Season of Mystery

The Mystery within...

I experience fall as a season of mystery.  The air has a melancholy feel and scent. Some life will soon slip into dormancy and wait for spring.  Much of what sprouted in spring and grew through the summer has matured and is preparing for death.  I am reminded of my own mortality and the day to come when I find out what happens to this energy that is me, and will finally know what it’s all about.  Though I love fall best, right now I am preparing for the season to come, the one of introspection and the hibernating bear.  I put away my flowered summer quilt and put the red and beige plaid winter comforter on my bed.  I hauled up storm windows from the basement, standing them up one step at time, and wondered if next year will I have the strength and balance to do it again?  And a necessary major window replacement is happening in my living room this week for which I am staining and varnishing the surrounding woodwork, along with redoing other timeworn windowsills.  I find it hard to believe that I once had the stamina to finish all the woodwork in my house forty years ago.  A lot of seasons have since gone by.     

I feel blessed to live where there are four distinct seasons and look forward to living in the rhythm of each one, and then transitioning to what comes next.  But I can sometimes get tired of winter’s cold, spring’s dampness, and summer’s heat, but I don’t think I could ever get tired of fall.  Its colors are so warm and the air so invigorating.  It makes me feel earthy.  I remember some past unforgettable fall scenes, one going way back before children, when I walked with my late husband on a sunny day at the edge of a dark wood.  There, white birch stood at the edge of the darkness while their sun bright yellow leaves floated lazily to the ground.  I watched in silent awe.  And then there was that perfect autumn bike ride when falling leaves, back dropped against tall pines, fluttered, floated and then dipped to the ground.  Watching them tumble, glide and then tumble again made my tummy tickle.  Being present to each season brings depth to my life, and the deepest occurs in fall.

What if we could all love a season to depth?  What’s your favorite season?    

Ressurection

God is...

What if there was no mystery surrounding death? What if the real mystery to be solved is in learning how to live through the many physical and metaphorical deaths we encounter in this life?  After completing a workshop on the “Nature of Mortality,” I was reminded of what is so easy to forget—that we are each unique, with problems stemming from things that no one can assume to understand or fix; and that we can each view the same things differently—including physical death. So then, who’s the teacher?  Through workshop participants’ reflection and sharing, I was reminded the teacher is within!

Our facilitator, Cathy Gawlik, skillfully drew us within through handouts of poems to which we attendees underlined words that stood out for each of us.  Then we reacted to our selected words with pen in hand.  I was surprised how the ink flowed onto my paper from underlining these closing words in a poem by Rumi, “…I cannot say the flavor of my being apart.”  Paradoxically, what I wrote does capture the flavor of how it now feels being apart from my husband who died in 1975. 

"The void between us is so vast and yet is non-existent.
 Pain, so intense, somehow bridged the gap.

Slow healing drew a veil on the one life we shared." 

Maybe death is the Ultimate Facilitator.  It encourages me to make meaning out of life.  It reveals my heart--both its grace and need.  There I can converse with mystery, with God, in whom I place my trust.  And there I can rejoice with those who have already melted into the sun and are dancing.

What if we all took time to reflect on the many deaths we experienced and therein find new life?