Autumn: a million beautiful deaths.

This is the first time I've sat in real solitude and silence in several days. I have not wanted to be alone with my own soul. Nor have I been ready to. Sometimes I like to pretend that I am hard, that things don't get to me, that I am not terribly frightened by the idea of weathering certain storms on my own. I get angry, and the anger insulates me. But anger doesn't just insulate from pain, it insulates from joy as well.

From the soil of sorrow grows the poet's soul. We must drink deeply of the cup of sorrow. Sorrow sharpens our senses. It makes us aware of the brokenness around us. It helps us understand joy. Sinking into the realization of how broken we are produces an inevitable sense of grace. Oh how we need to live with our fingertips lightly on the pulse of sorrow! How easily I grow hardened to the heartbreak of others when I am wrapped up in my self-sufficiency and the pressure to mark things off my to-do list. Nothing quite accomplishes the rekindling of sensitivity like an Autumn of the Soul.

We cannot always live in summer. The temptation is to wish we could. Summer is easy and fun. It delights us with its warmth and adventure, with its freedom and possibilities. Summer reels with pleasure, but eventually our capacity to enjoy the benefits of summer wanes. Summer feels like perfection. Like the way we instinctively know things are supposed to be. That's why we love it, why we long for it. But nothing in this present world is perfect. Life cannot be wonderfully alive and green all of the time. If it were we'd dull to the radiance of the green and lose out on the glory of every other color.

When I think of autumn I think of brilliant reds and oranges, and I think of rain. I think of crisp air and pumpkin spice lattes, and I think of funeral scenes in movies with powerful cinematography. The really good funeral scenes, the ones that make your heart ache with the characters, are always on a rainy day in autumn. Really, when I think of autumn I think of a the agony of death and the deep, warm things that bring real comfort. The truth is that we cannot know life without understanding death.

Around me in nature I see the edges of autumn creeping up on the fraying leaves of summer. Soon the Blue Ridge Mountains will be gloriously at the epoch of a million deaths, just as they are every year. The days are growing shorter, and the nights longer. Everything moves in its cycle propelling us back into the heart of winter where summer is a memory and spring a hope.

I feel the million little deaths inside me too. Not just one thing is dying, but many. It will be a long, cold winter. I feel the edges of sorrow about to burst into flaming color. And I fight the urge to run to a place where there are no seasons but summer, where I won't have to watch those tiny corpses fall to the earth of my life. I won't run. I won't. If for no other reason than that I know this: every leaf that falls from the tree enriches the soil. It nourishes the tree so its blooms will be bountiful and fragrant in the spring and its branches will spread wide and welcoming in the summer.

The sorrow may last for the night, joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30). His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3), and those who mourn are blessed because they alone understand what it means to be comforted (Matthew 5).

After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. Ipsi imperium in saecula saeculorum (To Him belongs the power to command in the present and forever). Amen. ~ 1 Peter 5:10-11