each encompassing both beginnings and endings, each a threshold new possibilities.  
I would like to become more attentive to each moment & to the myriad beings that companion me along the way.....