This morning as I stepped out my door, crystaline frost blanketed the rooftop and tips of each blade of grass. The early morning light filtered through the yellowing leaves and the shift into mid-Fall was palpable.
Outside, nature is dropping her shawl and adornments as leaves and acorns litter the ground. The soundtrack is shifting to the wind swirling as the things that have fallen crunch and explode into a million bits underneath our feet. As their point of origin thins and becomes bare, I can see fully across our neighborhood pond to houses once shrouded by greener and warmer ways and days.
It is easy to mourn the loss of those past months but there is always something beautiful to witness when the scene changes. On this particular morning, I saw my friend sitting with a warm mug of tea on the edge of her dock across the pond witnessing the views from her location. We both raised our hand to wave hello as we acknowledged one another’s presence. It was startlingly synchronized but perhaps not so surprising as we were both taking the early moments to sit in our separate seats to simply take things in.
There was nothing pressing.
Nothing hurried.
No thing calling us away from the most important thing- the present.
As we walk through November, we invite you to savor your steps that you walk alone and with others, and to find your seat. It is an emotion-filled time of year that deserves its time and space to observe, feel and savor. It is a time to not only be grateful but to also ask ourselves time and again, ‘what do I need in this moment?’, with as much compassion to ourselves as we would ask a friend.
We look with appreciation and heart to all of the moments we move and sit together with you.
With Love,
Your Friends at TYC
Kindness
“Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.”
-Naomi Shahib Nye