Fall Wisdom

It isn’t a new thought… it’s a yearly thought: We come to this season and the world reminds us that its time to do some letting go.  It would be ludicrous to go into your yard right now and start strapping leaves to the trees, so they don’t fall off… and yet in our lives we often cling to things we won’t don’t want to lose in that same kind of futile struggle.  We fight the progression of seasons.  Ecclesiastes reminds us “for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”  This also means, reflexively, for that for every matter there are times that is simply isn’t the right season to be carried.  You can no more force a tree to hold its leaves in fall than you can make it bud out new growth in the depth of winter.  The trees live the rhythm of life, and we can learn that wisdom if we are willing.  Trying to do things “out of season” is costly for all involved. 

I invite you to reflect on what this “fall wisdom” is inviting you to contemplate in your life: where are you clinging to that which is not giving you life?  What is it time to let go? What is time to plant for the future?  Are you in step with this season of your life?

I leave you with this poem, Sonnet 73, from William Shakespeare on life, death, and love in the light of fall:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see’st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.