We moved to southwest Florida just shy of 20 years ago where I quickly became acclimated to experiencing One season…summer. Yes, there were a few cool days. Yes there was learning to live in a place with a ‘hurricane season’ and a ‘rainy season’ but in all truth a day in January, April and July were separated by only a few degrees. We settled in. We adapted. Sam cut the grass 12 months out of the year. Until now.
When we lived in Illinois and Indiana, Autumn was always my favorite season. I loved the smell of burning leaves, the colors of gold, auburgine, pumpkin and scarlet. I loved crisp apples at the outdoor market alongside the clusters of Indian corn, tied-up hay bails, wheat shafts to decorate the light posts, and all things signaling fall. It was, as all changes of seasons are, a sign of transformation. The creation shouting that something was afoot!
During the past 20 years, I did my best to create what I most loved, in a place for which such things were foreign. My good friends from up north would send me colored leaves which I’d carefully place on the runner on the dining room table. I’d get a nice spicy candle that smelled like apples or pumpkin to burn each early evening. I searched my wardrobe for clothes in the colors of Autumn…and dared to wear corduroy pants while it was still 80 degrees… and be hopelessly out of context. Until now.
We lived in Lehigh, Naples and Sarasota in those years, tropical and subtropical weather. Who knew that moving 200 miles north would bring so much change? This morning I woke up to a crisp 55 degrees and the high will be 70. The skies are blue, the sun shining, the breeze is out of the west pushing back the breeze off the Atlantic. Out my window even the birds are changing, some don’t stay for the winter, and others from the north are just arriving. Leaves are falling everywhere, and while there are not all the colors of maple and oaks that I remember, the bright green marsh grasses are beginning to turn copper. Creation is once again signaling transformation.
I tend to wonder, ponder, think and write a lot about both creation and transformation. Creation is the subject of most all of my photography. And the wide open invitation to transformation is at the heart of my theology and likely my original call to ministry. I am aware at this moment in time of the unbidden and gracious gift of the place I find myself today, where I “live and move and have my being.” Once again (and likely still) creation is speaking to me of transformation. And I am humbled, and I am grateful.
It’s important for me to put together, to write down my awareness of this important spiritual thread of creation/transformation and it’s guidance, teaching and the sacred metaphors it provides in my life. As I sit here it has been 20 months since I’ve walked into a church. My disciplines and spiritual practices have all changed dramatically. When I try to make sense of, or to articulate the spiritual transformation that has/is occuring, words that come to mind are embodied, creationist, universal, or to borrow a word from the mystics, “one-ing.” My spiritual director this week graciously gave me the word mystical to describe the path on which I am walking as I tend to my spirit in this time. It is a path where the gap between ‘sacred and profane’ has all but closed…every- thing sacred…because everything is of God. “And he said: Let us make humankind to our image and likeness. …. And God created humans to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them.” —Genesis 1:26-27
Our transformation, yours and mine, is not a matter of becoming anything other than what we already are: created in God’s image. We are not seeking perfection, as we are already perfect as God is perfect.. The transformation open and waiting for us is simply our consent to likeness. To becoming like God whose image we already bear. The metaphor I see out my window, as the seasons change, is that the white pines, the scrub trees, and the grasses are not trying to become other than what they already are. They are simply transforming as a part of their life cycle…shedding what they no longer need…gaining strength by preserving in a season of want…storing and building in a season of plenty. Indeed. Creation signals to us what transformation looks like. Becoming. Always becoming. No books, diagrams, or “3-steps to perfection” needed. Just awareness.
I am grateful for the richness of creation and the diversity that I am experiencing as if for the first time. I am grateful for the wonder that wells up in me as wind, and temperatures, and foliage and flying things and creeping things speak to me of things divine. I am especially grateful for those who have gone before me and those who walk with me who also see/experience/welcome the transformation that creation speaks. Holy Autumn to you friends. Holy Autumn.
xo, Kathleen Bronagh Weller thecelticmonk
The Celtic Monk Musings 