Standing out in the crowd

When I returned from a walk this morning I noticed a bright red leaf lying on our driveway. It stood out so beautifully amidst the mass of shriveled brown leaves that have been there for a few days. I thought it must have fallen recently since I hadn't noticed it on my way out, and it was still so supple and brilliant in color. I immediately bent down and picked it up to examine it more closely and it didn't take but a second for me to decide that I wanted to take it inside and try to photograph it. I wanted to preserve this beauty, knowing that its color would soon fade and it would succumb to decay. This is the resulting image (click on the image to view it larger).
As I was walking this morning I thought about an email message that I had received a day ago from a friend that I had met a few months ago through her blog site. I haven't been posting anything here lately and she wrote to tell me that she had visited several times, hoping to find new musings, only to find that I had been absent. She wanted to let me know that I was missed and asked how I am doing. When we take the time to create and relate, it's nice to know that someone notices. Often it seems that what we do makes little or no ripple in the lives of others, that our work and our words drift out into vast space and float about aimlessly. A message like this one from my friend suddenly reminds us that we have significance, that we can be a channel of grace in the lives of others, even when we aren't aware of it. And that, after all, is what we are all searching for, isn't it?
So I'm thankful for my friend who, standing out among the hundreds of contacts I've made through the internet, took the time to let me know that my words and images have made some ripples in her life, enough to be missed when I didn't show up for a while. What a wonderful act of kindness.
Bless you, my friend. You're one in a million... :o)