old but blazing gold

Bright blazing day today. Though last leaves the colour of cornflakes shiver on almost denuded trees, the autumnal sun is brilliant. I learned (or relearned?) recently, that leaves in autumn show their 'true colours', having lost their chlorophyll. That's quite an interesting thought, that at the end of their existence, though the life-sap is ebbing, true nature/character is unmasked. In the leaves' case of 'leaving' it looks to us like bright glory but could we be witnessing destruction and seeing it as beautiful? Some people hate the endingness of autumn, seeing it as bleak, negative, failure - the promise of summer always defeated, come to dust. But I have always loved its change, its sense of transformation - turning base green into gold. In the world, we are moving from a time when "Greed was good" and the accumulation of stuff, property, etc to increase one's sense of substantiality was encouraged and actively fostered; into a new time when change is being recognised as vital. Change is threatening quite often because it means entering unknown territory - you lose something or someone and it seems there is only ending. But the ending is also the beginning, nothing is certain but change. Being alive to living change.
(photo by Vova Zinger)

It's a new dawn, it's a new day

Hard, when the weather is driech, as it is today, to think in terms of new days and new beginnings. But the light, though grey and gloomy, is new. The trees stripped back to almost bareness are clearing themselves for a restorative pause. When everything is dying back and disappearing it can look like an end, but this only superficial. Everything is dedicating to a necessary rest, before the slow gathering of strength begins in preparation for an eventual new beginning.