It’s Autumn

August 30, 2015 | Reflections from some of the nuns

Words from The Heart

It’s autumn again. I felt that “new breeze” a little while ago and knew autumn wasn’t far away. I look outside the window today, as I write this, and see the tall maple tree beginning to change colour. There is a silent sense of relief that the heat has gone. It will come back soon enough, but right now we can have a break, a breather. So much can change now and we will enter into another phase of life. Different clothing, different food, different activities, different silence. The seasons mark so clearly a forward movement, while at the same time reminding us of what is past. I have lived long enough to know that autumn follows summer, it has done so each year of my life without fail. A certain security and hope can validly rise up.

And as surely as autumn follows summer, so does God unfailingly follow you and me. He has been present without fail. He has been there in the winter of our coldness and despair when grief for whatever reason has wrung the warmth from our hearts. He has come in the varying cyclones of our tears, and battled the fierce storms of our seeming worthlessness and despondency. He has walked those summer days of stifling humidity when the unremitting daily heat has sapped us of our motivation and purpose and left us languishing and thirsty for we know not what. He has come as a southerly buster at the end of our day and visited us with new hope, new energy, new purpose. He has disguised Himself as the person who gave us a raincoat of concern in the downpour of our depression, who knitted us a scarf of protection in our vulnerability, who lit a candle when the days grew shorter and we were caught unprepared, who walked along the beach with us and spoke of nothing much.

Yes He has proven to us again and again and again that He always comes. Each season’s change is a chance to remember the times He came and to look forward with certainty to a future where He will not only come again but is always present.

 

Sr Hilda Scott osb