Even on wet miserable days like we've had this week it's hard not to be amazed, yet again at the wonderful colours of autumn. It's nature's way of course, of preparing for winter. It discards all the unnecessary parts, all the extra commitment of feeding the leaves. I remember a few years ago when I was fully committed to life within the organised church and working 3 days a week as assistant manager at the charity shop connected to the local church, I had this strange sense that I shouldn't be taking on any more commitments. In fact, I was feeling that I should be relinquishing some of the things that I had been doing until then. I didn't understand it but felt that God was leading me in a different direction and he wanted me to be free of commitments, free and ready to go or do whatever he wanted. Eventually I laid everything down and felt quite naked spiritually. All my life I had been involved in church activities and projects and yet now, here I was without anything, just me and God, no frills or attachments. And that's the way I am now but what an enriching time I'm having.  |
| From autumn I learnt that even though the leaves fall, the tree remains standing. |
The other great lesson of autumn is the harvest. Those who are gardeners (or farmers working the land) will be coming to the end of a very busy time of harvesting. It seems that in our garden every year at this time I rethink and plan what I want to do next year. I clear out the old and harvested and decide whether I'll do the same again next year or change things a bit. Sometimes when things haven't turned out as I thought or expected, then I change things. I don't do the same thing again. It would seem a bit foolish. If it hasn't worked then why waste time doing it again. As Albert Einstein said, you can't go on doing the same thing again and again and expect a different result. What a waste of time and effort. And yet on a spiritual level we so often do just that. We do not always have the deep satisfaction we hope to find, there is always something missing. We go week after week, still searching and hoping. So often we come away thinking, 'that was good but ... ...' 
As young people we were full of enthusiasm - we were going to change the world. Yet we haven't changed our own town never mind the world. In the big picture, nothing seems to have changed. If a business doesn't get the result it's looking for then it changes how it does things. Yet in 2000 years Christianity has failed to bring the world to God. Maybe we are doing it all wrong. Maybe we should change the way we do things or maybe look at the seed we're sowing. After all you reap what you sow. Maybe we should take notes from creation and shed whatever might hinder us. We need to change, evolve and adapt.
2 comments:
A great deal of truth in all of that, but I just want to throw something else into the mix, timing! As you know we grow lots of things in our garden, some of them are grown knowing full well that they might not do so well, but in years when other things fail, they do very well. Peas a classic example of that, in our garden here in Latvia they often succumb to heat rather early but in a cool summer they are prolific and do the soil good anyway, so we continue to grow them and experiment with placement and timing.
Sometimes we try something for the first time and it doesn't grow, like you said, we think about how it was grown, where it was grown, etc. and try and work out if something needs to change. Sometimes we just come to the conclusion that maybe the year wasn't right for it and try again. After three years of trying we then tend to give up and concentrate on other things.
I think the end of year thinking and pondering over the year and what needs to change or how to do things better though is so important. In the frenetic, 24/7, 7 days a week, 12 months a year type society, there is no sense of that resting period and I don't think it's healthy at all.
I was hoping you would comment Jo knowing that you would have some words of wisdom on the subject. You're so right about the timing thing. As I see it, there isn't a 'one size fits all' scenario.
Also I find that some things I'm just not good at growing or I don't have the space or conditions in my garden. So many life lessons that we so often ignore without realizing just how tied to the land we really are. Thanks again for your input.
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