Leaves
dried and heaping thick from last year’s autumn, no doubt – long before I lived
in this cottage or tended this yard – covered a whole garden bed. I could see
the tiniest tender green shoots grasping for sunlight, stretching up and
through the leaf litter. Feeling the 2013 autumnal equinox just on the edge of these
now-cool sunsets and cooler sunrises, I know more leaves will soon fall. I
couldn’t not give those baby green growing things a chance to soak up the impending
rain of the season so I raked up an entire barrelful of deliciously decaying
leaves in order to give some room to that which strives to mature. Because I do
not prefer pristine, I only removed enough leaves to give the plants space.
Yesterday
and this morning I have been thinking about passion. Actually, I have been feeling my passions...those quiet
activities that play loud harmonies within:
Writing.
Sitting in, wandering through, deliberately moving toward,
dreaming about…the nonhuman natural world.
Creating things by hand – a delicious meal, greeting cards, collage
paper, a painting.
Reading.
This
morning I journaled:
Passion merging with
inspiration? Breathing in passion and the release (outbreath) is one’s gift to the world. It is the burning hot impulse to act, out of love and
gentle tenacity. Passion brings together. It builds. It offers. It renews.
Passion with purpose. Passion for Nature, the world, fellow beings. It cannot
be contained within a single being, The Passion Bearer. For it is not self
serving passion: a moment to feel good. It is passionate service. Passionate gifts
are those that draw from the deepest stirrings within – a voice we cannot deny;
a call we cannot silence. It beats sometimes softly, sometimes loudly. But it
is always there. It is incorrigible in the face of inattention. Persistent
relentless stubborn. Beautiful. It is the polestar, a “dependable indicator of
direction,” the “center of attraction.”
Out
in the world of fast moving vehicles and rushing errand-runners, I realized
that sometimes our passions get covered over – the luscious new green growth in
the garden bed not-quite-smothered by last year’s fallen leaves. Gently, we
lift up the leaves, remove them to the compost pile, allow our own sumptuous
passions to receive the light and water so that they can become what the world
needs – a little more beauty, a bit more compassion, an iota of patience.
It
is only by feeding our passions, forgetting the trite distractions of the day,
that we move deeper into who we are, that to which we are called, to our Work
and Offering to the world.
As we move into this autumn time, let us come back to ourselves.
All blog images created and/or photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted.
