Of Song and Seasons

Every season has its song. The music of Fall is decidedly different from the music of Summer, Spring and Winter. Vivaldi thought as much. So did Keats and Byron and Eliot. The changing of seasons has inspired artists since time immemorial. The earth acts differently depending on the season: In the summer one won’t see yellow leaves scuttling down city streets; or feel the brace of a cool morning; nor would one behold the ambiguous sunlight glittering on the water at a slant. Those phenomena belong to the Fall of the year, when the ways of earth mature and ripen and slow down to take account…of the harvest…of mutability…of waning light…the coming cold…of our dead….the music now in a minor key.

The liturgical life of the church is emblematic of the way we live according to season. We begin Advent soon. We leave off reading about the life, teaching and ministry of Jesus, and we recount again the prophecies of renewal and restoration, and we remember the promise and hope of a new birth that bears profound possibility as to the way ahead. We do this as the light lessens. The service music will be different, the hymnody, the vestments change, the procession changes…All pointing to the reality that the earth and our lives in earth participate in a mysterious and beautiful transience, divine process set to song, that animates the universe entire… the becoming that is and is to come.

Pay attention to the truth of the season…for seasons sing of truth…pay attention, for this season of “mists and mellow fruitfulness” won’t last…seasons beget new seasons that sing their version of truth too; but for now the earth begins sacred rest, accounting for what is gleaned and what is lost…and begins preparation for sleep…sleep in hope of season come round again, as if for the first time.