Shades of September

Here we are in the second half of September already. Goldenrod and asters are the wildflower stars of this season with the brilliant colors of sumac leaves a bright contrast to the many subtle shades of green and gold. The

Shades of September

are not yet brilliant and beautiful as they will be later this fall. But the turning of the season is visible almost everywhere I look. I took a short walk this morning in a part of French Regional Park where there is lots of sumac growing. There is a hillside that is covered with sumac. And every year when the sumac turns to shades of red, orange, and rust, the hillside glows.

Some of the sumac was beginning to turn but it has not yet reached its color peak for the season.

Even with the unusual warm September weather we are having I can feel a sense of fall in the air. I am looking forward to slightly cooler temperatures, though I still mourn this turning towards full autumn. Last night was a full moon and partial eclipse of the moon. The media was making a big deal of the harvest blood super moon. But I didn’t go out to photograph it last night.

The night before the full moon I woke up briefly at 2:00 AM and saw the beautiful almost full moon high in the sky surrounded by wispy white clouds. It was so beautiful I couldn’t resist getting up and picking up my camera to make a few photos of it through the living room window.

Then I happily went back to bed and slept again.

Things Change All the Time

When I notice beauty right outside my window I try not to ignore it because things change all the time, sometimes very quickly. It took only a minute or two from when I photographed the clear image of the moon for wispy clouds to move in front of it. I’m glad I took the time to notice and to photograph the beauty that I saw. It is in the daily noticing beauty around me that I find joy and wonder of life, not in the so-called special events.

What Should We Do About That Moon?
A wine bottle fell from a wagon
And broke open in a field.

That night one hundred beetles and all their cousins
Gathered

And did some serious binge drinking.

They even found some seed husks nearby
And began to play them like drums and whirl.
This made God very happy.

Then the “night candle” rose into the sky
And one drunk creature, laying down his instrument,
Said to his friend – for no apparent
Reason,

“What should we do about that moon?”

Seems to Hafiz
Most everyone has laid aside the music

Tackling such profoundly useless
Questions.

   — Hafiz

Enjoy the beauty of the moon in all of its phases. But don’t let the media hype you into thinking that you are missing out if you don’t go out to gaze at a particular eclipse or if you miss the northern lights. There is  as much beauty in the ordinary world all around us as there is in so-called special events.

Today seems like a good day to celebrate Hafiz. So I’ll share one more of his poems before I go…

Everything You Do is Sacred

Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child’s training wheels
To be laid aside
When you can finally live
With veracity
And love.

…Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time
For you to deeply compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.
― Hafiz

Enjoy the shades of September. And celebrate the ordinary moments of beauty in each day.

May you walk in beauty.