november

If I'd seen this "welcome to November" yesterday I would have used it as my Friday quotation.  It's lovely.  It's celebratory of what this month can hold.  And it honors so much of what I love about fall, when the days become crisp (at least for a few morning and evening hours here in Austin), there are a few leaves on the ground to crunch beneath your feet on a morning walk, and the daylight hours dwindle just enough to suggest that it is time to go home, to take care of the hearth, and to take care of the heart within. 
At school, we say good-bye to October with an All Saints Day and welcome November with All Souls Day.  We sing "For All the Saints" as we honor those who have gone before us - well-known saints and personal saints - and all those among us who are living lives of purpose and compassion and passion.  And then the next day we have a wonderful (and bittersweet) slideshow honoring the love that we've had for loved ones and friends (even furry, four-legged friends!) who are no longer with us.  This year, our chaplain opened the service by recognizing that there is a sadness to the service.  (Indeed, I'm always in tears.  And not just because of the background music.)  And that sadness, he said, is okay.  It's the other side of love.  It's the sweet ache of having lost a loved one.  But the beauty in all of it is the power of that love.  And how if that love is so powerful, can we even imagine God's love for us?  If our love for someone here on earth is strong enough to exist even after they are gone, how strong then is the love of God for all of us - a love that transcends time and the passage from life to death.
So that is always how my November begins.  Thinking of those whom I love yet no longer see.  Thinking about tending to the relationships I still have here on earth.  And seeing what I have to learn from it all.  These thoughts I stumbled upon seemed to be a good way to continue into this month:
"It's time to revel in the love of the warm, furry bodies around you.  It's time to move and sweat and pray on your mat and fill it with the salt of your tears.  It's time to go to bed early and snuggle with the covers wrapped around you, a book in your hands as you let your imagination soar.  It's time to drink warm drinks and take long walks and bundle yourself in scarfs and socks and everything warm.  It's time to settle into who you are and know that this is how you get to live, again.  November, this year (and all the ones to follow), let's be kind; let's do our work and heal our wounds, and learn to love with grace - and fail and learn better the next day and the next.  Let's talk about God and fear and hope and life.  Let's talk about all of the things, because that is what life is for."
Here's to the glorious month ahead!