The Contemplative Companion for Friday, June 9, 2017

iThe LORD raises up those who are bowed down. – Psalm 146.8

In Four Months

I love all things Autumn. While it is ninety-four degrees and sunny in San Antonio, Texas, I sit indoors, beside a purring fan – reading, or so it appears.

I am actually waiting for Fall.

Its earth-scents haunt my soul. Its vestiges of color line my heart with suppleness, and I wait as an act of longing, deeper than any patience might seem reasonable to most sun-people. I am all Autumn. A surrender to the dying beauty that is Summer’s moment.

It is a season for my letting go with the birch and hemlock, maple and oak. A welcome too: hello, evergreen pine and fir, silent sentinels whirring in the nearing winter wind.

In four months, I know where I belong. By October 1st, by body wants to migrate North. Now, in the heat of summer, I remember a trail along Lake Superior at sunset – framed with golden aspens. I remember the dusk at Two River’s monastery just south of Kalamazoo, Michigan. It is mid-October. Slate windy sky. Damp earth, silent to my footsteps through the ambered forest. I fell to the earth there, gripped the black humed soil and cupped its scent to my face. What did I perceive? All time fallen and made beautiful. Summer light now fading into cinnamon fields. October earth, moist to my breath – from which it comes and to which it goes.