October Afternoon

We’ve been experiencing some truly beautiful fall days here in Minnesota, with the afternoon of this past Sunday, October 15, being particularly memorable for me. This was not only because I spent time with my friend Adnan, but also because I visited one of my favorite spots on the Mississippi River in south Minneapolis – the Winchell Trail, a largely unpaved trail that winds about five miles along the west bank of the Mississippi from Franklin Avenue to Minnehaha Park.

Here I chose to take a sacred pause and cultivate a much-needed experience of centeredness. I did so by, in the words of Mark Nepo, “slowing to the pace of creation.” This experience put me in touch with, again in Nepo’s words, “that unseeable stream in which life is continually vital and refreshed.”

I share today some images from last Sunday, along with an excerpt from Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Slowing how we think and feel and take in the world is directly related to being centered. The wisdom traditions all have some form of meditation or prayer that is aimed at slowing us into this center, where the very pace of creation breathes. In their own way, all spiritual practices help us reclaim this centeredness, because being centered in this way plunges us, again and again, into that unseeable stream in which life is continually vital and refreshed.

At the pace of creation, all things breathe the same way. So, when we slow and open and center ourselves, we breathe in unison with all of life, and breathing this way we draw strength from all life. When we slow down and breathe, we reach like trees into everything open, and whole skies of cloud drift in unison with the dreams of an entire people. If we can slow to the pace of creation, truth will sweep like a flock of birds from the mountains we climb. At the pace of creation, the beginning enters us and we are new.

When courageous enough to relax our soul open, the pace at which our mind thinks slows to the pace at which our heart feels, and, amazingly, together, they unfold the rhythm with which our eyes can see the miracle waiting in all that is ordinary.

– Mark Nepo
Excerpted from The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want
by Being Present to the Life You Have
Conari Press, 2011
pp. 338-339

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Autumn: Season of Transformation and Surrender
• A Time of Transformation
• The Autumn Garden
• Stasha Ginsburg on the Living Mystery That Infuses the Equinox
• Autumnal Thoughts and Visions (2022)
• Autumn . . . Within and Beyond (2021)
• Autumn . . . Within and Beyond (2018)
• Autumn . . . Within and Beyond (2016)
• O Sacred Season of Autumn
• “Thou Hast Thy Music Too”
• Autumn Psalm
• “This Autumn Land Is Dreaming”
• Autumn’s “Wordless Message”
• Autumnal (and Rather Pagan) Thoughts on the Making of “All Things New”
• Brigit Anna McNeill on Hearing the Wild and Natural Call to Go Inwards
• Stepping Out of Time and Resting Your Mind
• In the Stillness and Silence of This Present Moment
• The Beauty and Challenge of Being Present in the Moment
• Today I Will Be Still
• Cultivating Stillness
• I Need Do Nothing . . . I Am Open to the Living Light
• A Sacred Pause
• Aligning With the Living Light
• Mystical Participation
• Dwelling in Peace
• Returning the Mind to God
• The Soul’s Beloved
• You Are My Goal, Beloved One
• Be In My Mind, Beloved One
• Your Peace Is With Me, Beloved One
• Resting in the Presence of the Beloved
• Finding Balance in the Presence of the Beloved

Images: Michael J. Bayly.