Autumn is sending you invitations

This was one of the first fallen autumn leaves I saw this year, on September 17, by itself on a sidewalk in my neighborhood. I took its picture and posted it on Instagram and Facebook with the caption, "This seems to happen earlier these days. #fleeting #cultivatecalm." About two dozen of my Facebook friends and acquaintances liked the post, and one added a comment:

Autumn is sending you invitations!

Sometimes I'm tempted to give up social media, but it's moments like this I know I probably never will. I've been meditating on Sara's five words ever since that day, thinking about why the falling leaves are astonishing and poignant and meaningful, and why they become more so every year we spend on this planet.

This has been a year full of reflection for me. On the nature of work, as always. On the importance of love, and the balance between solitude and companionship. These matters merit my attention, and they help direct my attention to the handful of people who need me most (and from whom I am learning the most, too).

This blog takes its name from something Henry David Thoreau wrote, something I first read on a bumper sticker at the Walden Pond gift shop, "Surely joy is the condition of life." I bought three or four stickers and gave them to friends over the years. At long last, during my Wellspring travels and our study of the writer's work earlier this year, I was compelled to finally read this phrase in its context.

In his 1842 essay Natural History of Massachusetts, Thoreau wrote of growing weary of politics and even "the din of religion, literature, and philosophy," then he describes how his spirit is continually refreshed and renewed by nature, by

the young fry that leap in ponds, the myriads of insects ushered into being on a summer evening, the incessant note of the hyla with which the woods ring in the spring, the nonchalance of the butterfly carrying accident and change painted in a thousand hues upon its wings, or the brook minnow stoutly stemming the current, the lustre of whose scales worn bright by the attrition is reflected upon the bank.

And so it is for me. The first big windstorm of the fall is due tonight. It's raining now, and rain is forecast for the next week and probably for the next month, since this is October and it is Seattle. Yet I feel fortified for any darkness and uncertainty ahead by many walks in beautiful places this fall. I've been recording my impressions less in words and more in memories and photos, because that's where I am in my life.

I don't write here much, and I don't post much on social media. I take comfort (and, yes, joy) in what Thoreau says about "the inexpressible privacy of a life -- how silent and unambitious it is."

Autumn's invitation to me, especially in this season of din and angst, is to dare to be unambitious, to dwell in the present moment, to recognize and gratefully acknowledge gifts as they're revealed to me, and to share when I am moved to do so.

Thanks, Sara, and HDT, too.