This almost-damp soil, this chilled-warm air, these faded yellow but still utterly brilliant leaves, and the bright cheery flowers on my windowsill … these are gifts.
That redcedar with her telltale-autumn rust-colored boughs hanging as if change is not afoot among the evergreen boughs, from her, too, I receive gifts: breath, beauty, change, stability. A reaching upward, eyes crawling limb to limb until the triangular top pricks the white cloud, now blue sky, now gray cloud as unseeable breezes animate the hopeful promise of drought-quenching rain.
Those same clouds last night, or their kin, are gifts: backdrop for Harvest Moon rising, palette for this morning’s peachy sunrise, indelible pink and gold a few sunsets ago.
These visual gifts are the first to arrive to me; the next ones come in different senses –
sensation of Earth’s breath on my skin,
an unbidden but ever welcome scent of pine needles,
the tang of my homegrown tomato who’s still deciding if he’s ripe or not,
the sound of chickadees in a new season of activity: reminiscent of springtime in a landscape emerging into autumnal bliss.
There are many gifts including all those that I can’t perceive with senses but which I feel with clarity within me: comfort, peace, invigoration, inspiration, praise, grief, expectation.
In response to these gifts, I give my life, my passionate service, my work, my heart, my stamina, my prayers …
