The tree’s now stand stripped of their leaf coverings, in all their raw, naked, natural beauty. They are a sight to behold which gives me great enjoyment every morning as I watch their stunning silhouettes emerge from the darkness of night. They never fail to wow me with their striking beauty set against the ever changing back drop of the sky. They serve to remind me of the necessity and beauty, of all seasons. And that each season has a natural timeline for producing, before shedding and resting, to prepare for the next season of producing.
Autumn calls us to release and shed all that holds us back from growing in new ways. Winter seeks to welcome us unencumbered by old, redundant ways of being and relating. This transition between what was and what is to come, can be unsettling because those learned but unquestioned patterns of relating, may have covered our most natural selves; needs and desires to grow beyond, ‘what was’.
The trees invite us to stand tall exactly as we are. No more, no less, no hiding or pretending to be anything other than who we were born to be. This raw authenticity will reveal those who see and enjoy us for being who we are and those who don’t. This is the natural order of life that supports us to shed all that will hold us back from change, whether internal or external.
Post shedding, it is helpful to rest, resource and re-set. We may need to withdraw a little to regather ourselves in preparation for producing more life in a different way.
The business of being alive means that change is constantly happening. We can surrender to this reality, whether gracefully or disgracefully, or fight it to the very death. As in our death, be it physical or psychological.
When we surrender to the shedding season and refuse to resist the resting season, we work with our natural life cycles.
As humans in a nonstop culture, we may struggle to simply be still. The tree models this to us while also showing its striking beauty. When the wind blows, the trees move with it in a dance of its own.
Winter invites us to accept the mini deaths of, ‘the way we/life have been’, to prepare us to birth fuller, healthier, more satisfying ways of living and relating. While the physical body is aging, wearing and tearing, the psychological and spiritual self is growing, shedding, resting and relearning.
While we may all have our favourite seasons, the tree’s remind us to trust during all seasons. For life is always calling us to the fullest way of living, which also requires an ongoing assessment of all that undermines this. (including ourselves!)
As I look out of my kitchen window, I feel like I’m looking in to a real live snow globe! And I wonder how long it will be before it settles down.
As I do so I reflect upon the shifting of the seasons. It feels very much as if the winds of change are blowing (from the East apparently!). There may be snow on the ground but there are also buds of new life in evidence. Although I’m not sure how they will fare following this snow!
We’re in between seasons, no longer fully in Winter yet undeniably not yet in Spring. Signs of both seasons are present. We’re in transition. And this happens every single year. Maybe at slightly different times and in differing ways but the seasons come and the seasons go. We know and accept this. Even with all the weather associated grumblings that make us English!
Winter & Spring Transitions
Yet how much more as humans can we resist the changing seasons of the soul. We can fall in to the ‘comfort’ of just wanting life to stay the same. At least if things are going well. And even when they’re not, we can still opt for the familiar over the unknown.
Yet nature reminds us that nothing stays the same. Ever. Everything changes. Constantly. Either that or it dies.
We too are invited to be open to change. Not just to find a nice comfortable way to live and stay there forever more. But to be open to the ongoing changing seasons along with all the endings and loss that precipitate growth and new life.
As I observe the shifting of the seasons of nature, I know that I cannot make the winter stay simply to avoid the change that Spring will bring. I equally know that I cannot fast track in to spring to avoid the dead and the cold of winter. I accept this and I trust it.
The external changes I see within nature reflect something of the internal changing of the seasons of my soul. I can’t see them in the same way and I don’t know what the new season will look like. I know only that it will not be the same as the previous or existing one.
My season of the soul is effectively under review.
It is no longer what it was, neither is it yet what it will be.
It is in transition.
I am in transition.
Strange but exciting.
When I look back to the season of last year, I see new life in the areas of work, play and ministry. It was full of colourful and varied expressions of creativity from the kitchen to the garden, to my work and ministry.
I felt full of life and new ventures. It was exciting, enlivening, over full in honesty and at times terrifying. But I loved it. Mostly. I felt very alive.
Then the death of a loved one came and I was stopped in my tracks. I tried to resume life as I’d known it before but I couldn’t. I needed to pull back, slow down, stop, rest, heal and reconsider all.
As I continue to do this, I notice a natural stripping back occurring. As a self-employed individual, the financial controller part of myself has started to ask some uncomfortable questions. Fortunately, these days the spiritual part of me has walked with God for long enough to know that when things suddenly start shifting, I need to pay attention for God is on the move and in control. And way more dependable than any finance.
I have learned and I am continuing to learn way beyond the honeymoon period of knowing, through many periods of doubt and despair, that no matter what is happening in my life or how I feel about it, God remains trustworthy in all matters. Not for life to be how I want or to be exempt from the trials but that He is always there ready to help me to overcome whatever comes at me that I may continue becoming all that I have been made to be. As well as continuing to pursue the paths, the plans and the purposes that He has for me. No matter what. For His plans always supersede anything I could ever come up with.
And so, as I realise that it is God who is stripping me back right now, I am beginning to loosen my grip upon all things known in my life that the winds of change may take away that which I need to let go of to make room for that which I am being prepared for.
This is a live process. It’s moving constantly and hard to capture in words right now. I don’t really know what is happening within me. I don’t really know what the outcome of this seasonal shifting will be. I don’t know what I will have to relinquish from my life nor what I will find in its place. I don’t really know what will happen, when or how. I know only that it is happening. And that I can fight this process out of fear or I can surrender and embrace what is to come out of expectation and anticipation. Ultimately out of trust for the one who does know for I believe that it is He who is engineering this seasonal shifting.
Trust is such a key element of being a human. Trust in ourselves, in our God, in others and in life. Trust that just as nature reminds us that the seasons do what they need to facilitate the next season, so too do we when we trust and surrender.
We can’t stay in any one season forever more. It isn’t possible. Everything that lives continues to move, to change and to grow. Including us. But we each must choose whether to go with this or to fight it.
Imagine attempting to stop summer from ever ending. With no stripping back, no season of rest, everything would eventually die off. New life would cease to continue. Ditto with us humans.
New life wants to spring forth within us all. But this cannot happen without the season of pruning, stripping back and rest that facilitate the emergence of new life. Without which something within us begins to die.
We trust in the seasons of nature, that no matter how long it takes, the snow will eventually go and spring will burst forth bringing a colourful array of new life with it. And maybe even some warm sunshine!
Can we trust too in the seasons of the soul?
Can we allow the changes to come?
Not fight to keep things the same?
Not hold so tightly to the old and familiar that we block the arrival of the new and unknown?
Can we simply surrender through trust to the shifting of the seasons?
When I look back fifteen years, my life today bears no resemblance to what it did back then. And I praise God daily for that. When I look back five years ago, my life was entirely different. When I look back a year ago, some things were the same, many were not. Life doesn’t stop ebbing and flowing, birthing new things, seeing others end.
It’s a living thing this life and all living things must go through seasons in order to stay alive. And this includes us.
When I look around at the moment, I see much change occurring in the lives of my friends. Seasonal shifts. A letting go of the old. For some, relinquishing positions they had held for twenty odd years. A willingness to make space for something new. Even when the new thing is not yet seen. A willingness to trust and surrender to the process of life and living and changing and growing.
The winds of change are clearly blowing.
The seasons are indeed shifting.
I don’t know what this means for me or my life right now but I do know that I want to shift with them. I don’t want to get left behind. I’m not sure what will happen as a result but I trust that in the right time, that which is currently unclear will become clear.
