Tag: Autumn

An Advent Threshold: For the Growing Grey

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Autumn
Was certainly not winter, scholars say,
When holy habitation broke the chill
Of hearth-felt separation, icy still,
The love of life in man that Christmas day.
Was autumn, rather, if seasons speak true;
When green retreats from sight’s still ling’ring gaze,
And creeping cold numbs sense in sundry ways,
While settling silence speaks of solitude.
Hope happens when conditions are as these; 
Comes finally lock-armed with death and sin,
When deep’ning dark demands its full display.
Then fallen nature driven to her knees
Flames russet, auburn, orange fierce from within,
And brush burns brighter for the growing grey.
~David Baird “Autumn”

We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us.

We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us.

The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Watch for the Light

The shepherds were sore afraid. So why aren’t we?

The scholars say Christ was most likely born in the autumn of the year ~ so fitting, as our reds and oranges fade fast to grey as we descend into this wintering world on the threshold of dying, crying out for resuscitation. 

Murderous frosts and falling snow have wilted down all that was flush with life and we become desperate for hope for renewal.

And so this babe has come like a refiner’s fire to lay claim to us and we feel the heat of His embrace – in the middle of the chill, in the middle of our dying – no matter what time of year.

He finds us in our liminal moment of transition.

Hope happens when conditions are as these…

My 2025 Advent theme:
On the threshold between day and night

On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. 
It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord—
with no distinction between day and night. 
When evening comes, there will be light.
Zechariah 14:6-7

So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.
~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk

1. Father, enthroned on high—―Holy, holy!
Ancient eternal Light—hear our prayer.

REFRAIN
Come, O Redeemer, come;
grant us mercy.
Come, O Redeemer, come;
grant us peace.

2. Lord, save us from the dark of our striving,
faithless, troubled hearts weighed down. REFRAIN

3. Look now upon our need; Lord, be with us.
Heal us and make us free from our sin. REFRAIN

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Strung on the Necklace of Days

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It is a dark fall day.
The earth is slightly damp with rain.
I hear a jay.
The cry is blue.
I have found you in the story again.
Is there another word for “divine”?
I need a song that will keep sky open in my mind.
If I think behind me, I might break.
If I think forward, I lose now. 
Forever will be a day like this
Strung perfectly on the necklace of days.
Slightly overcast
Yellow leaves
Your jacket hanging in the hallway
Next to mine.
~Joy Harjo “Fall Song”

bluejay photo by Josh Scholten

November 22 always has a sadness about it for those of us who listened to the tragic news reports and experienced the aftermath of that day…

In the seemingly endless,
sometimes bleak string of fall days,
each one differing little from the one before
and the one that comes after,
there is linkage to winter on its way,
inescapable and unrelenting.

If I were to try to stop time now,
hold tight to a particular moment,
this necklace of days would break and scatter,
as a sustaining connection depends
on preserving what was before,
breathing deeply of what is now,
and praying for what is to come.

Each moment
never in isolation from those surrounding it.

(this article about JFK’s granddaughter’s terminal diagnosis was particularly poignant for me this morning)

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The Whole Shadowed Earth Reaching Up

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  the season quicker now
the darkening—

no longer the leaves
fluttering down

but the whole shadowed earth
reaching up, taking hold
~David Baker “Quicker”

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?
~Robert Browning from Andrea del Sarto

My branches are bared during this season of letting go.

As starkly revealed as I am, perhaps darkening days are a blessing: less spotlight on my complexity in silhouette – all knobby joints, awkward angles and curves.

One thing I know: in this season when I prefer the shadowland, I still reach up, trying to hold on to the promise beyond me. In fact, so many of us keep grasping at what we know is there but cannot see.

God has come down to grab on to each one of us — and is still hanging on.

We are not too plain or complex or awkward to be lifted, welcomed, cherished as we are, into heaven’s arms.

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The Intricate Texture of Things

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silentweb
morningweb7

Here is a new light on the intricate texture of things in the world…: the way we the living are nibbled and nibbling — not held aloft on a cloud in the air but bumbling pitted and scarred and broken through a frayed and beautiful land.
~Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

fogdrops3

The weather is getting brisker so the outdoor critters, some invited, some not,  are starting to move inside.  The cats scoot between our legs as we open the front door, heading straight for the fireplace to bask in the warmth rather than a cold wind. The pup comes in from the yard for a nightly snack and chew bone, and stretches out on the rug, acting every bit like a piece of furry furniture. And today there was another mouse in the trap under the sink. I almost thought we were mouse-free with three weeks of none sighted and none trapped, but there he was waiting for me in the morning, well fed and quite dead.  He became an opportune meal for a cat too lazy to go get himself a living breathing mouse.

From nibbling to nibbled.  It is a tough world, inside and out.

Our most numerous and ambitious visitors from outside are the spiders, appearing miraculously crawling futilely up the sides in the bathtub, or scurrying across the kitchen floor, or webbing themselves into a corner of the ceiling with little hope of catching anything but a stray house moth or two this time of year. Arachnids are certainly determined yet stationary predators, rebuilding their sticky traps as needed to ensure their victims won’t rip away, thereby destroying the web.

I don’t really mind sharing living quarters with another of God’s creatures, but I do prefer the ones that are officially invited into our space and not surprise guests. The rest are interlopers that I tolerate with grudging admiration for their instinctive ingenuity. I admit I’m much too large, inept, and bumbling to find my way into someone else’s abode through a barely perceptible crack, and I’m certainly incapable of weaving the intricate beauty of a symmetrical web placed just so in a high corner.

After all, I am just another creature in the same boat. There is something quite humbling about being actually invited into this frayed and beautiful, complex and broken world, “pitted and scarred” as I am. I’m grateful I’ve so far escaped capture in the various insidious traps of life,  not just the spring-loaded kind and the sticky filament kind.

So it is okay that I’m settled in, cozy in front of the fireplace, just a piece of the furniture. Just so long as I don’t startle anyone or nibble too much of what I shouldn’t, I just might be invited to stay awhile.

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A Little Tired and Hungry

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For grace to be grace,
it must give us things we didn’t know we needed
and take us places where
we didn’t know we didn’t want to go.
~Kathleen Norris from Cloister Walk

Sap withdraws from the upper reaches
of maples; the squirrel digs deeper
and deeper in the moss
to bury the acorns that fall
all around, distracting him.

I’m out here in the dusk…
where the wild asters, last blossoms
of the season, straggle uphill.
Frost flowers, I’ve heard them called.
The white ones have yellow centers
at first: later they darken
to a rosy copper.  They’re mostly done.
Then the blue ones come on. It’s blue
all around me now, though the color
has gone with the sun.

There is no one home but me—
and I’m not at home; I’m up here on the hill,
looking at the dark windows below.
Let them be dark…

…The air is damp and cold
and by now I am a little hungry…
The squirrel is high in the oak,
gone to his nest , and night has silenced
the last loud rupture of the calm.
~Jane Kenyon from “Frost Flowers”

Even when the load grows too heavy,
when misery rolls in like a fog that
covers all that was once vibrant,

even then
even then

there awaits a nest of nurture,
a place of calm
where the tired and hungry
are fed.

We who are empty will be filled;
we who are weary will be restored.

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The Silence Between Words

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Words, of course, but
Also the silence
Between them.

Like the silence
Between
The beloved and you.
Silence full
Of the unspoken
As a seed is full
Of all
It will become.

No poem made only
Of silence.
No poem 
Made only of words.
~Gregory Orr from “Words, of course, but” from How Beautiful the Beloved

Some mornings all I do
is write down words—cistern,
tribal, cached—copying them
from sprawled pages of books
across my desk, words that call out—
glimmerings, cursive, saffron,
heartwood—holding me in place
as if to say listen, you may need me
someday, I might offer you another way
toward beauty, or even beyond.
~Andrea Potos “Daily Practices” from The Presence of One Word

I want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable.
I want them to honor
both the heart of faith, and the light of the world;
the gladness that says, without any words, everything.
~Mary Oliver from “Everything” from New and Selected Poems: Volume Two

This morning

poem hopes 

that even though
its lines are broken 

its reader 

will be drawn forward to the part where blueberries
firm against fingers 

say roundness sweetness unspeakable softness
     in the morning
light.
~L.L. Barkat, “This Morning” from The Golden Dress

In the ghostly dawn
I write new words for your ears—
Even now you sleep.
~Amy Lowell “V” from Twenty-Four Hokku

The blueberry fields
are all afire,
each leaf an October mosaic.

As chlorophyll wanes,
the colors appear by magic,
like words selected for a poem
which begins as an empty slate.

Each carefully chosen.

Each surrounded by silence
becoming more holy
when it’s no longer empty.

So much of the beauty of poetry is the silence, a pause between the words.

Like life, there is nothing empty or meaningless about pausing.

Like poet Mary Oliver:

I want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable.

I am so awed at your faithful reading and generous sharing of what I offer here.

Even when my lines are broken, or I say again what another has already said much better, yet bears repeating — I too try to write with quiet hands, and see through quiet eyes, out of reverence and awe for what unseeable gifts God has given us.

Thank you for being here with me.

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Kicking Up Leaves

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Just as, when you keep watch
on the ground ahead of where your boots
kick up the leaves, the path
goes vague and blurred, while

if you lift your eyes the far
reach of the trail comes lucid
as map; so when you look
at tomorrow through next year,

the way, otherwise
so tangled and burdensome,
clears. And if the leaves
are, as they likely are,

fallen from the trees around you,
then you get to look
deeper into things
than spring allowed.
~Charles O. Hartman “Autumn Ordinance”

I remember it
as October days are always remembered,
cloudless, maple-flavored,
the air gold and so clean
it quivers.
~Leif Enger, from Peace Like a River 

The air tastes like autumn,
quivering on my tongue –
no need for pumpkin-spice flavoring
to feel the change.

Revel in the gold and bronze tint to the sky,
the cinnamon nutmeg dusting of the trees,
the heavy sprinkling of hanging dew drops,
the crisp and shivery breezes,
the new landscape peering through bony branches.

Soon the ground will be frosty instead of dusty,
leaving a crunchy carpet rather than shady veil.

October is always a much-needed transition,
keeping us fresh gazing at new horizons,
reminding us to breathe deeply when life feels shallow,
remembering we are immersed
in the glory of a new day we have never lived before.

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Hushed October Morning

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O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
~Robert Frost from “October”

After yesterday’s travel through curtains of heavy rainfall,
we abandoned plans to meet with family across state
for today’s memorial service, so returned home,
defeated, weary with sadness.

October is enough reminder of mortality,
with winds stripping trees to bare bones,
birds flocking and vacating,
bright leaves reduced to rusting dust.

This morning, the rain suspended,
its gray curtain pulled back briefly
to view what awaits beyond the haze:
this luminous brilliance, radiance, promise.

Slow down to look. Slow down to live. Slow.

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The Sound of Leaves Falling

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l(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness
~e.e.cummings “a leaf falls on loneliness”

Now constantly there is the sound,
quieter than rain,
of the leaves falling.

Under their loosening bright
gold, the sycamore limbs
bleach whiter.

Now the only flowers
are beeweed and aster, spray
of their white and lavender
over the brown leaves.

The calling of a crow sounds
Loud — landmark — now
that the life of summer falls
silent, and the nights grow.
~Wendell Berry “October 10” from New Collected Poems.

Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems — not to suffer pain?

Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
~Dante Rossetti “Autumn Song”

If I were a color, I am green, turning to gold,
turning to bronze, becoming dust.

If I were a sound, I patter like raindrops and children’s feet.
If I were a smell, I would be dry earth soaking up rain.
If I were a touch, I am a leaf letting go, landing softly.
If I were a taste, I would be warm and bittersweet.
If I were a season, I am the wistful goodbye hug of autumn.

But I am none of these, being enough for now;
this is enough for now.

Singing in the falling leaves,
I will come rejoicing,
Singing in the leaves.

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A Peculiarly Genial Light

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I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.
There is no season when such pleasant
and sunny spots may be lighted on,
and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings,
as now in October.
The sunshine is peculiarly genial;
and in sheltered places,
as on the side of a bank, or of a barn or house,
one becomes acquainted and friendly with the sunshine.
It seems to be of a kindly and homely nature.
And the green grass strewn with a few withered leaves looks the more green and beautiful for them.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne from The American Notebooks

After the keen still days of September,
the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth…
The maple tree in front of the doorstep
burned like a gigantic red torch.
The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze.
The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels,
emerald and topaz and garnet.
Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her…
In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.
~Elizabeth George Speare from The Witch of Blackbird Pond 

If I were a month,
I would choose to be October:
bathed in a “peculiarly genial” and friendly light.
A kindly and homely nature,
slowly withering, yet still crisp,
with mild temperature and modest temperament
despite a drenching rain and wind storm or two,
once in a while foggy.

Most of all,
I would cherish my flashes of burnt umber
as I reluctantly relinquish the light.

text by Mechthild of Magdeburg
Effortlessly, Love flows from God into man,
Like a bird who rivers the air without moving her wings.
Thus we move in His world one in body and soul,
Though outwardly separate in form.
As the Source strikes the note, humanity sings —
The Holy Spirit is our harpist, and all strings
Which are touched in love must sound.

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