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meditation: fall/it all falls down

i love fall.

I love that fall is such a necessary part of the life cycle of earth where I live.

I love that in the fall we can see the beauty of change,
of death,
of decay
and letting go.

I love how the birds seem to have so much more sky to play in all the sudden. I love how all sorts of nests slowly come into view high up in the trees, another unseen ecosystem…
even as I worry about that exposure (what is safety?)

I love the ground covered in leaves which,
on their own,
will break down and feed the soil.

I love the colors, and the speed of them changing.

watching the same little tree in our lot go burgundy, lipstick red, deep orange, sun yellow, and then
stripped naked.

watching the twin male pear trees in our front yard turn, together, deep purple and gold.

I love the smells of fall.

(at our detroit doula potluck tonight we had 3 varieties of squash soup, and homemade (handpicked) apple sauce and zatar bread. it smelled like warmth and life and summer’s end.)

this season is a call to:
let go -> of busy-ness, overwhelm, untruths, and the social season of summer.
find -> warm places to sleep and work and be in a context of cold.
cherish -> sunlight. all other manifestations of heat.

as the starks say, winter is coming.

and this season makes me more deeply aware of the great imbalance of society, where there are so many people without warm places to just BE.

I don’t know how to let go of that,
but I don’t want to.

there are too many who have fallen through the cracks in this broken system, leaves falling on concrete,
bagged up in plastic,
raked up into piles/shelters
placed behind bars…

no where to go,
no way to stay in the cycle of a good life.

as the temperature drops i wrestle again with my socialzed urge to do charity from a place of pity. I don’t believe in that as a powerful act, politically. I know it maintains inequality, to do FOR instead of WITH.

I let the urge well up, change color, let go.

i am always asking: what does real power look like? in chaos, is power calm? is there power giving in to the inevitable, changing color? is there power in staying alive when expected to die?

every year I think these thoughts, watching the leaves fall, watching my street neighbors huddle and then go underground.

I want to always be this aware.

how long is this season, which feels so full of metaphors for this moment?

how long will our society be falling down?

(1 million people have left big banks in america, letting go, falling from the system to fertilize credit unions and community banks and social justice investment funds. the surface of our society ripples with changes that look like fire, catch on the wind and go.)

I know the trees will let go until they are bare –
but in our case the tree itself is rotten.
the forest is rotten.
we hear it, see it.

perhaps it all falls down.
and that could be terrifying,
(I love change, I fear change, I love change)
or as gorgeous as this fall season…
we cannot know.

winter is coming, and everything is shaking apart.

each unique transformation is a wonder on its own, and when seen altogether yields a vision that is breathtaking, incomprehensible to us as we are so contained in time and space and scope.

we can only know the great miracle by seeing wholeness in the tiniest portion.

I want to be as insignificant as a leaf right now,
letting go,
falling away,
trusting the matter of my existence
(as irrelevant on the individual level
as it is crucial to the needs of the many)
to the next iteration of life on earth