Every year, the start of a new baseball season rallies optimism with a phrase from an Alexander Pope poem: Hope springs eternal. This phrase was more fitting for me at the end of the regular season when my under-dogged NY Yankees took on, but lost, to the LA Dodgers in the Fall Classic. Hope will have to spring eternal next year. Baseball aside, I recognize Fall, more so than Spring, as the Season of Hope.
Two Bibles
With my recent deep dive into Celtic Spirituality, I follow the practice of John Scotus Eurigena in frequently reading not one but two Bibles. The little Bible (Scripture) points us to the big Bible (Creation) which at every moment screams or whispers God’s presence and bounteous love.
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork
One day tells its tale to another,
and one night imparts knowledge to another.
Although they have no words or language, and their voices are not heard,
Their sound has gone out into all lands, and their message to the ends of the world.
(Psalm 19:1-4)
The Big Bible of Creation and the Little Bible of Scripture have a reoccurring common thread: death is never the last word! In my prayerful moments, fall most clearly delivers that message.
As a proud north easterner I love the four seasons, each for their own beauty. For better and worse the changes reflect our cycles of life while reminding us of God’s presence. We pass through bright beginnings and unexpected terminations, fulfilled hopes and shattered dreams, warm loving moments and bitter cold rejections. While death is never the last word, it seems to be a recurring word in every paragraph if not sentence of our lives. The Big Bible of Creation provides the animated screen saver and soundtrack for our life experiences.
It’s easy to have hope in spring with sprouting green and longer days. Summer brings us AWE-filled sunsets, sunrises and the warmth of the sun. Bright sunny days dazzle us, but the creepy darkness and changing colors of fall invite us into a deeper mystery of transformation, a passing to new life.
We are often more radiant in our losses
Falling leaves reveal a beautiful transformation. They fall to the ground, but in glory. Their bright colors seem to assure us they are retreating only to return again in spring. They also seem to suggest that we are often most radiant in our losses. Sometimes we later realize that in was in those moments that we glowed in God’s love. Jesus called death his Hour of Glory.
Falling holds the promise of rising, dying yields hope for new life. Fall gives us pause. Nature winds down almost as if it were preparing to sleep. The cold dark winter then draws us deeper into that mystery with a chilling seasonal silence, an invitation to contemplative stillness, a time to deepen that hope.
In the more recent fall seasons various challenges and losses have befallen me: disappointments in my ministry, deaths of close life-long friends, parental woes, health scares and losses, strained and broken relationships. For some of these falls, spring has already sprung, more often with a transformation within me rather than a change of circumstances. Yet for others the seeds of new life remain deep in the dark cold night of my soul. I wait, in HOPE, with the encouraging pattern of all living things around me.
Reflection
“Reading” the fallen leaves in the Bible of Creation leads us to reflect:
- What is falling in our lives? What has recently be-fallen us?
- Do we feel like we have recently lost our color? Do we recognize a threshold of transformation, an invitation to enter more deeply into the mystery of the divine within us that never completely falls or dies?
- Without glossing over the pain of a permanent loss or short-circuit a grief process, what little death-experiences hold promises of new life?
Herein lies HOPE! Whereas faith is belief in things unseen, hope is TRUST that they will come to be. Now and in every season, we raise our hope in a living God, for whom death is never the last word.