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A large brown leaf floats down onto the road beside me; fallen from the large maple tree that stands watching, along the side of the road. They are watching. Trees, deer, foxes, coyotes, raccoons, squirrels, hawks, cougars, bears, eagles, whales, manatees, sparrows and dolphins are all watching. We are latecomers to this world, only a few hundred thousand years ago, perhaps a few million by some accounts. And we have made such as mess of it. But we can clean up the mess. We can correct our mistakes, change our ways and do it right.

‘No one else can do it for you,’ as the song goes. The government, corporations, even God won’t do it for us. We are stewards of the earth and all its bounty. It is up to us to make the change we want to see happen, over the next 50 days and 50 years. Change from outer gratification to inner meaning, wellbeing, peace.

It is time for us to turn with the season from outward self-satisfying indulgence to inward self-fulfilling intentions. It is time to learn and let learn. It is time to grow and let grow. It is time. It is time to love and live and cease with the distractions that are so confusing and distracting. It is time to turn.

It is time to have fun. Enjoy life. Live in love and share the joy of living. The leaves falling remind me of all the blessings that constantly come to us, they don’t fall from above but flow continually as streams through the universe. The beauty all around us in so rich and vivid, in the water, the rain, the wind, all living things. And love, love is in everyone, whether they/we know it or not. Whether they/we realize it, give it and live it or not, love is here. For that is what we are.

“And the leaves of the Tree of Life are for the healing of nations.”

In the Rumi room we read:

“Inside water, a waterwheel turns. A star circulates with the moon.

We live in the night ocean wondering, What are these lights?

You have said what you are. I am what I am.

Your actions in my head,

my head here in my hands with something circling inside.

I have no name for what circles so perfectly.

A secret turning in us makes the universe turn.

Head unaware of feet and feet head.

Neither cares. They keep turning.

This moment this love comes to rest in me, many beings in one being.

In one wheat grain a thousand sheaf stacks.

Inside the needle’s eye a turning night of stars.

Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.

Don’t try to see through the distances.

That’s not for human beings.

Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.

Walk to the well.

Turn as the earth and the moon turn, circling what they love.

Whatever circles comes from the center.

I circle your nest tonight, around and around until morning when a breath of air says, Now, and the Friend holds up like a goblet some anonymous skull.

No better love than love with no object,

No more satisfying work than work with no purpose.

If you could give up tricks and cleverness,

That would be the cleverest trick!

Some nights stay up til dawn, as the moon sometimes does for the sun.

Be a full bucket pulled up the dark way of a well,

then lifted out into the light.

I am so small I can barely be seen.

How can this great love be inside me?

Look at your eyes. They are small but they see enormous things.

When you feel your lips becoming infinite and sweet, like the moon in a sky,

When you feel that spaciousness inside, Shams of Tabriz will be there too.

The sun is love.

The lover, a speck circling the sun.

A spring wind moves to dance any branch that isn’t dead.

Something opens our wings.

Something makes boredom and hurt disappear.

Someone fills the cup in front of us.

We taste only sacredness.

Held like this, to draw in milk, no will,

tasting clouds of milk, never so content.

I stand up, and this one of me turns into a hundred of me.

They say I circle around you.

Nonsense, I circle around me.

I have lived on the lip of insanity,

Wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door.

It opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside!

Real value comes with madness, matzub below, scientist above.

Whoever finds love beneath hurt and grief

disappears into emptiness with a thousand new disguises.

Dance, when you’re broken open.

Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.

Dance in the middle of the fighting.

Dance in your blood.

Dance when you‘re perfectly free.

Turning

Walking down a country road between waves of rain storms rolling in off the ocean, I was enjoying the turning of seasons. It’s turning from warm to cool, dry to wet, turning from green to yellow, red, brown and gray. Autumn, right in the midst of it. Then someone came out from a lane and walked along the other side of the road. As we passed I said, “hi.” He responded with a nod, “how ya doin?” I said, “Good, how are you?” “School, same sh*t, ya know.” He looked like a Greener (college student), kicking along with a little facial hair, curls sticking out of his beanie. I turned and said with a smile, “You are so lucky! I wish I could go to college. Enjoy!” A bit taken aback he said, “thanks.” And we went on our ways.

Now, I wish I could say that I turned his head around, but I probably didn’t. People in our society today are so bored, young people who have grown up on video games, computers, cell phones and now texting, twitter, FB. What’s next? Feathers? And older people who have had it the way they want. There is even a TV series on HBO entitled Bored to Death. Thanks, Larry David. Where’s Mr. Kastanza to rail at us when we need him? Reruns. Boredom. Apathy.

People in our country, in our society are so blessed and have so many good opportunities laid out before them. All the kids in Pakistan and Afghanistan and all the other places who do not have access to the public education, opportunities and basic choices we take for granted. Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea), has helped build over 300 schools in Pakistan. This is to especially help educate girls to become women with choices for self-determination and not simply continue in the same ways of tradition, culture and conformity they have today. Greg is threatened, not by Pakistanis but by American reactionaries who are incensed, they say, because he is helping the enemy. But who is the enemy? Is it the ones who bomb schools and universities? Is the enemy those who control and manipulate women and children in opposition of learning, growing and unfolding to the beautiful universe beyond borders of religion, race, culture, clan, tribe and tradition. Hitler had books burned. Most totalitarian rulers oppose or oppress education and learning on behalf of control, conformity and blind obedience. Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Ivan the Terrible.