this is the season for remembering...

Today we walked into the brisk autumn wind of October. There was the hint of winter in the air and it was simultaneously stimulating and sobering. Winter lasts a long time here. In a few weeks, it will be dark at 4 pm. Often there is snow in April. And it seems as if the sun disappears for almost six months, too with only periodic teasers until Easter. Old man winter won't really descend on us for another few weeks, but there was a preview of what's coming for those with eyes to see this afternoon. 

I have embraced the hardiness of this realm and have come to love it. There is nothing quite like the silence that fills the air during a vibrant snow fall. The only thing comparable that I have known is hiking in the Sonoran desert. It, too, can be completely empty of sound for a spell. Just without the snow. So, for me right now, before we get to winter we must transition into darkness. The poet, Jane Tyson Clement, describes it as "the season for what is over and done with" in her "Autumn Sketch."

The wind in the dry standing corn is the sound of many waters.

     (This is the season for remembering,
     for gathering in memories like flowers before frost.)
Over the mountains the dark clouds of birds wheel and vanish
and the air stills slowly with the beat of wings
in the light no longer.
     (This is the season for what is over and done with, finished.
     Hold no promise in your hands. Look to the earth no longer,
     nor tho the sky, for the snows gather.)
The wind through the standing corn is the murmur of many waters;
look for frost on the hillside and milkweed pods
smoking along the roads.
     (This is the season for remembering;
     blow on your hearth’s embers, and ask for a little while
     no new springing.)

Remembering, letting go, taking stock of the stark beauty and transitioning into darkness is the work of my autumn transition. It asks me to honor what is vital and essential and let the rest become dust in the wind. When I placed a bound book entitled, "My Pastoral Ministry" into the trash today - a volume I started in seminary back in 1979 but quit updating sometime in 1983 - my breath caught for a moment. In that instant I was a young, hot-headed idealist again with two small children living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. 

I looked through this book before putting it into the trash bin with reverence. There were funeral notices next to eight page lists of sermon titles. What a surprise: for an instant I was sitting in the Quad at Union Seminary. Or in the Sanctuary of  First Church in Saginaw. Or walking the neighborhood of Trinity United Church of Christ. I felt grateful for everything that had taken place over these forty years. Grateful and keenly aware that something entirely new is now taking root. "This is," as the poet says, "the season for remembering." And getting ready for something entirely new.