A DAY IN OCTOBER

This is the time of year when most of us get up before Sunrise. I usually go to bed about 12:30 and get up around 7:30. Sunrise wasn't until 7:41 this Morning. It was light, but the Sun had not breached the horizon, when I came down stairs. I looked at the thermometer and it was 28F. When the Sun came up it was dazzlingly bright. What a glorious show! We get so used to these magnificent events, we may fail to notice them. I trudged through thick carpet, of varicolored maple leaves, on the way to the coop where the young chickens abide. As usual, they greeted the Morning with a great deal of energy and alacrity. They express everything wonderful about life, itself, as they roar out of their house in the Morning. I noted a skin of ice on the bird bath as I walked by, yes, the seasons are changing.

Naomi, Greg, Adam and Elijah arrived in the afternoon and spent the night. Greg barbecued the steaks on the grill, we had them with a marvelous salad and scalloped potatoes. We had a marvelous time, we spent some time outside around a fire. We celebrated well into the night.

Yes, I live in paradise! While awaiting our guests, on Saturday, I sat on our deck and just soaked in the immediate environment. It was an amazing afternoon; so beautiful, impossible to describe, unless one is a poet, which I am not. I could only note the amazing colors of the leaves; maples, oaks, elms, aspen etc, some are bright yellow, some orangish, some reddish, many hold on to their green. The big elm tree has only a few yellow leaves clinging to its branches. It is marvelous to observe how this giant trunk meets the ground and disappears in to the Earth.

When we moved here in 1975, this elm tree was probably about forty years old, perhaps a little older. There were very few trees in the yard, some aged box elders and Chinese elms. In the next ten years, the elms of most varieties, were succumbing to Dutch elm disease. We had rock elm, slippery, elm, and American elm, they were all dying. This American elm dominated our yard. The box elders were spectacular, but very old for box elders, and I knew they would have to be removed. I dug up ten sugar maples from the woods and planted them in the area of the elm, one of them, even under the drip line, I wanted to have trees when the elm died. Of course, the elm refused to die though most of the elms in the neighborhood did. So we have a mini-forest in part of the yard. The lawn doesn't do to well under those maples, but that is fine. The elm tree has come into its own, a giant tree at least eighty years old. It may have been spared by the zinc coated nails Jamie pounded in a ring around its trunk. Zinc is a fungicide and Dutch elm disease is fungal.

If I just pay attention to my own life, it is so fantastic! I live in incredible beauty. My life from day to day is filled with joy and peace. But then, like the rest of you, I have my mind. Oh, how a thought can destroy the image of paradise and open up the experience of hell. Is there any doubt that our minds create our experience? We can be in heaven at one moment and breathing sulfurous fumes the next.

As we learn to invite, only, loving thoughts into our minds, we continue to see reality, as a loving universe gives it to us and not the illusion of our fevered minds.

Talk about illusions of our fevered minds; I like to watch television in the evening, I keep the mute button pressed on the remote, I keep thinking that there might be something I want to hear about; there rarely is. This election cycle is the worst I have experienced. Is this the way the empire is going to die? I haven't heard one word, in any discussion, that dealt with the real problems of the world. Maybe, I missed it.

I can tell by talking to people, sometimes total strangers, that our consciousness is rising. Folks are seeing that the world, as described in the main stream media, is stark raving mad. Hey! Our local communities are pretty sane; a few nuts among the berries, but nothing as displayed in the MSM. Most people I meet are brimming with light. Their eyes are shining, they are friendly and loving. We have wonderful loving, open hearted, open minded, people in our community; doesn't everybody?

Yes! The old system is going to be swept away. We will be okay. We don't need an authority. We don't need people in big buildings to tell us what to do. We have Nature and the truth in our hearts to guide us. We will be fine. We will be more than fine. We will step into paradise.

Love and Peace, Gregg