Autumn Thoughts

This post has been forming in my mind for some time now. As the year slowly ends and fades to winter I am reminded why spring is still my favorite season -- though there are fall days that make me rethink that choice.

And yet, there is something, some elusive, fragile, haunting quality about the fading of the year in the autumn that tugs at my heart, that awakens thoughts that are both too melancholy and too beautiful to bear.

Autumn embodies the quote [that I used to have] on the heading of this blog: "Two of the greatest gifts of God to man are light and color."

Light and color abound in autumn. Light so cool and crystalline and yet so warm and soft. Color so fierce and so vibrant it takes your breath away.

And yet, and yet, the color and the light are bittersweet, like an ache in my heart that makes me look away that I might not fall too much in love.

When this ache comes I want to stop looking, stop feeling and walk away. For nothing stays the same and autumn's lights and colors seem to accentuate in their dying brightness that painful truth.

All seasons are about change. But it seems to me that autumn, in which each day brings a new change, a lessening, is change in fast forward. The daily change, the fall of leaves, one by one, inexorably, wakes thoughts and desires in my heart that make me sad, and bring up that dull ache of time. Time, that heals and renews indeed, but in these autumn days, seems to only rob and deprive.

And then I find myself longing for Heaven, where nothing will ever change and light and color will be beauty in it's purest form, unable to diminish or die. Nothing will be taken away forever, and nothing will pass before you can gaze at it fully. Gazing at the beauty that burns to fill you will no longer be this action trapped in time -- time that passes and pulls at you, making you hurry and gather the color and the light to your heart in painful haste knowing all the while that it cannot stay, and that the memory will fade as well. Gazing will be eternal. We will be able to look forever and then our joy will no longer be tinged with sorrow.

Then maybe autumn can be my favorite season.



Here is a song by Dave Mallett (a favorite folk singer/songwriter of my Grandpa's too) that says much of what I tried to say here:

"Nothin' But A Long Goodbye"

Some days shine so brightly
Like gold dust in a pan
Some days you hold so lightly
They go slipping right through your hand
And those of us who are so lucky
Get to grow old before we die
Sometimes it seems this whole life
Ain't nothin' but a long goodbye.

Falling leaves outside my window
On this October day
I always grieve when the last rose
Of summer is fading in fright
And when I see the seasons changing
It brings a tear unto my eyes
Sometimes it seems this whole life
Ain't nothin' but a long goodbye
Nothin' but a long goodbye.

And every day people leavin'
For some place far away
And every day people grievin'
Over things they didn't do or say
And in the great big picture
It's just the twinkle of an eye
Sometimes it seems this whole life
Ain't nothin' but a long goodbye.