Last Monday in October

What's really permanent?  The patterns in this rock are offset by the footsteps of visitors...but we all know the time and forces it took to make these patterns had nothing to do with people.

Change is the message of October.  Ancestors are honored at the end of this month, with Halloween and Samhain, and All Souls Day, and Dia de los Muertos.  Whatever you name the celebration, it's about the impermanence of people on this wonderful but frail earth.

Remembering an ancestor during meditation is part of my daily ritual.  I thank these ordinary people who somehow created their lives and left a legacy which is humming to my attentions.  The least thing they did was have sex, and have a baby which then grew up to do the same.  But the DNA, or genes as everyone calls it, being passed down to my own generation was not the height of their lives probably.  Their passions began as children, being raised by parents and others, then blossomed as they became adults.  They not only survived, they thrived in whatever aspect of life that they approached.  It might have been hard at times, but I know there was laughter also.

Salute and thanks go to these fore-mothers and fore-fathers.

I hope something I've done in my life (or perhaps am still to do) will be a gift to my descendents.  I wonder what, if anything, will have most meaning for them. 

And beyond all the talk about generations, there's the Great Beyond...that belief in something greater than all of us.  Divine.  Spirit.  God.  Goddess.  Idea.  Universe.  The Great Unknown.

But even that is not permanent.