stillness by mirabai starr

"Be patient, my heart.  The time of the cave is coming.  The season of quiet.  The deep drink of stillness you have been thirsting for.  Secret, luminous darkness.  Fruitful, radiant night.  Your access has been paid.  All year you have made an offering of your life, flung your treasures into the clamoring hands of the world.  You have lost yourself in the lyrics, recollected yourself in the silence, forgotten again and again where you came from, where you are meant to return.  Return.  You have filled your belly with the season's harvest, grown robust on bowls of chile and beans, apple muffins spread with honey.  You have split and stacked your kindling, patched your cloak.  There is nothing left undone.  Drop the distractions now and head home.  The door is open.  Go in.  Deeper and deeper inward.  Enter the womb of the world and take refuge there.  This is not the season of sorrow but of gratitude.  The extravagant, fiery beauty of autumn heralds the coming of the holy quiet.  Be still.  Be wildly, voluptuously quiet.  Embrace your solitude like the child you never thought you could birth, like the lover you thought had died in the war, who parts the curtains of your innermost chamber in the middle of the night and slips into bed beside you."  --Mirabai Starr