Our heating season will begin soon, but as of now only chilly mornings and late evenings indicate the time of year. This month might be my favorite nine days in AZ so far.
Autumn memories of Detroit in the ’60s haunt me. Incorporating lots of brother Rob and all three sisters, many of the old friends, and lots of leaves burning in the street, there is a massive tie to “peaceful, sweet days of old.” Not much about them was all that peaceful or sweet. The names, Autumn and Fall, mean simply the fall of leaves, or some Etruscan possibility of what compared with harvest in old Middle English, with no relationship to memory, former times, or peace of any kind. In the same way that Spring suggests new birth and youth, however, Fall feels like another transition.
Death is not the experience at all! It is new life! Now is a time of withdrawal, not as from addiction, but to revelation. Like cloistering, pulling back into our wee cells for reflection. It is, in elementary terms, a time to write, “What I did last summer.”
The reality of rebirth in Christ Jesus, at least for me, makes the joy of autumn even greater. In almost identical ways to the laying over of life beneath leaves and snow, so it feels to go into the dormancy I now begin to feel. If they spoke among themselves, what would our last fading flowers and roses say to one another? “Quiet now, and go to seed. You will awake again.”
It is not their garden at all.
Winter, spring, summer, and harvest.
Recent Comments