A time to reflect

As the last of the summer warmth gives way to the autumn snap and to the blanket of winter.  Where running streams and brooks now give way to icicles and frost and the beauty of the haw frost on a meadow.  

The sun and the warmth leave the earth to return some while later and the nights draw in revealing a deep black sky with stars like a thousand diamonds cast upon a velvet blanket. 

And our thoughts turn to the last year, the days, the weeks, the months that stretch out in our past. And we turn our thoughts to the potential of the future, of what we might achieve; of new jobs, of more money, of new friends; of goals and aspirations that begin on the first of the month of the new year.  Our energy goes outwards into the outer world; what of the energy within?

A time to reflect and to pause, of lessons learned. The time to look within and see how we are evolving as a spiritual being. The lessons that are all so human – some painful, some joyous, some neutral.

What do we do to form the potential of our future?  Is it in our thoughts and actions and deeds and words or all of these? Do we take time to reflect each day, each moment on how we are as a spiritual being living as a human form?

Time now as those winter nights hug us and we settle into the warmth of a sofa, of a hot drink, of a burning fire. Time to think, what do we need to achieve to be better, to be patient, to be kind, to be tolerant, to have our dreams come true.  What of those dreams? The dreams of others, of our own, what do we need to do to become all that we must be and all that we can be?

A time to look about at nature, how she achieves what she achieves with the simplicity of a smile from a fellow traveller who walks upon the same earth as us, to look at the joy in the eyes of a young child who plays with something simple as a twig on a forest floor. Of a bird that leaves the nest not knowing where it will get its next meal but trusting and knowing it will find sufficient.  A time to disregard and let go of those material things that weigh us down and become a simple traveler in life observing oneself, one’s thoughts, one’s deeds and being content to be in the moment, in the now.