" I do not know if the seasons remember their history
 or if the days and nights by which we count time remember their own    passing.
I do not know if the oak tree remembers its planting or if the pine
 remembers its slow climb toward sun and stars.
 I do not know if the squirrel remembers last fall's gathering or if
 the blue jay remembers the meaning of snow.
I do not know if the air remembers September or if the night
 remembers the moon.
 I do not know if the earth remembers the flowers from last spring
 or if the evergreen remembers that it shall stay so.
 Perhaps that is the reason for our births–to be the memory for creation.
Perhaps salvation is something very different than anyone ever expected.
Perhaps this will be the only question we will have to answer:
 "What can you tell me about September?"

–Burton D. Carley–

Today is September 29th. We are bidding goodbye to this very significant month. A friend sent me the poem that is above and I have been sharing it wherever I can. It touched my heart and soul and I have held onto its truth all week.

September is one of the months when we become so aware of the changing and shifting all around us. Children return to school and the easy flow of summer finds a pattern, a regularity that summer thumbs its nose at. We see the change of all Creation all around us. As leaves turn from green to brown through various other forms of the color wheel, we recognize the changes in our own bodies, our own lives.

September is a letting-go month. It is a time when we are not where we were and not yet where we are going. Sometimes, as humans, we have the ability to remember Septembers past and can conjure up feelings or experiences that ground us in these autumn days. But most of the time this shedding, this storing up for winter, this heading into the darkness that September heralds, is all new once again, as if we've never lived through it before. Are we more like the tree, the squirrel,the blur jay than we'd like to admit in our human bound ego?

Or are we, as the poet proposes, meant instead to be the memory of Creation? Will how we remember this September, this glorious sun bathed, warmer than usual September, save us? I can't fully answer that question. But on the off chance that the poet is correct, I want to remember the fullness of this September with all its joys and sorrows, its sunshine and brilliant starlit nights,its letting go and holding on. I want to remember how the light played on the tree's leaves, how the children ran up and down on our block full of their freedom. I want to remember the sheer pleasure of the warmth on my back and how the clouds looked as they danced slowly in the changing sky. I want to remember the glorious taste of tomatoes and the first bite of a Honeycrisp apple.

I do not know what salvation is. But I do know that to remember the beauty of September, to learn its lessons, is worth storing up,not only for the winter, but for my whole life.The opening it creates at my center, for how it connects me with the Sacred is something to hold onto before it's too late and this September is gone forever. And that, in the end, might just be enough.