Good morning…
Today we welcome the first official day of fall 2019. As I prepare this morning’s kick-off talk for the Lovett Moms In Prayer group, I reflect again on two pages from a book I taught in our living room last fall semester.
“Autumn is a season of great beauty,” I will read aloud Let Your Life Speak wisdom to this gracious group of praying moms. “But it is also a season of decline: the days grow shorter, the light is suffused, and summer’s abundance decays toward winter’s death.”
Yes. I know. These are pretty intense words to share with young, fresh-faced mothers early Monday morn. Decline. Decay. Death. Might this be a little too much at 7:50 am? Please stick with me. As we listen most attentively, we will be lifted by these buoying words. Season. Great beauty. Grow. Light. Abundance. We will tune our inner eyes to the Creator of our universe.
Parker Palmer notices: “Faced with this inevitable winter, what does nature do in autumn? It scatters the seeds that will bring new growth in the spring – and scatters them with amazing abandon. In my own experience of autumn, I am rarely aware that seeds are being planted. Instead, my mind is on the fact that the green growth of summer is browning and beginning to die. My delight in the autumn colors is always tinged with melancholy, a sense of impending loss that is only heightened by the beauty around.”
Parker Palmer continues: “But as I explore autumn’s paradox of dying and seeding, I feel the power of metaphor. In the autumnal events of my own experience, I am easily fixated on surface appearances – on the decline of meaning, the decay of relationships, the death of a work. And yet if I look more deeply, I may see the myriad possibilities being planted to bear fruit in some season yet to come.”
Parker Palmer looks back: “In retrospect, I can see in my own life what I could not see at the time – how the job I lost helped me find work I needed to do, how the ‘road closed’ sign turned me toward terrain I needed to travel, how losses that felt irredeemable forced me to discern meanings I needed to know. On the surface, it seemed that life was lessening, but silently and lavishly the seeds of new life were being sown.”
Parker Palmer looks forward: “This hopeful notion that living is hidden within dying is surely enhanced by the visual glories of autumn. What artist would ever have painted a season of dying with such a vivid palette if nature had not done it first? Does death possess a beauty that we – who fear death, whop find it ugly and obscene – cannot see? How shall we understand autumn’s testimony that death and elegance go hand in hand? For me, the words that come closest to answering those questions are the words of Thomas Merton: ‘There is in all visible things . . . a hidden wholeness.’ In the visible world of nature, a great truth is concealed in plain sight: diminishment and beauty, darkness and light, death and life are not opposites. They are held together in the paradox of ‘hidden wholeness.'”
For me, the words that come closest to answering these questions are the words of Scripture: All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all (2 Corinthians 4:15-17, NIV).
This autumn season, may we not lose heart, may we be renewed day by day, and may we trust the benefits of God’s eternal, glorious grace as it overflows with thanksgiving in our everyday lives.
…Sue…
P.S. Thanks to our web designer, Gina MacFarland, who took this awesome photo of autumn’s vivid palette.
