With school sports, academics, and holidays on the horizon – words like these are incredibly important to be challenged by…this is stolen from a recent e-newsletter by the folks over at the Common English Bible.
“If you believe, as I do, that Earth’s turning, the shifting of the kaleidoscope from one hour to the next, across the arc of sunlight and night shadow, across the seasons of the year, is God tapping us on the heart, whispering, “Behold the Beautiful, I’ve made this just for you, this dappled sunbeam, this birdsong of the dawn, this crack of lightning in the offing,” then it’s whole-body meditation to immerse yourself in the blessing of autumn, Season of Awe.
Be it slicing zaftig pear, or plopping on a mossy log deep in golden woods, be it gathering apron load of acorns or plucking pumpkin from the farmer’s field, October’s days invite us to harvest the bountiful. To begin the deepening toward winter. To stock the larder with all we’ll need to make it through till springtime comes, and with it the rebirth of that holy season.
I’ve made a quiet practice of nodding to the wonders of each interlude of time. I resist the urge to hunker down inside. I nudge myself out the door, into the shriveled diminishment that is the autumn garden, into the boggy woods where trees undress, where naked boughs finger toward the heavens. Where the stripping down reminds me to drop my own unnecessary armature, inv
ite in the Sacred.
ite in the Sacred. I find autumn to be the season when faith is sown all around. On bent knee, we tuck bulbs deep into the earth — that’s faith galore, surrendering to winter’s slumber, believing that come the vernal sun, the shoots will poke through loam, will bloom and nod, will glory us in hallelujah hours.
Some say this is the wabi-sabi season, so defined as that stretch of time that pulses with “the beauty of sadness, and the sadness of beauty.” I find breathtaking poetry in the imperfection and impermanence of the dwindling all around — the light, the leaves, the southbound flocks who carry song to where we cannot hear it any longer. Is this not spine-tingling reminder to embrace our own imperfections and impermanence, to cherish all the more the hours that are ours?
Revel in the jewel-toned tapestry of autumn, in all its luminescence and its shadow.
Breathe deeply October’s prayer: Come star-stitched night, tiptoe beneath the heavens’ dome, wrap yourself in the cloak of Glorious Creation and Creator. Behold the Beautiful. God’s made this just for you.”
This meditation is by Barbara Mahany, author of the new book Slowing Time: Seeing the Sacred Outside Your Kitchen Door. From the front pages of the Chicago Tribune to her revered page-two columns, Mahany has opened her heart and told stories that have drawn in thousands of readers for decades.
words from wick 