I love summer and all the fun and warmth she provides. But for me, autumn is the season my soul feels most at home. I love the freedom of letting go of things that no longer serve me, like a tree lets go of its leaves. And the symbolism of the seed, alone in the darkness of the Earth, awaiting its time to grow into something new, gives me a quiet hope.

We went away to the coast of Oregon over the long Labor Day weekend. Each morning, we took a long walk on the beach. And while a few mornings, we had a camera in hand; we decided to head out without our cameras one morning. However, I couldn’t help myself, and the camera that is always near, my iPhone, came out again and again. I love the freedom of the iPhone. I don’t have to meter or focus or count how many pictures I have left or really think too much at all. I see and click, see and click, see and click. My iPhone is the camera I always have on me, and it is usually my most reliable.

Between the liberty of a new month, the anticipation of the beginning of fall, and the ease of my iPhone, I kept thinking of one of my favorite poems from John O’Donahue. May it bring you a sense of hope, comfort, and freedom.

For Freedom

As a bird soars high
In the free holding of the wind,
Clear of the certainty of the ground,
Opening the imagination of wind.
Into the grace of emptiness,
May your life awaken
To the call of its freedom.

As the ocean absolves itself
Of the expectations of land,
Approaching only
In the form of waves
That fill and please and fall
With such gradual elegance
As to make of the limit
A sonorous threshold
Whose music echoes back along
The give and strain of memory,
Thus may your heart know the patience,
That can draw infinity from limitation.

As the embrace of the earth
Welcomes all who call death,
Taking deep into itself
The tight solitude of a seed,
Allowing it time
To shed the grip of former form
And give way to a deeper generosity
That will one day send it forth,
A tree into springtime,
May all that holds you
Fall from its hungry ledge
Into the fecund surge of your heart.

~Staci Lee