Katie Jones Pomeroy

AUTUMN AWAKENING
Reflections on a "yes" mindset / remembering the magic

i.
Dear Friends ~ The chill of autumn rouses something in me that begins to doze in the comfortable consistency of late summer warmth. The sun sets sooner and the air cools considerably. Each nerve on my arm becomes acutely aware of the change; chill bumps peak up as if to say, "What's this now?", "Oh, Hello, Old Friend!", "I am alive, conscious and present on this spinning Earth for the start of another season".

For me, each quarter brings a giddy excitement. The magic and merriment of the altering autumn colors, of the first snowfall, snowdrop and crocus buds, or butterflies, or when summer trees begin to mimic those orange butterfly wings once more. Round and round. They are predictable, but they are not everyday. They are consistent, but also passing.

ii.

Dear Friends ~ Rainbows may seem a rather glib focus for a March newsletter, but stick with me. Overplayed as they are in early Spring, I have the compounding factor of rainbow-enthusiast housemates; children pushing me to the next level of septacolored semicircles, selecting every story rendering a rainbow. As my spiritual directors, my children implore me to read and reread favorite picture books ad nauseum; a Lectio Devina of a bedtime reading ritual.

In truth, and not at all disingenuously, I find a deep well in children's literature. And rainbows, as both a physical phenomenon and illustrative image, offer seemingly endless edification, reaching back into our ancient stories and traditions around the globe and ahead into our scientific understanding of how we perceive our world on a narrow spectrum of visible light, with much to see beyond our means.

Dear Friends ~ My young children replay variations on the same stories over and over. They are learning and growing through recurrent dramas of goodness, love, and bravery. In truth, I do the same: playing with the idea of myself.

[Scene 1: The Garden] This playground represents my teetertotter approach to existence, one moment trying to control it and when that breaks me, at first humbly and then jubilantly, marveling at that which is larger and more clever than I. I learn to simply follow the beauty, adding my own weavings, whittlings, and winding foot paths; my own song and silence.

Dear Friends ~ The kids and I stare out the window, watching birds. The juncos are my favorite, presenting in sooty suits, bowing often in a jaunty jig of seed seeking. My son enjoys the sparrows, who descend in numbers that send our feeders reeling. My daughter likes the showy birds—right red cardinals and silence shattering jays.

I am mesmerized in a manner that conjures memories of my own childhood, when wonder came in waves of such intensity it could knock the feet out from under my day, leaving me belly down, drawn to the details of a blade of grass or a grasshopper's legs. As I grew in body, mind, and vision, my sights widened to bigger pictures; a perspective that helped me find myself in academics, civics, and spirituality.