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Fall provides lessons for us
Theresa Seraphim g
Spotlight
Fall is my favourite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change colour and fall from the trees. – David Letterman
Ah, autumn!
By the calendar, it’s still a few days away. But by Nature, it has been happening for the past few weeks.
Slowly, but surely, the leaves on the trees (hopefully not the birds – is David Letterman perhaps saying something about the smog in California?) have begun to change colour – not all of them, but the process has unmistakably started.
The air has become cooler and brisker.
Students are back to school, and going to the beach is now on hold for only another eight months or so (or, as Doug Larson puts it, “Autumn is a season followed immediately by looking forward to spring.”)
Stores are now filled with long-sleeved shirts, pants, mitts, parkas and other clothing items for the cooler days ahead. (There are also shovels and sleds on tap, but we won’t go into that at this point.).
Soon, leaves will fall off the trees and provide delightful crunching sounds as they are trampled underfoot. But before they fall, they will turn red and yellow, providing the splash of colour that has been captured by countless painters over the centuries.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, in their article Autumn: Reflections on the Season, write that this time of year provides three important lessons for us.
The first is balancing darkness with light.
“On the autumn equinox (Sept. 22), day and night are of equal length. This signals the need to balance light and darkness within us,” the Brussats write.
They quote several spiritual teachers who emphasize the necessity of not being afraid of darkness – either physical or the one inside us – but of befriending it.
The second lesson autumn provides, say the Brussats, is that of letting go, as the falling leaves remind us of the necessity of leaving behind one of life’s cycles before going on to another.
“Autumn is a time for … releasing things that have been a burden,” say the authors.
The final lesson autumn provides, says the Brussats, is the opportunity to acknowledge impermanence.
“We have experienced the budding of life in spring and the flowerings and profusions of summer. Now the leaves fall and bare branches remind us of the fleeting nature of all things,” they write.
So as we watch the leaves turn, we can know that it’s not just a harbinger of snow, ice and -40 temperatures. It’s also a chance to contemplate the above points and to look forward to a renewed cycle, both in Nature and in our own lives.
Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn. ~Elizabeth Lawrence
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