Autumn is a beautiful season. Autumn
is a season of death. All around us, the world is ablaze in color. Color which
is the result of dying. Many of us find it hard to think of death and beauty at
the same time, and yet that is what is happening. Parker Palmer calls it a
great paradox, this blending of opposites which must be held in the spirit at the
same time: death/life, beauty/corruptibility, color/darkness.
Deep truth is not found in either/or
thinking, but rather in the paradox both/and.
Our faith is filled with such
paradoxes. Think of the paradox that begins the Requiem Mass: We are baptized
into Christ’s death so that we might rise with him to new life.
Autumn is also a season when
seeds are scattered and will bear fruit in times to come. Again we can think of
our faith: the seed falls to the ground and dies so that will bear much fruit.
The death of Christ inaugurates a time of un-ending life.
We can also think of our own
lives, of those times when we have been called to suffer little (or great)
deaths which themselves gave way to new promises, new horizons and new fruits.
I’ll let Parker Palmer have the last word here:
“In retrospect,
I can see in my own life what I could not see at the time—how the job I lost
helped me find work I needed to do, how the ‘road closed’ sign turned me toward
terrain I needed to travel, how losses that felt irredeemable forced me to
discern meanings I needed to know. On the surface, it seemed that life was
lessening, but silently and lavishly the seeds of new life were always being
sown.” (Let Your Life Speak, p. 99)
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