“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” 

?L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

To live in a place where there are distinct seasons is a gift. Of course, every season and every landscape has its lessons, its gifts. The season of autumn is, for me, one of the richest. Oh sure, in summer a person can soak up the sun and feel the freedom stitched in our bones of those weeks when our young selves ran wild in the neighborhood and escaped the rhythm of school days. Spring brings days filled with such promise of what might bloom, what might yet happen if we have planted well. And winter carries the wisdom of silence and what can be birthed from cold and darkness and quiet.

But autumn is the season of letting go, of noticing how color can emerge from what was full of life on its way to the what next. On my part of the planet, these last days have been filled with letting go as leaves make their way to yards and fields and sidewalks offering those of us who walk upright another chance to learn. Letting go is perhaps one of the most difficult things we do as humans. Letting go of fear, of anxiety, of expectations, of judgements, of grudges, of dreams that were perhaps not right for us. This is to say nothing of the letting go we need do when children grow and make their own way into the world or when those we love most are gone from us forever.

Last week I was aware of the letting go that was happening with one of my favorite trees…the gingko. I have always loved this tree with its fan-shaped leaves. As I made my daily rounds in the neighborhoods I frequent, I noticed that the gingko had done what it is known for doing…letting its leaves all fall on the same day. No single fly away of a leaf for this tree. While there may be a few lingering leaves on branches, for the most part, the leaves all let go at once. It is as if they need company when deciding to make their exit from their summer home to the ground below. It can make for a very dramatic sight if you are lucky enough to see it happen. The wind picks up and it’s goodbye tree-home, hello soft, cooling earth.

I believe I may have shared this poem by Lucille Clifton at this time last year but it is so good here it is again:

the lesson of the falling leaves

the leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god
i agree with the leaves

Seeing the gingko leaves nestled into one another in the afternoon sun I had the sense they felt some comfort in being together in their letting go. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have the same comfort in our own free falling? I know their carpet was one I walked with awe and not just a bit of gratitude. I felt grateful for their presence…throughout the summer and now in autumn…knowing that their on-going life as fuel for winter’s waiting will help bring about the spring that lives only in our hopes. So much to learn from these trees, these leaves. Love. Faith. Grace. God. I agree with the leaves.

****I have taken a break from the pages over the last months but hope to be back in this space again inviting the reader to ‘pause ‘once again in the busy-ness of the every day. Thank you for reading.