IVP - Strangely Dim

'Tis the Season to Be . . .

I've got seasons on the brain, in part, I think, because fall is my favorite season. Or maybe it's because even though it actually is fall, Hallmark has the Christmas ornaments out, but it feels like summer. I think our poor trees here in the Chicago suburbs are a little confused: their internal clocks say it's time to change, but Tracy Butler from ABC News says it will still be over eighty and humid today, like it was all weekend. What tree wouldn't be confused?

Even though we're still mostly green here, though, there are some spots of orange and red bravely showing up on leaves. I notice a little more, a new burst of color, almost every day as I drive to work. And that's one of the reasons I love fall: I notice it, and what I notice thrills me. My generally ordinary commute suddenly contains beauty, wonder, awe. Not bad for a drive to work.

Another aspect of fall I love is the apples. I am a firm believer that an apple a day doesn't just keep the doctor away; it also significantly increases quality and enjoyment of life. Especially if you add peanut butter (which can only make anything better). The Michigan town where I grew up boasted more than one apple orchard, so fall always meant an abundance of apples and apple cider and homemade applesauce and apple crisp and fresh cinnamon-sugar donuts . . . When my parents moved to Pennsylvania last year, my sister and I searched out and visited an orchard in the area to replace our annual fall weekend trek to Michigan and stock our apartment with aforementioned appley goodness. Last weekend we returned to the same orchard, and I think it will become an annual fall tradition now.

I love living in a place that has four distinct seasons, and I love having traditions associated with each season. Lisa McMinn writes in The Contented Soul that "rituals call our attention to the present and encourage us to be mindful of the underlying activity of a particular season." Food is one of the examples she gives as a way to think intentionally about each season. She says she realized one year that she had "stopped appreciating the seasons and had been forgetting the succulence of fresh locally grown produce." Her comments have made me think more intentionally about eating foods that are in season (though I have to admit that I can't give up apples the other three seasons of the year!). My sister and I now have meals that we associate with specific seasons, and we look for new recipes that use produce that's in season. The rituals and traditions become a way of helping us pay attention.

We have seasons besides the physical seasons, though. I just finished reading a wonderful manuscript (forthcoming from InterVarsity Press; stay tuned) on the church calendar. I've never attended a church that closely follows the church calendar, but this manuscript shows the richness that comes from paying attention to and participating in the cycles of the church calendar, remembering, celebrating and anticipating the story of God's past, present and future work.

I'm also, as I mentioned before, in a season of preparation for grad school. Part of that preparation is setting aside time to write. And when I'm writing consistently, I notice things. I love poetry for the same reason I love fall: it forces me to pay attention to moments, color, details. The more writing I do the more I notice around me, in me. Writing is itself a practice that slows me down and helps me pay attention.

I'm still missing a lot, I know, even as I try to pay attention, but maybe I'll leave a few more extra minutes for my drive to work to notice the leaves changing. Maybe I'll choose silence sometimes over music or TV so that I have space to reflect. Maybe I'll take a walk so that I don't just see fall; I also feel the cold (or hot, as the case may be) against my skin. And maybe I'll savor a bowl of homemade applesauce, eating it slowly instead of gulping it down on the fly, and eating it with gratitude for the work of farmers in growing the apples and my sister in making it.

Let's pay attention together, right now, in the same and different seasons we're in. After all, 'tis the season--this fall season, the writing season, the good season, the hard season--to be.