The changing of the seasons

Sarah Brush reflects upon the joy that is to be found in every season.

‘Celebrate the Seasons as they fall.’ So read a hand-stitched banner covered in leaves of green, yellow and orange hues in the church coffee shop that my mum ran when I was in primary school. I was rather fascinated by it as a child because I didn’t really understand what it meant. I guess at the age of seven or eight I hadn’t really noticed the change of the seasons so much. Time feels much slower when you’re younger and the difference between spring and summer is much less apparent. Children tend to live in the moment. This is not surprising as each day is a much greater proportion of your life when you’re a child than it is when you’re an adult.

We often talk about people becoming more seasoned. And we don’t mean they have more salt than pepper in their hair. Having lived through more summers, autumns, winters and springs, people who have been alive longer have seen more, done more and have a plethora of experiences to compare. It’s not just the varying seasons of the year but also the seasons of life which older people have experienced to make them more seasoned.

Having just passed the autumn equinox a couple of days ago, as I’m writing, it definitely feels like we are in autumn now. It’s been a hot summer in the UK, with heatwaves, blue skies and people delighting in holidaying at home and getting temperatures you might expect abroad. I’ve delighted in my tomatoes and courgettes ripening, the summer flowers blooming and being outdoors in the twilight. Yet life is not always summertime and much as I enjoy the clear skies, I’m also a big fan of the autumn.

At the end of the summer, I wanted to mark the transition of the seasons by bidding farewell to summer and welcoming in the approaching autumn. I was over in west Wales on the last day in August just as all the schools were preparing to open up and children waiting to start or go back to school. So, at this transitional moment, I took myself off to the beach in the early evening, stepped across the soft sands and stood in the sea as the tide was turning. There was glorious sunshine but also a chilly wind. I was barefoot but also wearing a light raincoat. As I felt the water move in and out around my feet (and occasionally around my rolled-up jeans!), I gave thanks for all the joys the summer had brought for me; time with my festival family at Greenbelt festival; a friend’s wedding; a long shady walk in the woods with my dog; an afternoon working on a linocut image of a beach; singing with my choir at a beautiful cathedral. I thought too about some of the more challenging things there have been for me this year: complex conversations at work; people I know receiving diagnoses; others sitting with the dying or grieving loved ones; and, for all of us, being aware that we live in a world where, for some, normal life means financial stresses, war, famine, and even genocide. With each wave crashing in, then receding, I held all these before God. The joyful and the sorrowful. Then I looked towards all that would come with the autumn, the fruitfulness from a radiant summer. I thought about all those things that would be coming to fruition: the students starting on the courses I teach, the literal harvest of apples at Cuddesdon, my book coming out at the end of October, some new work projects which I’m hopeful will bring new interest and challenges. I held all these before God too.

With fruition also come endings and conclusions. As that possibly too well-worn phrase puts it, ‘The trees are about to show us how beautiful it is to let things go.’ And I certainly rejoice in seeing the autumn colours as the leaves turn and fall. I’ll enjoy blustery walks with my dog, followed by steaming cups of tea or getting warm around a fire. I’ll relish that special autumn light you get in the early evenings which turns everything to gold and I’ll be glad of night-time temperatures which call for snuggling down under a blanket or duvet rather than keeping all the windows open just to stay cool.

Just as I can see the value of the different experiences of summer and autumn, so I want to embrace the gift of challenges in life, alongside the gift of delights. Joy is to be found in each season, even those which seem more challenging. In all seasons there are things which endure. This is what I have wanted to highlight in my new book, where I outline my model of faith development encompassing all stages of life.

However you respond to the end of summer and the experience of autumn, or indeed to changing circumstances in your own life, I hope that you are able to celebrate the seasons as they fall and experience that sense of perennial love which, as St Paul tells us, is one of those things, alongside faith and hope, that abides through all things. He writes this just after he has talked about the uncertainty of our experience of the world now and the certainty of us knowing more when we come before God: ‘For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love’ (1 Cor. 13. 12-13).

Dr Sarah Brush is a Theological Educator and Practical Theologian at Ripon College Cuddesdon with a background in Medieval History and Youth Ministry. She enjoys creativity in various forms.

Her book The Way Through The Trees: An Introduction to Faith Development is out this month and available to order here, with 20% off all orders before the end of October.