It happens this time every year.
The leaves are turning colors and will start to fall off the trees and I find that I wake up in the morning inexplicably tired. It won't be long before I awaken to gunshots ringing out across the early morning marsh signaling that the hunters have returned in their primal quest for "game" - the strange euphemism for the killing of the elegant duck and noble dear.
The autumn wind starts to blow the leaves around in small, swirling eddies like a harried housewife sweeping trash into the bin, and I place my sweater by the door.
After tonight's time change, the darkness will begin to arrive sooner, shortening a day already overflowing with too many tasks, and I wonder why I sometimes trip over unseen but rising anxiety.
The leaves are turning colors and will start to fall off the trees and I find that I wake up in the morning inexplicably tired. It won't be long before I awaken to gunshots ringing out across the early morning marsh signaling that the hunters have returned in their primal quest for "game" - the strange euphemism for the killing of the elegant duck and noble dear.
The autumn wind starts to blow the leaves around in small, swirling eddies like a harried housewife sweeping trash into the bin, and I place my sweater by the door.
After tonight's time change, the darkness will begin to arrive sooner, shortening a day already overflowing with too many tasks, and I wonder why I sometimes trip over unseen but rising anxiety.
There is a sad resignation to this season for me. It's easy to stop believing that it will be warm again, that spring will come and flowers and trees will bloom again. The realization of this "change of season" will press heavily on my shoulders and fill my shoes with invisible lead.
Just under the crinkling sound of dry leaves scraping across the pavement, new life is already whispering their secrets in the dark. It is the paradox at the center of life:
Just when the trees have become hideously, obscenely naked, when I think I won't be able to stand another minute of chilly bleakness, when I'm resentful of being expected to be thankful, Advent arrives.
It can't come soon enough this year. I need time to prepare for the Light. For new Life. For hope, no matter how newborn and fragile.
For us to be a bit more tender with each other as an antidote to the rantings and tweetings of the Syphilitic King in the Oval Office.
I need to remember that tyrannical autocrats have their season, too. And then, the arc of the universe begins to bend toward justice once again.
There are a few weeks left to this Season of The In-Between. Of the climate change of The Almost-But-Not-Yet. Of The Time of The Dying-To-Be-Reborn.
So, I'll head into this day, singing my Autumn Anthem:
Just under the crinkling sound of dry leaves scraping across the pavement, new life is already whispering their secrets in the dark. It is the paradox at the center of life:
All life must end. Death nourishes new life.I hear it. I know it in my heart. I believe it and I don't.
It can't come soon enough this year. I need time to prepare for the Light. For new Life. For hope, no matter how newborn and fragile.
For us to be a bit more tender with each other as an antidote to the rantings and tweetings of the Syphilitic King in the Oval Office.
I need to remember that tyrannical autocrats have their season, too. And then, the arc of the universe begins to bend toward justice once again.
There are a few weeks left to this Season of The In-Between. Of the climate change of The Almost-But-Not-Yet. Of The Time of The Dying-To-Be-Reborn.
So, I'll head into this day, singing my Autumn Anthem:
Just a small town girlAnd, remind myself every step of the way, "Don't stop believing."
Livin' in a lonely world
She took the midnight train
Goin' anywhere . . . . .
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