On the grass, sunlight and I lie motionless. Gravity moves my blood. It is Fall. The sunlight has become still and full of an awesome power. I want to just soak it up, store it. Like a fallen apple, a bit bright and a bit gamey, I lurch and list through my day. Meanwhile, absorbing the yellow and red, the gold and the turning brown-red-green richness all around me, I am inspired to sing softly and read poems.
The fire is moving into the earth. Drawn out of the earth in long days and warm temperatures, the fire has brought us beauty and fruition in fruits and flowers and, now, it begins again, to temper and foster the soil. For us, the humans, this is our time to sort and preserve the precious, the essence of our activities, our projects, our hearts. We will have to choose what to keep, what to relinquish to the process of composting, building soils for the future. I think of this time as purification.
Choosing those things that will sustain me through the Fall, through the letting go and then, through the Winter, through the darkness, is a task I relish each year. It isn’t easy, yet it is somehow so human, so necessary, so real and right. If I do not make time to choose, if I let the proliferation of summer just spill over and overwhelm my senses, then I am left with a rotting mess that taunts and daunts me over time. 
This year, I am making it official. I am taking up the practice of getting rid of things each day; one for October 1, two for October 2, three for October 3, etc. Inspired by a friend, I am also adding a minute of stillness to each day and letting them accumulate through the month. By October 31, there will be 31 minutes of stillness, 31 minutes of simple sitting with the chaos, compost and color of my world.
I invite you to join me, to bring your own fire of discrimination to nourish the soil of your being. Find what has meaning in the world around you and arrange it where you can see it, be with it every day. Bring things out of the closets, go through your bookshelves, clean out under the bed. Let the light shine into those dark corners, so that the darkness, when it does come, is comforting and restful, rather than scary and fraught with the burden of undone things. In just the same way that compost generates heat, this process will generate the heat that will keep you warm through the winter. It is the heat that will bring brightness and life to your deepest dreams and desires, if you can let go of what obscures them. How will you know what to keep and what to let go of? Lie still, listen to your heart and you will know.
