Summer's End - 2012

Nights are cooler.  Mornings are requiring long sleeves until the sun can warm the air and peek over the tree tops.  The sunlight's angle comes in slant.  Produce at the Farmer's Market has peeked, our feathered friends are changing their gowns and heading south, and beautiful Lake Michigan's temperature is dropping.  Where did the summer go? And so day light gives way to longer nights and summer gives way to autumn, seed time to harvest, and we recognize the daily shifts and move with them.  Its nature.  Its natural. We don't question or argue it.

                                                                                 Moonset photo by Mark Bush

So why are we so resistant to change in other dimensions of life?  Why does the unfolding and shifting within our own lives throw us out of sorts?  As much as we talk about change, encounter change, and remember the various ways we and our lives change all the time, still we resist it.  I wonder if we could receive earth's transformation as a gentle model for our own; letting go of what was in the hope of what will be.  I wonder if we could recognize that we are part of something much larger than we can imagine and yet know that our part in the unfolding is precious. I wonder if we could receive transition with a sense of adventure.  I wonder if we might anticipate and expect our own transformations in heart and mind as we allow ourselves to be formed by Life and all its fullness.  I wonder if we could see it all as sacred dance, every day and find hope alive in it.  I wonder how we might all find our way more gracefully trusting that God is the Holy Turner in whose change we are made whole.  (See and hear Canticle of the Turning on youtube.com or from GIA Publications, Inc.)