Last year, just about this time, I wrote about my new route to school each day and the beauty in the colours around me as the leaves changed to richer and more complex combinations day by day. Sometimes a change in routine (or route) is just the right thing; “a change is as good as a rest” my grandmother said…
This year has brought a great deal of change to the Martini family home – some of it slowly and some of it fast, some of it welcome and some of it worrying, but we are learning to live through the changes as they come and to accept the beauty of each moment.
“Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.” (Wolfgang von Goethe)
If you have been reading along with me for awhile you will know that the hardest change has been the death of one particularly wonderful friend. She loved the autumn leaves (and wore their colours brilliantly), using the inspiration of the changing season to add colour to the lives and homes of her students and clients…
I miss her everyday, as does everyone who knew her, and especially the easy way she made us all feel important and welcome in her world. She lived through so many difficulties, but never let them change the way she shared so much of herself and her life with others.
As I have been driving the winding way to work and back each day this month I have been watching the gradual colour change with mixed emotions. This autumn, the first one that she won’t witness with us, seems like a gift from her directly. In her absence I am looking for her in the colour and feelings of the fall all around me.
The trees are so lovely in their ever changing coppers, rusts and golds. They stand like torches against the darkening fall skies, lighting the horizon and their impending change with courage and resilience.
These colours are a gift to us. The leaves, in their final days, are fuller and more beautiful than they ever were in spring and summer greens. And the trees are not afraid to let go of what is ready to return to the earth.
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” (Dan Millman)
It’s time to change. It’s time to let go. It’s time to let the season lead us to renewal and regeneration. In order to open ourselves to the possibility and newness of spring we need to let go and trust that the fall has a purpose.
Letting go is scary. No anchor, no port, no steady branch to lean against – but trusting in the cycle of change gives us the freedom to become what we are supposed to be. The leaves are lighting the way. Their bold colours are a banner of bravery in the face of the unknown…
“There is freedom waiting for you, on the breezes of the sky, and you ask “What if I fall?” Oh but my darling, what if you fly?” (quote by Erin Hanson, but she might have been channeling Margaret, who always called me darling and who championed a life of bravery, choice, passion and adventure…)
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.” (Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8)
Fly, lovely leaves, fly…
(Art by Miss G. & Gr.5…)
martinistyle 
“Is there an answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people?…The response would be…to forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to the people around us, and to go on living despite it all…no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened.”
― Harold S. Kushner
His book When Everything You Ever Wanted is Not Enough is enspired by Ecclesiastes
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I liked that book, although I don’t tend to question in those terms. I think people happen, and things happen, and our daily challenge is to do our best for others. Human existence (interaction, communication) is challenging just in terms of its human-ness… I guess the first line of forgiveness is to ourself for all the flaws we carry, and then to others for being perfectly imperfect just the same.
I’m fortunate in knowing that all I have is enough and more – I am abundantly blessed. Something I am trying to model and teach to my children is the idea that having so much (opportunity, education, resources) in turn means great responsibility (to the world, to others, to themselves…). I realized recently that the concept has a biblical reference: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” (Luke 12:48)
Acceptance, gratitude, charity, repeat…
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These are incredible!
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Aren’t they? The fall really is a beautiful season to play with colour and texture in Art… it feeds the soul!
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