Happy Fall, Y'all

Folks get all gaga about Spring:  the flowers, the births, the pollen, and bees, and the warmth.  We’re dizzy and excited with LIFE, eager to get out in the sun and feel the light on our faces. I have friends that wallow their way through Summer and it's half-naked, beautiful fertility. 

 Autumn is not about that.  Autumn is about…well, it’s about things dying, really.

But WHAT a death!  What a glorious, rich, sensuous slide into cold and dark.  The air is spicy with harvested pumpkins being baked into pies and peanuts and pig being boiled and barbecued for weekend fun.  The beautyberry glows like amethysts from the roadsides before becoming breakfast for migrating birds.  The leaves flame up their own funeral pyres.  The light is a golden blanket you wrap around yourself against the chill.

You know what’s coming:  the cold of winter, the blankness of sky and tree and ground.  And so you savor what is left to you.  And you marvel that you are gifted with such beauty and bounty.

That’s one of the reasons why I reconnect with my spirituality during the Autumn.  Because even more than the nutty aliveness of Spring, the Autumn teaches me about what it is to live—and to remember that life is transient and precious.  It reminds me that others have left this world before me and that they are just past my reach, close by and present.  It connects me to the idea that we must store up our treasures and prepare for having less. 

There’s also the idea of balance that comes with the equinox (and yes, I understand that it comes a week before October…work with me here.)  There is a time when we aren’t rushing toward dark or light:  we can just be still.  In between cold and heat, in between life and death, just…still and able to think of where you are in that place and what you need to move on to the next place.  I find it a comforting place to rest.

Of course, there’s college football…

What?

Y’all, I AM a Georgia Bulldog.  It’s pretty much a religion around here, with Vince Dooley being the patron saint and Mark Richt being the current prophet.  (Or demon, depending on the Tennessee score…)

The point of all this is that Autumn, and especially October, makes me think about the bigger picture and the smaller one at the same time.  It’s the time of year when I feel most whole and when I feel that anything is possible because almost everything has happened over the course of the year.

Happy Fall, y’all!  May this Autumn find you happy and blessed and well-pleased with the past year’s labors.