What a perfectly Glorious Autumn Morning it was as we, the dogs and I, left the house for our after-breakfast walk down Cathedral Drive to the Touchstone:

The air was still, barely a breath of wind as the fall-colored forest trees just beyond the back field to the west welcomed the rising sun. A gentle mist was rising off the dew gently left on the field overnight. There was not a cloud in the bright, blue sky with the sun above the treetops. At the end of the driveway, I noted how far south the sun had already gone by this early October Morning, and how much further it had to go yet before it reached its winter solstice

I thought again about the reality of that apparent phenomena, the movement of the sun, as if the Earth were the center of the solar system or, for that matter, of the universe. It is our home, this small, but wonderful, blue-green jewel of a planet that orbits our sun. As it moves, the position of the Earth’s tilted axis in relation with with sun determines the annual passage of the seasons. Modest in size, and still relatively young though many billions of years old, our sun is one of countless others in a universe still without measure. What lies beyond remains a Great Mystery.

But what we have learned in the relatively short time humans have scratched the surface of knowing has in my view done nothing to diminish the wonder and miracle of this precious moment. Some there are who would even say, surely there must be another world, another parallel moment even, just like this morning. Maybe, maybe not.

But, come what may, I find myself thinking, this morning will stay with me until that most fateful, personal moment when I linger for a while, in a certain amount of ‘fear and trembling’ wondering what comes next.

Shakespeare had Hamlet say, in his last, living words, “The rest is silence.” That could be taken literally, death being a rest from all the turmoil of life; or it could be what comes after death. I think he meant the latter. But in that case silence is not necessarily nothingness, I have good reason to believe. They are reasons I have previously written about in Finding Hope Ness, reasons having to do with the spirit of my father after he died.

And so, as I reached my Touchstone this morning, and said a prayer, the thought occurred to me that from somewhere in the “Great Mystery” I will look back on the spirit-memory of this glorious morning, and others, with life-loving appreciation for the gift of life; and likely also, I daresay, with longing.

As we walked back, the view down the road was again striking. We paused, the dogs wondering, as the sun, a little higher above the forest beyond the trees on the field to our left, illuminated the mist rising from the dew-covered tall grass and low-lying, new, wild apple trees. I felt the touch of a gentle breeze. A small cloud was forming in the eastern sky where by now Georgian Bay was responding to the sun’s warmth. And, on either side forest trees were painting their fall colors, various shades of gold and amber.

I thought those leaves are not so much fading or dying, as celebrating the life they had lived for another season among many, and giving life back to the Earth in return.

I regretted not having brought my camera to capture all those images. So, leaving the dogs in the house, I went back out, down the road again. But in that brief time, of course, the moment had passed. The mist had disappeared, and more clouds were forming, blocking out the sun now and then.

And yet, somehow it seemed right to have let the most precious moment go free, undiminished by not being photographed. So, what you see here is what it is, lovely enough in its own right on this sacred gift of a planet.