Embracing Autumn

September 28, 2024 | By Karen Herrick

Autumn Opposites

I like autumn… it’s one of my favourite months, but the truth is that I like it on my terms. Crisp, cool days, please, with a little sun, enhancing jewelled leaves that crunch under my feet as I walk, comfortable and cosy in my coat and boots or snug at home in a warm jumper with my head in a good book as the rain hammers the windowpane .

What I don’t like are the drizzly, dreary, wet days where everything feels grey and bleak; the endlessly rainy days, when there is more mud underfoot than colour; the days when the mist has set in, and you wonder when the next bright day will come…

and let’s be honest… some years, it feels as if those less palatable days are more frequent than the cool, crisp sunny days we love!

All of Autumn

The attribute of autumn is change…. allowing nature to slow down, growth to stop, and let go of external things to enable dormancy, rest, and embrace winter resistant cellular changes within. For many trees that means surrendering the year’s green leaves to temporary blazing colours that gradually fall in the cooler temperatures and wild, wet winds. So, can I, too, like nature, embrace the whole of autumn… accepting the mud, mess and mulch of letting go, as well as the treasures of jewelled autumnal days?

Summered Out

For right now, I feel summered out… done with the growing and blooming for now- and just long for rest and a slower pace. I know that autumns in our lives can be messy, as we release what has been, in preparation for what might be. It’s easy to get bogged down in the messy questions of what to release and what to keep in our lives, the muddy transitional times when we wish we could go back or quicken whatever new thing is growing within us. So, yes, I’m reluctant…

But what to let go?

I must admit, it would be good to get rid of some of the outer and inner clutter that gathers and gets in the way, but where to start? Perhaps I need to surrender to the wind of God’s Spirit and see what that might be, allowing the browning leaves of what has previously given life to mulch and feed next season’s growth. But that takes courage, I think, and time to sift and sort….

So, what to do?

I think that all I can try to do, is trust the process of autumn, looking to nature’s wisdom, having faith that with the mulch of what I let go, in time, can bring new ( as yet unknown) spring growth. Rather than resist, perhaps I can slow down enough to embrace this in-between, transitional time… both honouring what has been, and expectant of what might grow next…accepting all of autumn’s abundant offerings.

I wonder…

What season of life you might be in? How can pondering on the characteristics of that season help you navigate your own spiritual journey?

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