YIELD

A highlight of our recent trip to Colorado was viewing the aspens at the peak of their fall colors. If conditions are just right, aspens will turn from a soft green to their iconic golden yellow to bright orange and even bolder red. It is just such a year. “Beauty beyond words!” is all I can say. Then, flying home yesterday we viewed New England’s not-to-be-outdone colorama in all its autumnal glory. And again, beauty beyond words.

Beauty, in any of its infinite forms, stops us. We can viscerally feel it (e.g. “breathtakingly beautiful”). It puts us on pause--maybe even long enough to make us stop and think.  

While doing just that while mid-flight the word “yield” came to mind. As you know, there is more than one definition of the word “yield.” To focus for a moment on two of them; there’s the “natural/spiritual” one, i.e. surrender, submit, relinquish, etc., and there’s the corporate/agricultural/industrial one, i.e. NYSE stocks and bonds, earnings, dividends, crop or hog yields, etc. 

Leaves go for the former definition--and then the latter. They yield in the natural sense to the seasonal changes which trigger the chlorophyll’s breakdown which causes the green to disappear so the colors beneath can shine forth. In doing this they produce a yield in the “corporate” sense as well. What is that yield? For one thing, it’s beauty. And beauty is something we can’t live without. 

Obviously, both definitions have their places so which comes first? 

For me, when we, like the autumn leaves, yield to our true nature (“created in image and likeness of God”), we too, produce beauty....

...naturally.

TODAY.

LET’S GIVE THE WORLD & OURSELVES A GIFT.

LET’S TAKE TIME TO THINK ABOUT HOW TO YIELD.