Seasonal Musings and a Metaphor

I love nature. A lot. I've been frequently asked what my favorite season is, and most of the time I can't really think of just one. I love them all for different reasons. But recently I've been thinking about Autumn. I kind of miss it, maybe because this spring so far has been cold like Autumn usually is, but without the beauty. It's just been cold and gray and rainy. I think the earth is in the transitory stage between spring and summer. Most of the spring flowers have come and gone, and even the delight of the leaves having blossomed has lost its lustre. Now nature just looks like a big heap of old, water-logged moss. I just want a sunny day.
But anyway, I was thinking about all the reasons I love Fall and why I look forward to it again this year.
On any nice Autumn day, the air is crisp and fresh, and every time I take a breath it feels like my insides are being scrubbed clean and cool, and the sunlight is a pale splendor that filters through the crimson leaves like some sort of liquid gold, and the leaves dance and flutter as they fall, looking from afar not unlike raindrops of glittering diamonds and rubies.
In the calm dark of the night, which wraps the land and all in it in its silent, sheltering embrace, the wind sighs through the bare branches, and the moon peeps out from behind a glass curtain of slow moving clouds; from behind that wispy veil it looks rather like an eye, the giant and weary eye of God gazing down on the shadowed land with contentment in its depths. The cold of the autumn night—only a forebear of the harsh bitterness of winter that’s yet to come—caresses my body and nips at my ears and nose, causing a slight sting that snatches me away from the dungeon of my mind. It gives me just enough pain to let me know that yes, I am still alive; that I have a life to live and a chance to live it.
Yes, I love autumn. Something always stirs inside me when this time of year comes around; there’s something deeply tragic and poetic and beautiful somehow, about the sunset of the year. The land grows cold; nature loses its luster, and the leaves of its youth fall away to reveal the twisted and withered branches within. Everything is laid bare; there is no more hiding for anything. No more illusions, no more masks, just stark and bitter reality. It’s a time of judgment when what is good and strong in nature shall remain steadfast through the coming trials, and all that is weak or impure passes away. The world seems to slow to a crawl, and everything trembles in anticipation of the coming darkness, a cold, sharp darkness in which a thing—if it doesn’t perish—emerges stronger and sharper than before. It’s all very symbolic. I think it would be cool if Christ returned just when winter is about to turn to spring, like how Aslan did in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
All this thinking I’ve done recently has led me to rethink the metaphor I have about life. I used to equate life to a road: you’re walking along it, and sometimes you might trip on an unseen rock or hole, only to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep moving forward. There are countless deviations from the path, and once you take one, the one you were just on becomes lost to you, impossible to return to.
But now I’m starting to think of life more like a river. The river is Time itself, and you are just a little speck on this huge river, holding onto your pathetic little log for dear life. At times the water seems to rush ahead at an alarming rate, crashing and careening and throwing you around until you’re beaten and senseless, and other times it seems to just flow gently and peacefully or even slow to an agonizing crawl. And yet you are not alone in the water; there are many other people flowing alongside you, sometimes they pass you by quickly and sometimes you rush past them. And sometimes you can get close enough to someone that you can converse with them and hitch your rafts together for a while. And someday you meet a very, very special person who, when the rapids of the river threaten to pull you apart, you grab hold of and pull onto your own raft so that you can never be separated again. That’s marriage.
Sometimes a storm comes over the river. This could result in many things, like crashing trees and branches falling into the water all around you, or of someone else’s raft being crushed to pieces and then they are lost in the waters. But whatever happens, when you’ve emerged living but shaken from the storm, you have all this debris around you, and you take it and build your raft up bigger, stronger, and more spacious than it was before. By surviving the trials of the storm you have gained more building supplies for your Life-raft and, by building it up, stand a better chance of surviving even more horrific storms with confidence, and you have more room on the boat to let others into it. This is like getting more confidence in your life and expanding your horizons so you can let more people into your life, let them get closer to you without being afraid.
Sadly, some people just can’t take the ride of life and feel like they have to stop and get out and take a break. For most people, when this happens, they just go onto the shore of the river and stand there, watching the waters pass them by. They would explore, but they are too afraid of leaving their raft for fear of never finding it again and not being able to get back in the water when they want to. Yet others, tragically, cannot take the ride at all and simply abandon their rafts in favor of the water’s icy embrace.
For those people that weather the choppy ride and survive the storms, eventually, in the fullness of time, their rafts will have grown into mighty ships and unconquerable vessels, patchwork galleons of mismatched memories and experiences: experiences of love gained and love lost, and love made invincible by the passage of time; of church outings and school plays; of vicious arguments between friends, and the reconciliation of such arguments, performed with such bursting floods of love that they were almost glad that they had sinned against each other; of sharpest pain and deepest joy as words cannot describe. These mighty vessels sail on, uninhibited by the crashing waves. However, not even the biggest and strongest ship can sail on forever, nor can the grizzled navigator of such a prize continue on forever; there must be a stopping point, a place of rest and ease.
Some people find this place, the lucky ones—the lucky ones who know where to look. But most people end up just sailing on down the river; down and down until the ancient navigator collapses from weariness, and his boat breaks apart on the rocks and lets loose its master into the cold depths, alone. But the lucky people, the people that knew where to look—they knew something that those others didn’t. They knew that all along it wasn’t they who decided where their boats would sail, or whose boat would crash and sink and whose would flourish. For they had seen glimpses of that power which had wrought the river’s winding course from the beginning, the entity behind the very motion of the waves which tossed them to and fro. The very same God who had let loose the storms’ vengeance upon the hapless mariners, and who decided which of these souls would emerge from the maelstrom unscathed. He had revealed himself to them not in times of thunder and lightning, or of crashing waves; He made himself known in the softness of a warm summer breeze and in the chilly caress of moonlight on a sorrowful winter’s night. He had made himself known in the silent moments when thoughts are soft and hearts are open. And yet only those hearts that were open, rent open from the blades of life’s joys and sorrows and purged—only the hearts of those souls which were at their lowest, humblest, and most willing—only they could hear His still, small voice in the silence. And henceforth they were unafraid, for they knew that a power stronger, deadlier, wiser, and lovelier than anything their feeble minds could comprehend was watching over them. They gave control of the wheel into the hands of God—those perfect, firm, unyielding, faultless hands—and their lives were blessed.
And so, at the end of their long voyage, that still, small voice led them to a secret cove, on the shore of which He stood, waiting with open arms and tears on His face. And the lucky mariner stepped wearily out of his ship, and onto firm, hard ground. And, leaving the river of Time and the Life-boat behind, his loving Maker led him through the forests of Eternity into that place where shadows die and the past doesn’t matter anymore, a place of which not even the most gifted word-smiths could ever paint a picture of. And there they lived for the rest of Eternity in quiet peace, far away from the chaotic calamities of the river of time.
We need to start trying to sit back in those silent moments and quiet our hearts and minds and just listen for his still, small voice. Good night.