There are a couple things I love most about this time of year.

1) The way the light comes up in the morning. There is something about the later rise of the sun mixed with the cool of the season that results in all sorts of shades and hues from soft periwinkle and amber and blush, to deep cobalt and magenta and fire-soaked red.

2) The subtle nuances in the loss of leaves from the trees, each beautiful in its own unique way. Some already stripped bare, preparing for winter; some still covered in partial browns and bronzes; and a few just now reaching their height with pops of crimsons and rainbows and bars of gold. How do they decide when to turn? How do they choose when to fall?

It’s like there’s a secret dance of the trees; each step perfectly choreographed to a sacred timing all its own.

I’ve been thinking about timing lately: why some things fall out when they do, the way they do, and how they do. It is my experience that most steps seem to follow some sort of sacred choreography in this universe, our own included. Even the dark chaos of space exploded in creation with an ocean of stars.

Everything has a place, every place in its time.

These days my times seem to be wrapping around full circle. I see cycles completing themselves so new cycles can spin out. I see the old of yesterday make way for the new of tomorrow. And I see myself standing in the middle of all the change, trying to find my equilibrium in the flux, even as life is moving as fast as the quickening rise and set of that fire-soaked sun.

As I go about the time of this fall, I am finding that when I can’t find my Balance, it is more helpful to try and find my Love.

There are these questions I am asking myself these days: How do I love myself in this change? How do I love these challenges in my life? How do I love others through the change? How can I adjust my lens to try and see the situation through the eyes of love, bring the energy of love into interactions and relationships and myself?

How do I invite love into things that may feel unlovable? For all of us- when you strip away our branches, take things down to our unvarnished cores- are as knobby and gnarled as the lessons in those autumn trees.

We don’t always see the beauty in the knobs, it’s too easy to dismiss something that looks ill-shaped. But if you stand and stare at a tree long enough, you’ll start to see there are dozens of colors in the stretches of bark- from snowy grays to burnt slates to whispers of the softest pinks. And you’ll begin to see that all those knots and knobs look like wise eyes, watching over us in this place.

And you’ll notice all the layers that compose the strength of their trunks along with the deep roots it takes to stand solid in a world that constantly beckons change. That their branches are fearless when it comes to that change, growing and releasing and reseeding and budding over and over again-

-Just like our lives: everything has a place, every place in its time.

I don’t always know about the timing of things, but I am learning that Love always has the right timing. Here to remind us of our place in it All. Here to help the leaves fall and the grounds frost in some stunning Dance of Life that we can’t always see, but discern nonetheless. Here to awaken us to the courage in our own change.

Here to cover us with fuchsia rays and remind us-

-The light has a way of creeping up unexpectedly and astonishing us at the most opportune times.