You Who Are Perfect

Most of us try to find ourselves in good places -- for example, in our running, our work, our families and our travels. While these may be fulfilling aspects of our lives, they aren't the houses for who we are.

According to the Book of Deuteronomy, all of this looking is missing the point:

You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.
-Deuteronomy 28:6

If we are blessed no matter where we go, then we are less like seekers and more like seasons. Wherever we are, we are where we are supposed to be, in tune with everything else in the universe.

As the season changes from summer to fall this September, let us reflect on our state of blessedness, which exists no matter our situation. You are, as W.S. Merwin writes, "perfect in the dew."

To the Light of September
By W. S. Merwin

When you are already here
you appear to be only
a name that tells of you
whether you are present or not

and for now it seems as though
you are still summer
still the high familiar
endless summer
yet with a glint
of bronze in the chill mornings
and the late yellow petals
of the mullein fluttering
on the stalks that lean
over their broken
shadows across the cracked ground

but they all know
that you have come
the seed heads of the sage
the whispering birds
with nowhere to hide you
to keep you for later

you
who fly with them

you who are neither
before nor after
you who arrive
with blue plums
that have fallen through the night

perfect in the dew

Source: Poetry (September 2003).