The sun is shining, the air is crisp and there is a feeling of autumn in the air. This morning, when I opened one of my devotional books, this quote jumped off the page:
“Delicious Autumn!
My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird
I would fly about the earth seeking successive autumns.”
George Elliot
These words captured for me the feeling that I get every year at this time.
A Royal Season
In their book “The Heart’s Journey Through The Seasons. The Cycle of Life” Joyce Rupp and Marcrina Wiederkehr write:
“Autumn is a royal season. To temper the necessary disrobing of the glory of summer, autumn dons a coat of many colours, for beauty softens departure.
Autumn holds fragments of the other seasons in transformative arms.
Sitting in autumn’s quiet sunlight can be a sonnet without words”
The amazing colours of the creation sing a melody of thanksgiving and beauty as the days shorten and the sun falls away from the earth. So many images of faith lie within this season for me – transition; transformation; life and death; thanksgiving and wonder; sacred mystery. This is a time of endings and beginnings as the seeds are buried deep within the soil and there prepare for what is yet to come.
The Autumn Sun
So this morning, my being sings as the sun shines through the window and into the window of my soul. I feel myself wrapped in the mystery and beauty of this season and am touched by the presence of Divine.
In our sacred story we find these words written in the book of Ecclesiastes. In like to imagine that the author of these words was connected to the movement of the seasons of the earth and from that understood better the cycle of life.
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
This morning may you know a moment of joy as you are wrapped in the arms of sacred mystery and may the warmth of the autumn sun flood your soul.
Blessings
Valerie
© 2016 Rev. Valerie Peyton Kingsbury. All Rights Reserved
Valerie, I’m not a fan of Fall as it reminds me Winter is not far away. I do love the fall colors. I never thought of Fall in terms you put forward and so it give me a new way to consider this season. Thank you, Harold