The cicadas are singing and the sun is still warm, but the evening air is cooler as summer wraps up her aria and autumn waits in the wings. The leaves haven't started to turn yet, but the twilight sun in the woods is sad, and before we know it the lace of the limbs will drift to the ground in the dance of death that only God can make lovely.
It's strange to think of new beginnings in the time of nature's annual demise. December is the most popular month for proposals, which means fall is the prime time when young hearts burn, plans are made, love is nurtured, and dreams are born. Young minds are pulled from the pool and stuck in a classroom to start that arduous task of expanding with things about which most of them neither know nor care. These, though, are the "someday things," waiting to be put to use on a someday, a job, a higher degree. With autumn comes the harvest, the bounty of labor that means life. Making a living, providing a livelihood, feeding livestock - all these necessities are born in the time of great death.
"O death, where is thy victory?" O death, why should we fear your sting when from the ashes rises new life? It is only in the death of man that human hearts mourn, but from elsewhere in the natural realm we pull inspiration for art and hope of rebirth. Perhaps our God put before us the perfect example of His plan and the crucial role death plays, and yet it is us who still misinterpret and grieve what we have made death, equivalent to finality. Perhaps it's just something else we see wrong.
There is a harmony in autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been.
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
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