There is a suggestion that a saunterer is a person walking to the Holy Land, coming from the French ‘à la sainte-terre’. So let’s consider sauntering to be a form of holy or blessed walking.
For everything there is a season,
a time for every activity under heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die.
A time to plant and a time to harvest.
Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time.
He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.
Ecclesiastes 3:1,2,11
“Autumn … makes a double demand. It asks that we prepare for the future — that we be wise in the ways of garnering and keeping. But it also asks that we learn to let go — to acknowledge the beauty of sparseness.”
Bonaro Overstreet, “Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness,” in Jean Beaven Abernethy, Meditations for Women (1947)
Autumn
The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning “no.”
And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.
We’re all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It’s in them all.
And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.
Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. Robert Bly)
God, open my mind and heart.
Lift the barriers,
unbind the strong grasp of my demands
when I want everything to go my way.
God, reach into my inner space.
Sweep out all my old clutter,
enlarge my capacity to receive.
God, empty me of whatever impedes
the growth of our relationship.
Help me to recognise and accept
your sources for my growth.
God, soften my resistance to emptying.
May I welcome each inner season
as a catalyst for my transformation.
Joyce Rupert
God of life, you believe in us, you enrich us, you entrust us with the freedom to choose life.
For all this, we are truly grateful.
Amen.
The Green Tau 