Here in New England, October offers us great beauty—the brilliant colors of the autumn leaves, the crisp morning air, the scent of apple cider, the sound of geese overhead as they fly to a winter destination. We are reminded in a compelling way that change is a way of life, that a truly engaged life includes countless endings and beginnings, letting go to make room for new experience. We are thus encouraged to build spiritual muscles of trust and faith in the processes of life itself, with continual change as its most visible hallmark. We are to practice new life springing from places that would seem to deny possibility and hope. On the surface, the reality of barren trees, declining light, and the chilling of our bones point to the inevitability of a coming winter. We are called to look beneath the surfaces of such experiences to deeper realities being revealed in order to develop more fully the eyes of faith.
Parker Palmer says, “Faced with the 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.” God’s gift of nature does not simply replace one leaf with another exactly like the last one. There are scores of chestnuts everywhere, thousands of apple seeds under each tree. It is the letting go of the current way of life that makes room for the possibilities of new consciousness and awareness dawning.
In the autumnal events of my own experience, dare I release my fixation on the surface appearances and see with eyes that open themselves to the myriad possibilities being planted to bear fruit in some season to come? In adaptive change, the status quo is shifted. My inability to make things stay the same through my own will power is challenged, my vulnerability is acknowledged before God who is greater than me and holds more possibilities than I can even imagine. Thus new resources of information and participation are generated which allow for a broader range of potential solutions and for a future of possibility. This is the resilient life, the “abundant life” God calls us to live. It is a life less focused on acquiring things than on relishing the openings and new connections of a life of love.
Again, Parker Palmer says, “Autumn constantly reminds me that my daily dyings are necessary precursors to new life. If I try to ‘make’ a life that defies the diminishments of autumn, the life I end up with will be artificial, at best, and utterly colorless as well. But when I yield to the endless interplay of living and dying, dying and living, the life I am given will be real and colorful, fruitful and whole.”
Dare we accept the invitation autumn is giving us to allow things to be released and come to their ending, let go of them with abandon and even joy, not knowing completely what our future holds? Are we willing to practice the faith that teaches us that God holds our future? May we courageously allow God to lead us into a new (and dare we say resurrected) way of being: body, mind, and spirit!