When the seasons change, there is always a touch of sadness in the heart. Whether celebrating Labor Day and the season of summer to fall, or a time of personal change, the feeling is the same. Even when it’s a welcome change, something we’ve wanted and anticipated... we always have to say goodbye to what was. Then, as we settle in to the newness, we also have to say goodbye to our idea of how we thought it would be. There’s so much letting go.

To dream is to co-create. So we can only do our parts. We envision and plan and do the necessary leg work. Then we have to let go. Only open hands can welcome and receive. How often have I held so tightly to a vision for manifesting, only to find as I relax into allowing, that an entirely different but ideal version appears?

Amidst all our dreaming and striving, the moments pass. Even the season of striving is itself its own time. What lingers? How can we gracefully accept the unexpected newness and still honor what we have let go? So rarely does the truth of where we are going balance with the sweetness of where we have been. Just moments. Reflections kept safe in frames for pictures. Stepping back and seeing both somehow at the same time.

We recognize a new time by contrasting what remains with what arises anew. We choose what remains. Here is our power in living and in seeing. Each day has its threads of beauty, of pain, of grace, of struggle. We choose which remain constant in our hearts. I know this new time because it rests beside the love or struggle or beauty I have always kept with me.

Newness, sadness, awe at the unknown now before us. May we embrace it all, gracefully choosing, holding and releasing, in ideal rhythms all the time.