A Meditation for the Season
In late autumn, there are no secrets.
In late autumn, the world is what it is
and there is no time for pretense.
In late autumn, the days are short
and dusk comes early
and nights are long and dark.
In late autumn it is obvious
that light is not the natural state of things;
it is a transient phenomenon
in the midst of environing darkness.
In late autumn,
the trees are stripped to their essentials.
Leaves lie piled around gnarled trunks,
green and gold and red and orange
all transmuted to dun and to dust.
The trees are twisted, scarred trunks and limbs
dancing against a stainless-steel sky
in spite of all the indignities
of lightening strikes
and wind storms
and insect infestations
and other traumas made obvious
by the merciless autumn.
The life of the tree
is now entrusted to a thin band of cells
protected by the gnarled trunk,
and to the roots,
life hidden out of sight
in dark places
in late autumn.
Caught in a net of twigs
near the top of one small oak
is a red plastic ring,
part of a child's lawn game,
tossed and lost
one warm summer afternoon
and soon forgotten.
Now the leaves are down
and a circle of bright red,
like a halo near the top of the tree,
recalls a simple summer game.
Standing under the tree,
one can almost hear the voices,
the laughter and shouting,
the times now gone, never to return.
Late autumn is a harsh reminder
that time's arrow is not reversible.
The underbrush,
the thick screen of bushes and weeds
which hid so much from the roving eye
in the bright, light days of summer
is now a thin and fragile net,
leading the eye on from place to place,
hiding nothing.
The deer, hidden all summer
by dappled sunlight and green leaves,
now turns and stares out at me
from the center of the wooded copse,
stares like one startled in the bath.
We stand and look deep into each others eyes,
eye making contact with eye,
carrying wordless
messages each of us understands
only vaguely and in part.
In summer we live in separate worlds
which intersect occasionally, often tragically.
In the late autumn world,
with all pretenses stripped away,
it is clear beyond doubt
that we share one world
and one life
and one destiny.
Small birds,
having forsaken the trip south,
daring the worst the coming winter offers,
flit uneasily from bare branch to bare branch.
Finding little cover,
they lift and whirl in the sky
and return to the leafless tree,
reminding us that they, too,
are part of this one world,
this one life, this single destiny.
In late autumn,
when the gray clouds cover the sky
from horizon to horizon,
and wind lashes the rain
against the window--
rain that carries crystal promises
of what is to come,
in late autumn,
when the sun is weak and late rising
and dusk comes early
and dark arrives before dinner,
in late autumn
I feel a yearning somewhere deep within me,
at the very core of my being.
Mistaking the meaning,
I turn on lights against oncoming darkness,
I turn up the heat
to ward off the chill and the damp,
I fill my time with important matters
--books to be read,
appointments to be kept,
meetings to attend,
jobs to check off an endless list,
lest I disappoint some unvoiced expectation.
In late autumn, the world and I
conspire to fill up the time with business,
the tyranny of the urgent
ruthlessly silencing the quiet need
at the center of my being.
I walk down the street of the town
as dusk gathers about me.
The lights come on--
everywhere the lights--
street lights and decorative lights,
chaste electric candles in windows,
garish lights draped across bushes and trees,
outlining windows and doors--
as if all the world were determined
to deny or ignore or defeat
the gathering darkness.
I walk down the street
as dusk gathers about me
and somewhere in the core of my being
it stirs again--
that wordless yearning,
that melancholy sense
that I am missing something important.
Like an unexpected gift
it comes to me.
I need the darkness,
the fallow time,
the clear, unadorned truth
that is late autumn.
It is curious that we think of summer,
when all the world is busy
with the business of life,
as our season of rest,
and we fill the short days and long nights
of late autumn with a whirl of activity
and duty and responsibility,
as if determined to set ourselves apart
from the rest of life,
from the natural cycles
in which we are rooted,
out of which we have arisen.
We compensate for diminished sun
with electric light and heat
and have no time to cultivate our own souls.
I need the darkness, the fallow time.
In need to sit in the gathering gloom
and allow that darkness to enter my soul
to acknowledge it as part of my being.
I need to sit and watch the cold autumn rain
falling from the gray sky
to puddle on a barren earth.
I need to watch the stiff dance of leafless trees
out on a distant horizon.
I need to see the birds wheel and turn
in a sunless sky
and the deer standing quietly
in some leafless glade.
I need to decipher the meaning of this season
for my own existence.
I need time to enter into the dark core
at the center of my own being,
to confront my fears and frustrations and follies,
to accept my limitations and inadequacies.
I need time to consolidate the season of growth
and open myself to possibilities
beyond my dreaming.
I need the darkness of late autumn.
I need to embrace it in the world
and invite it into my soul.
That, after all, is the meaning
behind the myths clustered about this season.
It is only when the darkness is complete
that light is truly born in the world.
Before history, our ancient ancestors knew--
they knew this sacred truth.
Into the dark recesses of caves they went,
into the darkness
at the heart of the earth they went
and there they discovered a vision of life
and they painted that vision
with bold strokes and bright colors
deep in earth's darkness
where it speaks to us still.
There they painted the single world
they shared with all living creatures.
And there
in the darkness at the center of the earth
they celebrated the great Earth Mother,
who, out of darkness, brought light,
who, in darkness, nurtured life,
and who, in the end, received life back
into the environing and fecund darkness.
The dark was not to be feared;
the dark was not to be avoided;
it was to be invited and embraced as the source
out of which life and light emerges.
And in sacred circles,
and atop mounds and barrows,
wrapped in skins and pelts,
our ancestors watched the sky,
the weakening sun and lengthening night,
not because they feared
the sun would lose its way,
would fail to return,
but because they knew
that only when the darkness was complete
could the new sun be born,
the sign of returning light and life.
They watched
for the longest and darkest night of the year
to celebrate the cycle of nature
which brought light from darkness
and life from death.
And that is the ancient insight,
hidden and disguised and
offered as dubious history,
which lies at the root of Hanukkah,
that story of the miraculous light
burning for eight days in the darkness,
the story which celebrates the emergence of hope
in the midst of hopelessness
and of faith when there is no reason to believe.
And surely that is the ancient insight
hidden and disguised
and offered as dubious history,
behind the Christmas story.
The tale of the child born
at the midnight of the year,
born to a teen-aged, unwed mother,
born in a cave, in the midst of darkness,
a child of hopelessness and despair
who grew to become the symbol
of light and life and hope--
surely this tale is the old insight
repackaged and retold
to ears that now only half hear
because we are so busy lighting the darkness
we have not time to embrace the dark.
The story,
no matter who told it,
is the same story.
Late autumn darkness is not our enemy,
to be hurried through,
to be struggled against and overcome.
Late autumn darkness is an invitation
to enter into the natural cycle,
to see ourselves as part of the great process
which is darkness and light and life and death
and darkness again.
Late autumn is an invitation
to find that quiet, nurturing, dark place
at the core of our beings,
to rest in that environing darkness
and to wait for something to stir
and to grow and to emerge
for it is at the margins of existence
that hope is born and light is kindled.
And what emerges is often
beyond any expectation.
A dear and cherished friend,
diagnosed with a terminal illness,
once told me that his condition
had proved a strange blessing.
In the darkness of a world without a future
he began to see his life and his relationships
with a clarity he never experienced before.
For the first time,
he understood the tangled family conflicts
which had grown like rank vegetation
year after year.
With the authority of one
who had nothing to lose,
we was able to speak, out of a dark place,
to those he loved,
to call them to new relationships,
to untangle the twisted resentments,
to set a new course into the future.
Out of darkness, new light and hope was born.
Lying in his hospital bed
he shook his head in disbelief,
saying to me that only as he accepted,
indeed, embraced his perilous state
had he been able to make this gift
to those he loved.
It was a remarkable story,
but not uncommon.
When we have learned to accept the limits,
to embrace the inescapable,
to relax into the darkness,
then we may be free to accept
the unexpected gifts which lie all about us,
unseen and ignored in our business,
in our determination to banish the darkness.
In late autumn,
with winter coming on,
there are no secrets.
In late autumn, the world is what it is
and there is no time for pretense.
In late autumn, the days are short
and dusk comes early
and nights are long and dark.
In late autumn it is obvious
that light is not the natural state of things;
it is a transient phenomenon
in the midst of environing darkness.
This late autumn,
take time to embrace the darkness,
find some fallow time
when you can watch the gray clouds
moving across the heavens,
some fallow time
when you can watch the rain
strike the window,
and listen to the wind
calling an unfamiliar name,
and see a weak sun,
low upon the horizon,
move across the leaden sky;
some fallow time
when you can cultivate your soul
and learn to accept yourself for what you are:
a child of this earth,
a part of its endless rhythms
emerging from darkness into light
for this brief moment,
incarnating possibilities undreamed.
This late autumn,
I pray you,
be not too eager to light the lights.
Embrace the darkness,
the still, quiet, nurturing darkness
out of which all light and hope emerges.
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