a poem…
I am unusual, because even after the scorch of summer, I dread autumn. Sunshine dwindles, dragging along my feelings. Autumn chores snuff the summer spirit of joy. When darkness closes in on people, they close themselves like hermits. This season hits my body and beats into my soul.
Wispy cotton surrenders to drab, coarse cloth. And people lose the wisp of their attitudes. Heaviness shrouds both their brows and something more. For they return to tasks somehow piling on life in crushing bundles, as if to match the layers of clothing covering and hiding bodies.
In fall I see only the starkness of this death. I see the dry golden fields. I know harvest fills barns with good food, but the fruit now separates from the plant. The plant dies in the frost. Fields look like empty factories with broken windows. Hope no longer remains in the growing, living produce, because harvest has fulfilled the hope. Yet I do not see the joy in grain heaped in barns, because I weep with the field for its loss.
Man closes himself indoors, and he no longer lives as one with nature. Now that he has his fruit and grain, he forsakes the field. He hides within his chamber, burning the wood of trees he killed for warmth.
So much death lingers in autumn. I remember how man gamboled in the summer among the plants. Ponds and lakes splashed with children who dipped their toes and fed minnows.
Now the ponds ice over, and fish swim sluggishly in the bottom levels of water.
I remember Jesus’ separation from the Father. At this time, the austerity of that isolation provokes me. How cold and far away He must have felt.
Perhaps I too fall into this rhythm of death. Now I sleep more. My step falls heavier. I realize I’m growing not stronger, but closer to my own death.
And I wonder if I really know autumn at all. For if the seed dies, and if we must die, can we also find a new beginning? We must die for a season, yet we will live again. In Christ we have this promise. And we also have the promise that dormant winter seeds become the living April sprouts.
Why do I doubt this? For I dread this death. Much within me wants to live. I still want to run, leap and dance in sunlight. I do not want to wear the somber coat of autumn. I would rather live. But God asks that I sacrifice myself to Him. I must die to the flesh. In some ways, I know God wants me to realize death. So He sends a season of autumn so that I could see the first step in that cycle of death.
God does not want me to take too lightly the death of my old self nor especially the death of Jesus. For both His death and mine are important parts of Christian rebirth. I need not dread this first death. For after it I live and grow again.
A new self lives in me–a little part like Christ. Therefore I can want to live. With my new coat of the Son’s love, I can look beyond the gloom of autumn’s death. I can leap and sing, even in the waning rays of fall’s sun.
Spring’s sun resurrects the seed, like me. For the Son of God has paid the price for my resurrection.
