Here the deciduous trees have mostly shed their foliage. For the last few weeks I’ve collected a range of fallen leaves in preparation for an exercise in a facilitation day I’m doing. The leaves vary widely in shape, size and colour, even from the same tree. The range of oak tree leaf patterns and distinctive grooves in the edges I find mind-blowing. This year’s collection is mostly oak, birch, linden, beech, acer, sweet chestnut, cherry and willow with some unfamiliar blow ins from private gardens and arboretums. I’ve been drying and pressing the leaves, only as many as I need, pressed flat in lots of sheets of paper, in the leaves of books, tucked away under heavy boxes.
Today I’ve collected them together and started packing up my bags for facilitating on Friday. Friday is 1 December, the start of meteorological winter. As I was picking up each leaf to put in a box to take, I thought again, how beautiful these shapes are. I urge you to go and pick up a leaf, enjoy looking clearly with absolute focus on it for a while. Notice what it is like, its texture, its weight in your hand, the colour, the way the light plays on it, does it make a sound? Does it smell? What are you noticing in your body whilst you are being with a leaf? What else do you notice?
What is it that this time of year offers in terms of being able to see clearly? Today has been a crisp, clear day after last week’s wet sogginess. Now the trees are showing their skeleton. What is it that we notice that we don’t see in the full brightness of summer? And also metaphorically what do we notice now in our own lives? What can we see clearly now the leaves have gone? What might we want to drop, let go, let fall away? Autumn has fallen away and now we are presented with another cycle of the year. We in the northern hemisphere are entering a sharper, sometimes crisper, certainly colder, time of year.
I’d invite you to ask yourself what matters? What really matters? What do I need to take with me into the winter and what do I want to leave behind? Let it go. Let it fall. Let it land into the ground to be composted and recycled back into something else later. Notice how beautiful that falling actually can be.
The questions I write: ‘What can I see clearly? What really matters? What do I want to leave behind?’ Have featured large for me recently and helped me think through, and ultimately walk away from, something which had taken much effort. What can you see clearly and what will you let go of as we head into meteorological winter and these metaphorical winter considerations?
It’s Open Practice next week. Monday 4 December.
6.30 until 7.10 pm, about 40 minutes.
Show up just as you are. I hope to see you there. Let me know if you’d like the details and the Zoom link.
Thank you for reading and go well.