The "Favorite" Returns

Since the month has just started, and since I have no fresh pictures loaded, I was casting about for today's topic. I think I might have been divinely inspired. Hmm.. Here goes, but first, background.

When I first started blogging, an IRL friend who blogged did something she called "Friday Favorites," and encouraged us to write about something that we liked or moved us, then to link up with her post so we could share the happiness. She is now a successful business woman with a home-based enterprise (and a riotously adorable family,) so she has no time to write, instead expressing herself through her fun fabric creations.

But it's Friday, so I'll write about something that inspired me. (No, no linky-linky app, y'all. That would require too much thinking, and my computer gets cranky this late at night. It will be peeved that I will open FB simultaneously for just a moment. Pardon.)

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"Approach dawn softly from the other side," Rod Smith sympathized with me as I once again turned in a slightly overdue writing assignment I stayed up all night to complete. I am NOT a morning person, in that I do not wake up easily or joyously. But once awake (or otherwise, before retiring,) I find dawn a fascinating place. It is so alive in a peaceful sense. I resolve to take a moment there more often.

Today, I emerged from the house early to drive to my daughter to Decatur. My return found me at one school or the other on behalf of my children. I felt the day move through the morning, up to noon, and then settle slowly towards dusk. Words of mine, for a friend disenheartened:

"(I think of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3.) Today is soft upon our cheeks and we can set aside the jackets til eve'n. This morning the chill laughed lightly about us, while we amazed at the first frost that enchanted the fields, the rising river of mist that cloaked the water. A man? A dog? No, a mild buck and a doe that crossed the road, they unconcerned with neither man nor dog, but on their own hunt for the rich acorns that fall now. Look, raise your eyes, be blessed with the quilt of autumn color spread out upon the trees, across the mountains. Things change. Some we perceive, some we understand, some we know. But at the heart, life is a mystery-- joy and comfort where we find it. If not found today, may you be surprised when you stroll through your memories."

I love each season, in its season. Now is the true season of hope, as we make our harvests, and from this, plan again for the coming year.

Fall has come to us, and I will exalt in it.