Now for something completely different . . .

I love autumn. I love the cool crisp air like we are having this week-end. I love the golden light of the afternoon as the rays of the sun come subtly from the horizon rather than directly overhead. I love the feeling of melancholy that it provokes in me. I love going for walks and being amazed at the colors of the leaves against the jet blue sky. I love the crunch of the leaves and the spice like aroma of the forest.

When I was in elementary school my Methodist friends and I would walk from Oneonta Elementary School to Lester Memorial UMC on Monday afternoons for choir practice. The sidewalks along the four blocks that we passed were buckled upward by the huge roots of ancient oak trees (made great ramps for biking, but that's a different story). These were water oaks, and the acorns that fell by the thousands were those small round ones that easily burst open when you stomped on them, exposing a pumpkin like orange insides. Like all of autumn, it was a sensory experience, the sounds, the sights, the smells, the feeling of the cold air on the face. The tastes only came in if we stopped at my grandmother's house on the way (right by the first Baptist Church) to see what she had cooking.

So I continue to love autumn. But there is that melancholy feeling. This year I entered the season feeling worse than melancholy, so I wasn't sure that I could take autumn this year. Melancholy on top of melancholy might be more than I can handle. I have always seen autumn as an ending, a time when old things die.

But I've been wrong. Things don't die in autumn. The leaves die and eventually return to the soil (especially in my yard, I'm a strong believer in natural mulch). But the leaves are not much more than skin. The acorns that fall and avoid the stomping of young boys contain life. The trees that produce them are not dead, just getting ready to grow another year. Enough growth to crack and buckle concrete. There is no more new life created, it just continues.

The important things, the lasting things, do not die, they just prepare for new growth.

Therein lies my hope. The tree can no more decide to die than we can decide to kill life and love around us. It is just a season. The spring is not really a new beginning, it is an awakening.