One thing about living in the Midwest is the experience of the changing seasons.  Each of them comes bearing gifts inviting us to inner transformation.  Each season has its own truth and wisdom, challenges and joys and helps us find fuller meaning and purpose.  We are just entering into the season of Autumn now with its bright colors of red, orange and yellow leaves.  Its the season of listening to that crisp, crunchy sound beneath your feet as the leaves let go from their branches.  This is also the season of crackling fires, Halloween celebrations, haunted houses, hot chocolate, and the often advertised pumpkin spice lattes.  (Not my choice but some like it!)

Autumn for some brings a sort of melancholy time perhaps because it stirs up in us that feeling of surrender, of letting go.  Even though we celebrate Thanksgiving during Autumn, a time of gratitude, it’s also a time of bringing the harvest to completion.  Changes take place on the land, grass is less green, trees become bare, and the air cools.  It seems to be a wonderful metaphor for the transformation that can take place in our hearts if we allow it.  

I invite you to let Autumn speak to you.  What needs changing in your life?  What do you need to let go of in order to grow and deepen your relationship with our Provident God?  Are there past memories, hurts or grudges that weigh you down, or to which you are clinging?  What will these Fall days bring you?  I share with you my own musings from a poem I wrote in 2015 while on retreat at the hermitage at St. Mary of the Woods. Perhaps it will speak to you of your own Autumn musings.

Fall days often lead to letting go, uncluttering our life.   

Those inner seasons of life, the deep pondering questions,

where am I going?  who am I becoming in this second half of my life? 

These are my companions as I gaze on the cloudy, dreary day. 

I’ve been watching a lone red leaf cling to the tree–strongly,

perhaps stubbornly, maybe like me. 

It take a lot of courage this letting go…

trusting the fall to the ground eventually sets us free.

Happy Autumn!

Barbara McMullen, CDP