The Rilke poem & the photograph of an autumn-drenched Vermont posted in the weekend Journal by Liz Wessel caught my heart. Autumn is, like all seasons, a sacred time. Poets rhapsodize about the fall almost as much as they do spring.

   Of course, the colors are thrilling. Of course, fall's new air (referred to predictably as "crisp") sweaters our skin while autumn light makes every death-spiraling leaf a shooting star.

   And fall can be devastating. The change of seasons, especially summer to fall, is a fragile time for those vulnerable to depression.  

   Where is salvation? The Dalai Lama says he believes "…that the only true religion consists of having a good heart." And Jesus pronounced that "God is Love."

   Having a good heart allows us to love the shadows as well as the sun that creates them. That love can only be found in slow breaths. 

   Speed tramples compassion, destroys Radical Loving Care & causes spiritual blindness. Race through your days & you will miss the world's beauty. 

   "I went and sat in front of a Turner for hours and I realized something profound," artist Catherine Clancy wrote, "-that the vanishing point in the work does not vanish so that you have the feeling that love, truth and beauty go on forever." 

   The "good heart" needs regular visits to the private forest of Slow. 

SLOW

Space sprouts satellites.The world spins speed. The sky grows jets. 

Inside Slow live Hemingway, Van Gogh, Michelangelo, grass just mowed.

Inside Slow the widow in the windowed corner of her second floor bedroom sews kitchen curtains, raises her eyes to review rows of corn, harvests the caws of a murder of crows.

All gifts hide inside Slow.

-Erie Chapman

Photograph: "Autumn Daughter" by Erie