[Seasons: Autumn XV]
Autumn is the season where the life of summer and the death of winter collide and sparks of color fly. Darkness is near; death is waiting its turn. But the business of summer is not quite finished. The sun’s energy packages all of its warmth and growth into small seeds. Autumn receives the summer seeds with one hand and holds back freezing winter for a couple months with the other. Everything seems to fall, but not without purpose. Leaves fall but will become the mulch to protect the soil from winter’s harsh frost. Nuts and seeds fall, and they’ll become spring’s great rise and summer’s big growth. Inevitably, though, autumn is a fall toward death.
But autumn is never a fall toward “nothingness”. Life’s autumns—the liminal seasons between life and death, celebration and sorrow, growth and deterioration, light and dark—are never directionless and without purpose. Like the seeds that must fall and imbed in the soil for many months, the purpose of life’s autumns requires descent. Are we willing to dig deep for discover or will we always be satisfied with pretending our autumns are just cooler summers.
