Connected While Apart
Autumn Within and Around

The earth we are riding keeps trying to tell us something with its continuous scripture of leaves. (William Stafford)

I am made of all the same stuff that makes the seasons what they are. (Heather Maloney)

The notion that our lives are like the eternal cycles of the seasons does not deny the struggle or the joy, the loss or the gain, the darkness or the light, but encourages us to embrace it all–and to find in all of it opportunities for growth.  (Parker Palmer)

Dear Mayfield,
Sunday was wet, windy, and cold.  It was the kind of day that tears colorful leaves from their branches, littering the ground, bushes, roofs, front steps, gutters, sidewalks, and streets below.  The look of autumn can become more barren so quickly.  Wet leaves on wet concrete sidewalks retain their vibrant colors short term not unlike wet beach stones or river rocks. Running an errand on foot Sunday afternoon, drawn to leaves randomly plastered here and there to the sidewalk, I flashed back to being an elementary school child walking to and from school.  I was always fascinated then, in late October or November, if a fall leaf landed on the sidewalk and managed to stay there long enough to deposit an imprint as it started to decay.  I would watch it day after day as the imprint appeared.  I think it happened most often on concrete that was still curing.  It resembled a fresh, blank sheet of paper.  The imprint would be there months later, a gentle reminder to everyone and everything in an organic cycle.  I have long agreed with poet William Stafford in his understanding of leaves as scripture.  And I find young songwriter Heather Maloney’s words about us and the seasons and a similar sentiment from octogenarian Parker Palmer an invitation to pay attention to the conversation playing out between humans and seasons.

Years ago, I read a wise book with a central premise that our lives like the life of the planet on which we dwell have recognizable seasons.  The author went on to say that sometimes our current internal season and the season of the larger world match up, but at other times they are very different.  Autumn is a season of release, loss, and letting go.  When this pandemic came with its fury on the threshold of spring,  it carried the force of a wet, windy autumn day. Overnight schedules changed, businesses, schools, and churches closed, favorite destinations were not available, shortages loomed, calendars were cleared, quarantines were necessary, people got sick, friends and loved ones died.  In instance after instance the familiar color of our lives was drained.  Day by day spring was taking hold around us in conflict with the autumn loss-filled quality of our lives.

Now, for those of us who favor autumn and those of us who endure it, autumn within us and autumn around us are powerful, maybe even overwhelming, as they align now.  There is fatigue surrounding levels of loss and letting go.  There is frustration in not being able to distinguish between temporary interruptions and irritations and changes that are here to stay.  Like leaves separated from familiar branches, we are not sure where we are going to land.  In our varied lives, how we are going to handle all the chaos is a mystery.  Years ago, I had a patient briefly in the fall.  One day her daughter ran after me as I was approaching the front door of the facility where her mother lived.  “Chaplain, chaplain, you have to do something about this.  My mother said the most disturbing thing.”  When I inquired what her mother had said, she told me that her mother had announced that she didn’t know who she was anymore.  With care, I offered that her mother had captured the essence of her grief.  She knew who she used to be.  She had a structure of belief about what lay ahead.  But at the moment, she experienced a level of unknowing and maybe even fear.

In the decomposing of life that we used to know, we’re not entirely sure who we are either.  May we find at least small comfort in the words of Stafford, Maloney, and Palmer.  We are truthfully and deeply related to the cycles and the full embrace of every season, whether we like them all or not.  We and they are the stuff of one another.  And the possibility of growth never ceases in humans or seasons.  If loss and impending further loss are all that’s in our line of sight here and now, may we remember the turning of the cycles, the decomposition into new life, and the Holy One who never stops receiving and welcoming us when seasons within and around us stabilize us and when they rattle us to the core.  Be well.  Stay safe.  Don’t forget to email me memorial names by Thursday, October 29.
And peace be with you, Martha