A Few Thoughts in the Autumn of my Life...

I sit here at the end of a frenetic week, the work is over, our new building is mostly finished, and I anticipate the celebration and consecration in the morning. Somehow, I started thinking about all the celebrations that are both endings and beginnings.

I am in the autumn of my life, like the trees I sometimes feel a blaze of creative color, of time compressed, of richness and meaning both realized and anticipated. Fall is for me a season of glorious fruition, of ripeness, of harvest and celebration. So I find my spirit, while I still have a sense of much to learn, still there is a quite recognition of the distance already traveled and a meaning imparted to it all by the Spirit of God. Fall is a time to let go of regrets and missed opportunities and to look for the learning that each experience offered. It is a time to nurture relationships that matter, to complete the circle with friends and family, the circle formed when we become one spirit in two bodies. Fall is a time to learn the difference between alone-ness and loneliness, to learn that I am enough, not perfect, just enough, and to learn that God is pleased with that.

Fall is a season rich in the Spirit. A time to assemble our cloud of witnesses for All Saints, a time to taste the sweetness of fruit harvested, both spiritual and temporal, and a time to give thanks to the maker of all things for making me. And yes, now we anticipate the winter. Even in fall's joy we find the chill wind reminding us that we are not forever, even fall is only for now, so taste it's sweetness and it's joy while we can. The witness of the spirit is not to fear the winter, but to anticipate it's arrival...to lay up stores of the spirit to survive it's chill...and to remember the joy of a good roaring fire, old friends around the table, and memories shared even as the fire falls to embers.

The sleep of death waits us all in winter's depths, but why should we rail and complain before the Throne of the Eternal simply because we, like the seed, must be planted in the ground to rise and flower anew in a new and awakening world? Did not our Lord say that we have a place there? Should not even the smallest cell there be beyond comparison to the finest mansion this world could offer?

Do I go reluctantly? Of course, in the fall I am becoming less enamored of changes of all types...more taken with the steady, the unchangeable, the eternal. And so I fear the unknown journey, but not very much. For the one who is both light and life, who is warmth and life, has promised to go with me on the journey and to go is but to take his hand and trust the rest to him. And even if the journey has no bright tomorrow but is simply an end, so be it. For to have known Him in this life, to have felt His presence, to have been transfigured before Him, has made all the difference and I will be of all men most blessed.

Don't know if this will make much sense to anyone, but those are my thoughts as the leaves of my spirit begin to ripen and brighten to rich reds, yellows, and oranges.