"Now is the wind-time, the scattering clattering song-on-the-lawn time early eves and gray days clouds shrouding the traveled ways trees spare and cracked bare slim fingers in the air dry grass in the wind-lash waving waving as the birds pass the sky turns, the wind gusts winter sweeps in it must it must."  (Debra Reinstra, "Autumn")

    It's here:  the autumnal equinox.  It's a good day, a fun time.  Turning leaves and brilliant colors; cool, crisp nights and rich blue skies; the rising of Orion, his three star belt shining resplendently; and light and dark woven with liminality and change:  life displays its glory once more.

    In the ancient near east, the land of Egypt, Assyria, Sumer, and Babylon, the autumn was a significant moment.  It marks the time of harvest, of thanksgiving, a season of expectation--the life giving autumnal rains were imminent--and days of ingathering and celebration.

    So it can be for us.  Amidst our technology and worldly disenchantment, we can learn from our long ago brethren, our many ancestors who placed such faith in the certainty of the seasons, ordained, as they saw it, by the gods.  It's good to reach ends, and it's equally good to meditate on beginnings; it's good to remember the ceaselessness of unceasing rhythms that ripple through the cosmos.  It's good to think about the certitude still embedded in a mercurial and capricious world.

    In autumn's transforming predictability, we also catch a deeper glimpse of the creator God.  In a finite and fractured world, change, some good, some bad, is inevitable. Certainty, however, remains.  Amidst our many seasons of life, these days of malleability and shifting sands, God's love, guidance, and presence reign firm.  Take heart in autumn's changes, and realize, once more, the face and necessity of an eternal God.