Here in Sheffield the turn of the season from summer to autumn is very visible. Leaves are starting to fall from the trees, the nights are drawing in and schools and colleges are starting the new academic year.
· What do you notice around you at this time of seasonal change?
The Hebrew scriptures were written by and for a society that was dependent on nature, farming and the seasonal cycle for their daily life and needs.
As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. Genesis 8:22
For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted. Ecclesiastes 3:1-2
Autumn can remind us of aging, decay and endings. It can feel like a turning away from the light and into the dark. It can be a good time for slowing down and reflecting. As the evenings draw in we perhaps have more time to reflect and notice what is around us and within us in the darkness.
Evening
The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;
and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes
a star each night, and rises; and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.
Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell
· What feels like stone within you, and what feels like star?