Favorite Season

Have you ever been asked? I never know what to answer. I really love them all. Each in turn. I love the fading afternoon light in the Fall, and the splash of yellow and red against the deep blue of an October sky. Last Sunday as I walked to Church for services, the cows next door were lowing. I thought: "How cool is that!" I love the wind and rain and bare trees of November and the snow and ice that (sometimes) visit us in December and January. Well, I like the ice provided it doesn't take away the electricity! To walk outside to Church on a frosty night and to see my breath and the pulsating stars in the deep sky - beautiful. I especially love it when we have snow at Christmas (who doesn't?). And then with the gradual growth of the light, the trees waking up and stretching their fingers and the first flowers and buds of Spring. Who could not love Spring? Well, I imagine those who suffer from allergies. And then the warm days, the roasting days, the days of floating in the pool or in the ocean, drinking in the the sunlight. Then the grass-hoppers and the katydids. It's all a wonderful round, and when you think of how few times we really get to experience each in a life-time, I am determined to savour each as it comes.

And as if all that were not enough, within the dance of the outside world comes the dance of the Church. To move from Reformation to All Saints and the month of the dead, to sing the hymns of Advent and look forward to Feast of Christmas and the bright shining joy that is Epiphany. To move to the somberness of Lent and the call to struggle against the flesh (again!) and to experience it as sheer liberation. To sit in the silence and darkness before the Cross, before the Love of all loves manifested to us. To ring the rafters with Easter alleluias. And then to celebrate His Ascension and the coming of the Spirit - the beginning of an eternal Springtime. The summer festivals of Trinity, Sts. Peter and Paul, and St. Laurence and the falling alseep of the Blessed Virgin. It all rings round and round, dancing around the seasons' change and bringing us closer with each step of the dance to the glorious moment when we will see with our eyes what we have believed in our hearts.

Seasons. In my life, if things go as they often do, I'm on the threshold of Autumn. The Church's cycle prepares me daily to walk into the Autumn and bleak Winter months without needless hankering for Spring and Summer. I know they'll come again.