Autumn thoughts for autumn people
With help from Lewis, Yeats, Hayden, and the church calendar.
I've been working on an update about the state of our household as we hit the five-month mark in our fostering pilgrimage. But the piece is becoming rather demanding, and I'm scared to finish it, which means I really ought to finish it and soon. Feeling trepidation over finishing something challenging is a pretty good summation of how I'm feeling about our foster care work right now. So... things are going great!
But I don't want to think about that right now. I want to think about autumn. To say thank you and goodbye to autumn. Because even though November is moving right along, I am still in October, existentially speaking. In a recent newsletter,
included this quote from Ray Bradbury that I will steal and share here because it sets the scene, so to speak.October Country [is] that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and mid-nights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.
So, what follows is a jaunt through this country while there is till time—while there are still a few leaves remaining on the maples and oaks and ornamental pears, and before too many yards get overrun with inflatable polar bears and other such regrettable bits of flotsam and jetsam.
1.
The autumn in my neck of the woods has been an especially prolonged and temperate one. The first half of October wasn't just warm; it was downright hot. But the second half of the month was mild, bright, and luscious. The first freeze came late. These conditions meant that the leaves remained illuminated and attached to their boughs longer than normal. To borrow a phrase from Y.B. Yeats, there was a "golden apples of the sun" quality to the foliage and the way the leaves cultivated and dispersed light in such abundance.
The long and lingering colors moved me to long and linger, to go on walks and drink in the light. On the night of the full (and super!) Hunter's Moon, everyone in our household felt pulled toward its ascension in the east. We followed it down the sidewalk under ash laden with yellow and through the greenway at the end of our street and onto a dusky knoll where the kids played under its silvery approval and I threw the football to James and hefted the 2-year-old on my shoulders and Lindsey took pictures of the bright gravity as it rose between yellow cottonwoods and dark rooflines.
Even Halloween treated us to a relative celebration of changing leaves. Something we're not used to in Colorado. We walked through the silver light with all five kids and a couple groups of neighbors, bellies happy from the chili Lindsey made. The western clouds were pink and the last of the ash leaves twittered softly in the crisp beauty of the evening.
2.
C.S. Lewis, from God in the Dock:
We must not, in false spirituality, withhold our imaginative welcome. If God chooses to be mythopoeic—and is not the sky itself a myth—shall we refuse to be mythopathic? For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: perfect myth and perfect fact: claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight . . .
The sky is a myth. If that is so, then the autumn sky is the proto-myth. This is a fact. I mean, just look at it. Right now, go ahead. Your inbox will still be here when you get back.
3.
Walking and lingering under such a myth is risky. The light is revealing—sanctifying—showing me things about myself that I need to start, stop, or turn from. Recently, I have been convicted about my struggle to sit still. To be content without a device in my hand or my face aglow with blue (very non-mythic) light, especially in the evenings after the kids are in bed and the house is quiet.
This plays into a related feeling and conviction about how I move through the morning. I wake and feel haunted by the monsters of busyness (HT: Justin Whitmel Earley's Habits of the Household) to get kids up and things done "in time" so that I can leave the house "on time." I rush about with a low-level stress, and my stress can rub off on others. I inadvertently chase my loved ones the way my monsters chase me.
On the last Saturday morning in October, I built a fire in our backyard fire pit. The previous evening had been hectic and disconnected, and when I got up that morning, I wanted to kill the monsters of busyness and scarcity. Everyone bundled up and we ate fried eggs and drank tea around the fire. The kids said they felt like they were camping. We moved slowly and sat contentedly in the morning's embrace.
I can't build fires every morning, though I would if I could. Morning fires are extra special. They're a way to rebut literal and spiritual darkness, to "wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking," as Robert Hayden wrote in "Those Winter Sundays." So, I am looking at how to build metaphorical fires that keep the monsters at a distance and calm my spirit after I wake.
4.
Autumn asks, "How long can you hang on? Will you persevere or will you quit?"
I've been asking myself this about the foster kids. I can feel especially tried by the 7-year-old boy. He has made much progress, though many challenges remain, and he demands so much attention. And in my moments of exhaustion and exasperation, I feel ready to move on. To be done with this season. Doing hard things is hard. We're hanging on. But for how long?
5.
On the first Sunday in November, Linds and I and the older kids were reflecting on the true meaning of Christmas Halloween—and, by extension, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, a mini season unto itself known as Allhollowtide—by way of Sacred Seasons: A Family Guide to Center Your Year Around Jesus by Danielle Hitchen. This chapter spurred a healthy conversation about the Reformation, the sainthood of all believers, and the hospitality that can be given and received on Halloween. But this quote in particular stood out as a solid encapsulation of what autumn's fullness represents and how God can use it to help us to "number our days" so that we may get "a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90).
But on the cusp of both winter and Advent, the church invites its people to a very personal autumn triduum with three days to reflect upon the end of our own lives, the end of our days in service to the gospel and church militant, and our future in the church triumphant. . . . Fall is earth's reminder of our mortality and of the death-to-life journey to which God mercifully calls each of us.
I like this for reasons I can't quite articulate. Perhaps I feel strangely comforted as I wrangle with the ghosts of expectations and ask for Spirit-led power to mortify besetting sins.
It's also possible that I feel thankful for the space to take a breath, here nowhere in particular in November. Advent and Christmas will be here before I blink. I feel stressed by the thought, if I'm honest. Though I'm sure that by the time I put up Christmas lights on our house, I'll be ready for what the Lord has in store. The kids are already practicing Christmas songs on the piano. We had our first snow just a couple days ago.
But right now, the sun is shining, and the late autumn light falls in pleasant patches through our living room window.
Is Rain someone specific?