I have learned to both welcome and grieve the coming of autumn. And with every passing year I find that I am feeling
Autumn’s Lessons
more keenly.
Autumn is the season of ambivalence and reconciliation, soft-carpeted training ground for the dissolution that awaits us all, low-lit chamber for hearing more intimately the syncopation of grief and gladness that scores our improbable and finite lives — each yellow burst in the canopy a reminder that everything beautiful is perishable, each falling leaf at once a requiem for our own mortality and a rhapsody for the unbidden gift of having lived at all.
— Maria Popova, The Marginalian
In the fading autumnal hours I feel the absolute wonder and gratitude that I am alive at all, along with growing recognition of my bittersweet feelings for this temporal life with all of its losses.
Do you also find yourself feeling the both/and nature of this season?
This autumn I have begun a new photography project. Creating something new is my way to focus on the joy of being alive and the beauty of this season rather than on the losses of this season. Winter will come, darkness will grow and the land will be frozen and covered with snow. But eventually the season will turn once more towards spring and abundant new life will arrive once more. That is the way of life — birth, growth, maturation, and decline — repeated over and over again through time.
Lessons in Letting Go
I find this season a great teacher, especially about not holding on to anything too tightly. Everything in life is transient. And those people/experiences/pets/places/seasons/things that we love the best are also the very same things that we mourn most deeply when they change or die or disappear.
I’m not very fond of the decline part of the cycle of life, but then again, I find it better to be in decline than to not be at all.
Feeling Raw
As the November election approaches I recognize that I am feeling a bit raw and worried. There are many reasons for this, the primary being the threat to democracy that I believe we are facing in our country right now. Yesterday I voted early! And it felt good to see the careful checking of my identity and orderly process of so many citizens exercising their right to vote. Here in Plymouth, MN, it was very busy and the line was somewhat long. According to one worker there we had picked a “good time” to vote when the lines were less long than usual.
This morning I read an essay by singer/songwriter Carrie Newcomer and her words reflected succinctly some of my thoughts about the importance of this election…
We are all feeling a bit raw. The rhetoric of this election season has gotten meaner. But, so many people I know are working faithfully in all the ways available to them. The stakes could not be higher, and I believe this conscious step forward is still completely possible.
And yet, I am bewildered by the closeness of this election. I know there many reasons for the closeness — identity politics, the proliferation of misinformation and lies, mainstream news outlets and some social media normalizing a candidate that is anything but normal – felony convictions and all.
But there is another layer to the closeness of this election that I’d like to name. Clearly, we are doing something unprecedented in this country. We are endeavoring to loosen the vise-grip hold of multiple millennia of patriarchy and white supremacy, a system where men (particularly white men) overwhelmingly have held power. Electing our first Black female president will forever blur the spoken and unspoken lines that have dictated a social order and caste system that has been in place for centuries. We are wise not to discount the kinds of internal and external push back that can happen when a major social change is in motion. We are in a time of transition and change. We are reaching for higher ground. And even people who are totally on board with bringing in a better, kinder more just world, might still experience an uncomfortable nudge of internal bias about women in positions of great power.
…
What I’m naming this election season is how some people —particularly some men, but also some women — are finding it uncomfortable to deliberately blur the lines patriarchy has so deeply drawn in our cultural psyche. There will be people who enter the voting booth and feel no push back, only joy to be casting a ballot for the future. But there will also be people who enter the voting booth and experience unexpected push back. It will surprise them.
And so this is why we help one another, name what is happening, and understand what might push back as we push forward.
We are talking about electing a woman, and a woman of color, to one of the most powerful jobs on the planet. The thought of this possibility makes me rejoice in the fact we have come this far, and makes me more determined to not go back. This is world changing and generations to come are depending upon us to do the right thing – and I believe we can.
— Carrie Newcomer, A Gathering of Spirits newsletter (on Substack)
For all of you who are, like me, feeling rubbed a bit raw this election season, read Carrie’s words, go out and vote early if you can, and do whatever you can to spread light and truth. Also, spend some time with the trees. I can think of nothing more healing than walking beneath a canopy of golden leaves this fine October day.
May you walk in beauty.
Note: Photos today from a recent walk at French Regional Park
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