Turning To Autumn: Our Ever Changing Seasons

Tomorrow is the Autumn Equinox. Where has the summer gone? Where has the year gone? This time of year can bring a feeling of melancholy for what has passed and will not return.

Yes summer has gone, but with its passing comes the beauty of autumn. There are new energies at work at this time of year. Tomorrow Autumn begins. Next Sunday we celebrate harvest and then move into the seasons of Remembrance before entering into winter and the many festivals of light and Hope born again in the new year. Yes the green of summer and spring is dying and the leaves are falling, but seeds of new life are also being born, each carrying with them the promise of new birth, new hope.

Autumn is about to begin. Here’s a poem “Love Wants to Know How” by that famous author “Unknown”.

“Love Wants to Know How”
author unknown

Autumn comes with its riot of death,
its clarion bells of color,
drives the living green to ground
even as it thins the veil between worlds.
The visible and invisible walk now together
with arms outstretched over fields
where workers hasten to the harvest
none may divide against itself.

So: where are you in this?
How long do you loiter
between the said and unsaid,
the done and undone,
between the half and true rhyme
of a life answering a life?

Geese mark the sky with dark wedges,
call with harsh tongues
to what thrives at the margins
of all we so reluctantly receive.
Go now,
quickly and with great force,
toward what burns in your dreams
at the dying of the year.

Who can say?
Perhaps you reap the whirlwind,
perhaps the harvest—
but is it ever enough to not know
the bonds and bounds of what will one day
forsake you for the grave?

We are in liminal space once again, tomorrow is the autumnal equinox. So as we step through the threshold of summer into autumn where are you in this time of transition? How long are you going to loiter between the said and the unsaid, the done and the undone? What burns in your dreams? How will you ride this great force of nature that is this changing season? Will you reap the whirlwind, perhaps the harvest before your time comes to an end? As we enter another season it is vital to recognise the potentials present in life.

Autumn offers so much potential, as every season does, but there is something unique about the Autumn.

There is a special beauty about the Autumn; it is a beauty is found in its deepness. There is a special depth in the Autumn. Yes. Spring is full of newness, springing to life. It’s an exciting time, a flighty time, a time when we have our heads in the clouds perhaps, blown by the wind. The summer with its long days are perhaps the days of joy of running free, perhaps for swimming in the waters of life. Winter has Christmas and New year at its heart, a time of sitting by the hearth and being warmed by fire. But Autumn is different, it has a depth, a deep, deep beauty. It’s about getting deep down into our roots, into the soil, it is a time for earthing our selves, for going deep down within, to reflect in the ground as summer ends and winter comes. Of all the seasons Autumn to me is the deepest season. There is a depth in Autumn's beauty.

I love Autumn, glorious Autumn, beautiful Autumn, best of the year. Everything just seems that bit more precious at this time of year. Maybe the reason for this is because this is the time when things come to an end, or begin to come to an end. Maybe everything is that bit more beautiful at this time of year, because everything is dying. Or at least it seems that way. It’s an awareness of this, a real sense of this, in my blood and in my soul, right down in the marrow of my soul, that helps me fall in love with life in a much deeper way. I feel a sense of love for every leaf as it falls. For every leaf is a letter from God. Every leaf teaches us something about life. We are leaves ourselves. Everyone precious; everyone unique; everyone will one day fall.

Here’s another poem about Autumn by Rainer Maria Rilke

“Autumn” by Rainer Maria Rilke

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It's in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.

I love the beauty of Autumn. It took me a long time to truly appreciate it, but I am grateful that I finally do. I did not always, particularly in my teens and twenties. I did not see the beauty in its steady decline, my sensitive soul got caught up in its deep sadness. As the days grew shorter and colder and as the trees shed their leaves, their splendour, all I saw was the abundant beauty decaying and heading toward the bareness of the cold stark winter. As the colour died my spirit morphed into sadness as I watched what was beautiful die. All I could see was what was being lost. It would seem that the prospect of death consumed all the beautiful life, that was contained in this season of falling leaves. This season of change, that would bring something new. It wasn’t until the second third of life that I began see the promise in each falling leaf. That in the autumn new life was potentially being born, that new seeds were being planted as the leaves were being composted into the earth, preparing it for the new life being born following the Hope of Winter.

Now as I settle into the second half of life I feel a deep appreciation for Autumn both in natures turning and life’s turning too. Today I understand that we always live in liminal space, that life is always transitional, that life is always changing, being born, rising, flowering, dying and being born once again.

Youth was certainly wasted on me.

Here is "Autumn" from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons"

Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of Autumn, and maybe its most symbolic is the changing of the colour of deciduous tree leaves. Now as I’m sure you all know leaves are green because of chlorophyll. It is chlorophyll that gives leaves their distinctive green colour. Now this combined with sunshine is the key ingredient in the incredible, life-producing process, of photosynthesis.

Now what I find the most beautiful about the process is what is hidden. For the truth is that the leaves don’t actually become another colour The hidden secret of the falling leaves is that they don’t actually “turn” colour. What happens is that due to the lessening of sunshine the chlorophyll begins to be broken down and so the green disappears and the other colours, that were always there, the reds, the golds, the oranges, begin to express themselves. The leaves don’t actually change colour, its just that other colours are revealed due to the death of the green that had been masking them.

Perhaps it is the same with us. Maybe this is the point of Autumn to go deeper into our own roots, into the earth of our being and allow something new to be born again. Is there a hidden secret in the Autumn of each of us?

This brings to mind another favourite poem by Robert Frost “Nothing Gold Can Stay”

“Nothing Gold Can Stay”

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

By Robert Frost

Everything is beautiful, because everything is dying. Nothing last forever. Nothing stays the same. Aspects of life must fall and die for new life to be born again. This humbles me, it draws me into the ground, the earth, to my roots, something beautiful that autumn reminds me of

Autumn is the season for falling more deeply in love with life; Autumn is the season of the earth, of the ground for going deep into our roots that sustain us. Autumn is the season when we once again see just how precious everything is. You see everything matters…Everything matters because it does not last for ever, it is finite. Every drop of rain, every thought and feeling, every word and every action matters. I hope and pray that you know that. Everything matters, because nothing ever lasts forever.

Everything has to come to an end, everything must fall into the earth so it can create something new and beautiful. To make room for something new to be born again.

Autumn I love you, I pay homage to all that you teach me…Autumn, glorious Autumn, beautiful Autumn, best of the year…

"Autumn" by New Model Army