This is something that has struck me as an odd sensation. How seasons have one thing in common. One central connection point. Beauty in change. Fall has always been my favorite season, upon further contemplation I asked: What is it about nature dying that gives beauty? What is it about transition that can be so indelibly endearing to the senses? Is this not a picture of the transient nature of all things physical? The beauty we see in the passing of the seasons, the nostalgic romanticism one attaches to the falling of the leaves is not the thing itself, they are only the scent of unmet desires we have not yet found, an unsatisfied longing for the unknown, echoes of a tune we have not heard, news from a faraway country we have never visited, perhaps it is akin to weaving a spell? Spells are used for breaking enchantments and maybe nature can be a strong spell to break us form the clutches of our home monitors and screens, away from the compelling vices that have been laid heavily upon us. Built up crutches of esteem, layered and pasted on by the peer pressures of our society. A constant bombardment of stimuli, stimuli, input, input, a data collection cesspit of noxious sedatives. The worldwide web, an all purpose medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows thought my eyes and ears and into my mind. A sordid matrix of facade part-like representations, blog posts, memes, emojis, hashtags and tweets, with angular limbs, jerky movements, dry, metallic noises, all suggesting either machines that have come to life or life degenerating into mechanism. A brain molded by the plasticity of the age, re-categorized and sculpted into the rapid fire, quick-scan process of internet thought, attempting to reach an end yet always missing the linear and concentrated whole.
Yet outside nature, with a soft compelling plea begs to whisk us away into that other dimension apart of fear and anxiety, distrust and vexing competition, almost all of our culture has been directed at silencing this shy persistent inner voice, almost all our modern philosophies have been devised that the good of man is to be found in the vast interlocking web of self-aggrandizement and political advancement. Yet my mind wanders to the wet leaf-strewn concrete of a college campus on a blustery fall day as the trees shed their summer foliage and the wind whispers through many a now leafless tree. Falling leaves hide the path so quietly, a sickening nostalgia now entangles my mind, like the sordid web-like matrix of the internet itself. When autumn comes kicking the long hot perverse summer out on its treacherous hindparts, as it always does one day, sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend you have missed. It settles in the way an old acquaintance will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you. I prefer Fall and Winter, that is when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. The loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it. The whole story doesn't show.
Autumn reminds us that our leaves too will die. The curse we inherited from our father-tree Adam means we have our seasons and then we go. Winter takes us all.
This is worth stopping to consider. My chlorophyll will break down; my limbs will turn brittle; one of these breaths I now take casually will be my last.
And what, then, when my tether snaps from this mortal coil?
Autumn can draw our attention to the one man who broke through winter into an unending summer. The one who spent three days brown and dead in the dirt and came back in an indestructible green. The one who wasn’t just a leaf; he was a whole new tree.
Winter comes to us all. But winter isn’t the end for Christians, because our lives are joined to a tree that winter cannot touch. Death has no sting; winter has no bite. We will fall from the tree of Adam; but we will flower again in a spring of eternal, glorious growth.
Holding this truth gives the hope to inoculate us against the persistent disease of worldly materialism, to understand the eternal realities behind the transient veil and to one day let death be swallowed up in victory so we may indeed beautifully.
I do believe it is within our natures to be resistant of change. Though we might enjoy each season for its change once its taken place, there's an anxiety that comes with that build-up, it sparks a bit of nervous energy within us, making us feel like we need to prepare ourselves form something more severe or brace for impact--even though its as simple as allowing the seasons to turn. And though after a long harsh winter we may look forward with anxious eye to the budding of the green leaf and bloom of the flower, spring and soon summer itself we are yet still quick to let go of. And though we might be excited about sweater weather and Halloween parties, we know Christmas with its hullabaloo and enigmatic rush propelling many a profitable fortune earner into dispiriting debt and soul-cleaving New Years depression, looms large around the corner and we find ourselves at cross purposes as we all cant still but hesitate to embrace the new season.
Yet, if we have the correct mindset and focus, setting our minds not on fortune, money, or the transient nature of things, because like the seasons and the years that pass us by they seem to be as fleeting as a leaf in the wind, hard to catch yet visibly detached. What is changing is merely the physical apparatus and worn out vestures of things passing away, like a snake shedding its skin, what is left is a representation of things eternal, like the seasons of change they give us a fleeting and passing glimpse of lusters yet to come if only to be enjoyed for a moment, for what is really you, is as changeless as the eternal nature of our being.
"Since you have been raised with Christ, strive for the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above not on earthly things. For you have died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. " Col 3:2
"So we fix our eyes, not on what is seen, but what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal" 2 Cor 4:18
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